Vintage Rockport

Everyone in Rockport knows the iconic statue of a baby riding a frog that stands adjacent to the Rockport Art Association on Main Street. The sculptor and portrait artist who created that piece, Richard H. Recchia, and his wife, the writer and artist Kitty Parsons Recchia, lived in this home at 6 Summer St., where they also built a studio. The Recchias called the house “Hardscrabble.” Both the home and the studio are still there.

Recchia’s “Baby and Frog” is outside the Rockport Art Association. Another version is in Brookgreen Gardens in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

The house was built in 1837, according to online real estate records. Parsons, who was born in 1889 in Stratford, Conn., first lived here with her family before she met Recchia. Her family summered in Gloucester before they moved to this house. They probably already lived here when this photograph was taken. In fact, the postcard is signed, “Kitty,” and could have come from her.

It was in Rockport that Parsons met her future husband. Recchia was born in 1885 in Quincy, Mass. His father, a marble carver from Verona, Italy, taught the young Recchia to sculpt. From 1904 to 1907, Recchia attended the school of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and continued to work there until 1912 as an assistant to the sculptor Bela L. Pratt. It appears that he moved to Rockport sometime around 1926 and married Kitty in 1927.

(Before he came to Rockport, he was married to another woman, Anita, who he met while living in Paris, and with whom he had two children. In this oral history recording from 1978, he said that he was married to Anita until 1926, when she died. However, his recollection of some dates does not always comport with other records.)

Recchia’s diver is behind the Rockport Art Association

One of his best-known works is the mammoth statue of Revolutionary War hero General John Stark that stands near his grave in Manchester, N.H. His statue “Mother Goose” stood in the children’s room of the old Carnegie Library until it closed in 1993. (I can find no record of where the statue went after that.) His bronze statue of a woman about to dive stands behind the Rockport Art Association. For many years, it was in his studio and then in his yard.

Kitty Parsons was a founding member of the Rockport Art Association in 1920 and editor of Artists of the Rockport Art Association published in 1940. Other books she wrote include Dogtown Commons (1936), Buccaneer Ballads and Legends of Cape Ann and Essex County (1944), Gloucester Sea Ballads: True Tales of Fishermen (1948), and Christmas Offering (1956).

Kitty Parsons died in 1975. Recchia continued to live in the house until his death in 1983. He is buried at Rockport’s Beech Grove Cemetary, under a tombstone he carved for himself before his death.

For an in-depth article about this house and its famous occupants, see the post about it at The Landmark Files. To hear Recchia talk about his life, listen to these oral history recordings.

As to the postcard, it was a real-photo postcard made from an actual photo negative. As I noted above, it was signed by someone named “Kitty,” quite possibly Kitty Parsons herself. It was postmarked on Feb. 10, 1906, when Kitty would have been around 17.

The postcard identifies this house — which still stands at the corner of Mt. Pleasant Street and Atlantic Ave. — as the oldest house in Rockport. The plaque that is on the house now says it was built in 1680 by Joshua Norwood, father of Caleb. But based on what I read, the house is not the oldest in Rockport, was not built in 1680, and was not built by Joshua Norwood.

A similar view of the house today.

According to the History of the Town of Rockport, published in 1888, this house was built by Caleb Norwood, Joshua’s son, on land adjacent to Gap Cove.

“[The] house, on the corner of Mt. Pleasant St. and Atlantic Avenue, according to tradition, is the house built by Caleb and removed to its present position about eighty years ago,” the history says.

The view from the corner of Mt. Pleasant and Atlantic Ave.

Joshua Norwood and his family moved to Gap Cove around 1740 (different sources give different dates). Joshua first moved to Pigeon Cove in 1694, so he did not even live in the area at the time the plaque says he built the house. For many years, he and his family (he and his wife had 14 children) lived in what is now known as the Witch House. It appears that the family moved out of the area for a time, to Attleboro, Mass., and settled in Gap Cove when they returned.

Caleb was born  in 1736 so the house would not have been built until some years after that, presumably when he was a young man. That would mean it was built closer to 1755 or so. Based on the history’s account, it would have been moved to its present location around 1800.

This plaque is on the house.

Caleb is famous around Rockport as the boy who supposedly discovered pirates’ treasure at Gully Cove in 1752. (Eleanor Parson’s  book, Rockport: The Making of a Tourist Treasure, says he was 13 at the time, but all records I find say he was born in 1736, which would mean he was 16 in 1752.) Thanks to the treasure, he grew up to be a wealthy man and built several houses. As I’ve previously noted, one is the Headland House on Norwood Avenue, which he build in 1781 and which later became the home of artist Harrison Cady.

This postcard was published by the Rockport Photo Bureau. I estimate the date of the postcard to be approximately 1925.

In writing my last post about a Marmion Way cottage, I looked at a map of the area from 1899. I was surprised to see that it contained several streets that no longer exist. Compare the two views below, one from the 1899 map and the other from today’s Google Earth. If you look carefully, you will see streets on the old map that have disappeared entirely. They include:

• Glencoe Road, which ran from what is now called Lighthouse Lane (across from Gully Point Cove) over to Straitsmouth Way. Today there is a short road off Straitsmouth, Stone Haven Lane, that may be a remnant of Glencoe.
• Clydesdale Road, which ran from Whale Cove straight across to where Marmion intersects with Old Garden Road. It appears that today’s Richards Avenue was formerly part of Clydesdale. I found a 2008 town of Rockport document that shows Clydesdale as still running between Straitsmouth and Marmion.
• Between Clydesdale and Marmion are several streets — Grampian, Cheviot and Rokeby, that have all disappeared.

Do any readers remember any of these streets or know what became of them?