Annisquam Cotton Mill, Before and After the 1882 Fire

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Robert Ambrogi

Rockport cotton mill2

Mill Ruins 2

For more than 50 years, the Annisquam Cotton Mill dominated downtown Rockport, filling the area along Broadway between School Street and Main Street. In operation since 1847, the mill was destroyed by fire in 1882. Even though the mill never reopened, its ruins remained standing for another 22 years, until they were finally removed in 1904. As I’ve previously noted, the fire spared one building, the machine shop, built in 1864. That building eventually became a school and is still in use today as the Rockport Public Library.

The top image, an old stereoscope from E.G. Rollins of Gloucester, shows the mill as it looked before the fire (along with a curious dog). The perspective appears to be from on Broadway. The bottom image shows the ruins. Note the mill houses along Broadway, which remain there today. The elevated perspective suggests the picture may have been taken from the steeple of the Congregational Church.

The fire had another impact that would change the course of Cape Ann commerce. As I’ve explained before, the fire left the mill’s superintendent, Slade Gorton, out of work. In search of a new occupation, he started packing and selling salt codfish and mackerel. By 1899, he had patented the Original Gorton Fish Cake, and the rest of the story need hardly be told. Today, Gorton’s of Gloucester is a brand recognized worldwide. I just found another account of Gorton’s story that says that he originally ran his fish business out of Rockport’s famous Motif No. 1.

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The Beaches Inn (a/k/a Cape Hedge Inn), Rockport, Mass., circa 1965

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Robert Ambrogi

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This inn at the very end of South Street in Rockport, just above Cape Hedge beach, burned to the ground in the late 1970s. The ruins can still be seen there today. For many years, it was called the Cape Hedge Inn and in the 1970s it went by the name Sandpiper Inn. This postcard identifies it as the Beaches Inn.

I have been able to find no information about the Beaches Inn except that it was operated by Kathleen (Kay) and Edward Pine. The also operated an inn named The 1840 House on Beach Street in Rockport. Mrs. Pine died in 2003 at the age of 85.

This postcard is much more recent that the ones I usually post, but I was fascinated to see this view of the inn from the water. For a 1953 view of the inn when it was called Cape Hedge, see this post.

This postcard was published by Curtis News of Rockport, which published a number of postcards over the years before it closed in the early 1980s. It was run by Bud Curtis, who later was a realtor with Beaton Real Estate in Rockport.

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Surf at Headlands, Rockport, Mass., circa 1910

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Robert Ambrogi

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Here is a beautiful postcard showing the view from The Headlands — the granite dome on the southeast side of the mouth of Rockport harbor — looking northwest across Sandy Bay towards Pigeon Cove.

This postcard was printed by The Robbins Bros. Co, Boston, and distributed through the Metropolitan News Company, a larger Boston postcard publisher. Robbins was in business only from 1907 to 1912, so a fair estimate is that the image is from around 1910.

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Portion of Long Beach, Gloucester-Rockport, Mass., circa 1936

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Robert Ambrogi

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This late-1930s postcard shows a colorized view of Long Beach, which straddles the Rockport-Gloucester line. Except for the cottages, Long Beach has barely changed from early descriptions of it. Consider this description from the 1873 book, Pigeon Cove and Vicinity, by Henry C. Leonard:

Between Cape Hedge and Brier Neck, the half mile of Long Beach is of sand, and wide and smooth; but behind the sand, hardened by the tramping waves, are sand-knolls thrown up by the winds. Long Beach is backed by a marsh. On rising ground behind the marsh, and spreading over hundreds of acres receding to Cape Pond and Beaver Dam, is a grand wood but slightly damaged by the ruthless axe.

I do not know when the first cottages were built at Long Beach. The earliest reference I could find to them was from 1895, when the Long Beach Association made a request to the Rockport Board of Water Commissioners that the town furnish the cottages with water service. “It appears from investigation made by the Board, it would be a good paying investment for the town to put the water to Long Beach, and no doubt the revenue would increase each year as new houses are built,” the board reported.

In 1907, 13 of the 56 cottages on Long Beach were destroyed by fire, as I described in an earlier post.

This is a linen postcard, a type of postcard published on linen-like paper that was popular from around 1930 to 1945. The publisher of this postcard, E.C. McIntire of Gloucester, went out of business in 1937. The postcard has a postmark of July 2, 1941. Those factors suggest the image was from around 1936 or earlier.

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Turks Head Inn, Rockport, Mass., circa 1910

Posted on January 13, 2013 by Robert Ambrogi

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As I’ve noted before, the Turk’s Head Inn was long considered Rockport’s finest resort. It stood at the location of the present-day Cape Hedge Inn, at the intersection of South Street and Thatcher Road in the area of town known as Land’s End. The inn commanded a sweeping view of Loblolly Cove and Thacher Island, with its twin lighthouses.

The inn closed around 1965. In January 1968, with planning already underway to tear down the old inn and build a new one, fire destroyed the inn’s center section. The next year, the center section and the south wing were razed. In 1970, another fire destroyed the remaining north wing. The remains were razed and replaced by a new Turk’s Head Motor Inn, which later became the Cape Hedge Inn.

This postcard offers a unique colorized view of the inn. The card is not dated, but the picture offers a couple of clues as to the date. One is the car. It appears to be either a slightly newer model than or one of the same cars shown in a 1906 postcard of the inn. We also know that this picture is from 1906 or later, because the portion of the inn seen on the right was constructed late in 1905 after a fire destroyed the original structure. You can see how it originally looked in this postcard. These hints lead me to believe that the view is from no later than 1910.

The card was published by Edwin C. McIntire of Gloucester and printed by the Curt Teich postcard company in Chicago under the brand C.T. Photochrom. Many Teich-printed cards bore numbers that reveal when they were printed. This one has such a number, indicated it was printed in 1914. That further reinforces the conclusion that the image is from 1910 or earlier.

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Found on the Web: Rockport Harbor, 1905

Posted on January 6, 2013 by Robert Ambrogi

Rockport Harbor c. 1905

Here is a 1905 view of Rockport harbor, shot from the steeple of the Congregational Church. Click on the image for an enlarged view. I believe this is from the Detroit Publishing Company, many of whose images were reproduced as postcards.

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The Old Stone Wharves, Rockport, Mass., circa 1925

Posted on January 5, 2013 by Robert Ambrogi

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These two postcards show the exact same scene and come from the same publisher, but there are subtle differences between them. In particular, note the clouds — they are vastly different in the two views. The probable reason for this is the process used to color and print the postcards.

The actual photographs used to create these cards were in black and white. The colors were added in the printing process. When and how they were added varied with the printing process. Early B&W film had a particularly difficult time capturing details of the sky and cloud. Thus, postcard printers used retouchers and colorists to draw in the details of the sky. For that reason, you often see the same scene with different sky details.

In this image, you see Rockport’s famous Motif No. 1 to the left. To the far right, near the end of Bearskin Neck, you can see the transit tower, built in 1892, that today is part of a larger building.

Both of these postcards were published by the Edwin C. McIntire Co. of Gloucester. They were printed by the Curt Teich postcard company in Chicago, under the Teich brand C.T. American Art Colored, which was the name of the process Teich created for coloring postcards.

As for the date of these postcards, I am uncertain. The Edwin C. McIntire Co. was in business from 1907 to 1937. At various times, the company went by that name or by E.C. McIntire. I’ve published other McIntire cards, but this is the first to have a white border. White borders were not common on postcards until the 1920s. Another clue is that the Teich company began producing mostly linen postcards around 1930. Linen postcards had a distinct texture that these cards do not. Thus, my best guess is that the cards were from the mid-1920s.

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The Building of the Sandy Bay Breakwater, 1894 article

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Robert Ambrogi

There is a great discussion going on over at the Good Morning Gloucester blog about the building of the Sandy Bay Breakwater. I previously published a post about the history of this ill-fated project, but I thought I’d also share the following. It is an October 1894 magazine article about the building of the breakwater, replete with photos and maps. It was published in The New England Magazine and written by Herman Babson. (Click on the lower right corner of the SlideShare frame to blow this up to full screen.)

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Update on Oak Knoll: Location Found on Phillips Ave.

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Robert Ambrogi

Oak Knoll, Pigeon Cove, Mass., circa 1918Yet again, a sharp-eyed reader has helped me identify the present-day location of a scene shown in a vintage postcard. I recently posted a circa 1918 postcard showing the Oak Knoll, a summer boarding house in Pigeon Cove. In that post, I said that the best I could determine about its location was on the east side of Granite Street, between Phillips Avenue and Haven Avenue.

IMG_2120A comment to that post said that the Oak Knoll appeared reminiscent of a house on Phillips Avenue, across from the Nickerson residence. Sure enough, the house at 102 Phillips Avenue appears to be the exact building shown in the postcard, as these two photographs show.

The first picture, taken from Ocean Avenue, is roughly from the same perspective as the postcard. The chimneys, dormers, windows and bowed front are all identical. Even the widow’s walk remains in the same location on the roof.

IMG_2121aThis second photograph is taken from Phillips Avenue. Again, you can see that the house has all the same features as did the Oak Knoll.

According to Zillow, this house was built in 1874 and has six bedrooms. That information, too, comports with the conclusion that this is, in fact, the former Oak Knoll.

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The John Coggeshall Camp, Lanesville, Mass., circa 1909

Posted on January 1, 2013 by Robert Ambrogi

Andrews Point Artists’ Camp, Rockport, Mass., circa 1909

Yesterday, I posted the image above, describing it as an artists’ camp at Andrews Point in Rockport. That was the description that accompanied the postcard when I purchased it. As it turns out, it was only partly right. Although it is an artists’ camp, it is actually the camp that was run by artist John Coggeshall in Lanesville.

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The camp building as it looks today.

Thank you to Gregg Smith for his comment informing me of this and to Elana Brink for doing the same on our Facebook page. The building has since been broken up, but portions of it still stand, directly on the ocean at the foot of Coggeshall Road in Lanesville (a village of Gloucester).

A 1909 listing in the magazine, The School Arts Book, provides this description of Coggeshall Camp and Studio:

Offers a course of instruction in drawing and painting from nature under an experienced teacher who has studied and painted in many lands. Beginners and those who have made some progress in out-of-door sketching will find here an unusual opportunity to work directly from Nature in oil, water color, charcoal, or pencil, by new and simplified methods. The Camp buildings and studio were designed and built three years ago especially for this work and are situated beside the sea on a beautiful spot on the Cape Ann shore. This art students’ camp is unique in that it provides comfortable room, good board and best of practical instruction with pleasantest vacation surroundings and can accommodate a few who do not care to work in the classes, thus enabling students to bring friends as room-mates who would enjoy the out-of-door life. An illustrated booklet on application. John I. Coggeshall, 473 Beacon Street, Lowell, Mass. After June 15th, at Lanesville.

John Coggeshall

John I. Coggeshall

Coggeshall was a well-known painter of marine scenes and seascapes. Born in Fall River in 1857, he moved to Lowell in 1877 and lived the rest of his life there, until his death in 1927. He moved to Lowell to work as an engraver, after completing an apprenticeship in Boston. But he later said that he was surprised to find that Lowell was home to a thriving arts community.

In addition to painting, Coggeshall was an avid photographer. Fred Bodin has posted three of Coggeshall’s photos at the Good Morning Gloucester blog (here, here and here). He took many photographs of Lowell, capturing both its arts scene and its industry. He was an officer of both the Lowell Art Association and the Lowell Camera Club. Coggeshall’s great-grandfather fought in the American Revolution and Coggeshall was a member of the Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.

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