A Harthaven Memory – Stairway to Heaven

By Lanny McDowell  04/12/11

Before the McDowells had their own house in Harthaven, when I was four, we stayed at least some of the time in the White House.  I was crouched near a car in the drive out front, on the harbor side.  A penny flew through the air over the porch near the kitchen and landed near me.  I was astounded and still am.

Somebody somewhere must have had a good chuckle when Mom and Dad bought maybe the worst lot to build on in the whole place, almost a nothing lot, squeezed and stretched between the Edgartown Road and Ice House Pond, which was at the time still connected to the harbor by a narrow tidal creek east of the Vibberts’ lawn.  On at least a couple of occasions a dogfish came in with the tide and caused a bit of drama showing its sharky fin above the shallow pond water. 

The lot looked awful on paper and, except for the awful suicide non-driveway, was great in practice, with one of the most dynamic views of the sound, short of living right on the harbor.  Allan McDowell, self-taught as an architect, designed and also built a quirky house on the quirky lot.  Somewhere between California modern with a capital M, with Japanese textures and patterns thrown in, and the scale and functionality of a smallish schooner, the house was iconic, economical, awkward, charming and embracing of the outdoors to the ocean side, all endless windows and wrap-around deck in the treetops.  What today would be considered a retro period piece, chique to some, funky to others.  It was 1950 and I was four.

This house of ours contained a gesture of fun and devotion that I hope has informed my own designs and carpentry and maybe my soul:  the house plan was on one floor topped by a gently sloping expanse of roof, almost flat;  through that roof was punched a tiny room meant for me; the entire “second floor” measured perhaps four by eight in plan and some four feet high at most.  It’s sole purpose was to be a small lookout and hideaway for me.  Access was via a fixed homemade ladder alongside the house’s central (shiplike) hallway.  At the top of the ladder a trap door had to be lifted for entry into this tiny room, and then lowered back down for secrecy and intrigue.  I have a feeling that my toys were supposed to be stashed up there too.  Small louvered windows on the east side give me a lookout over my domain: Ice House Pond and the ocean beach beyond.

Later in the 50s, Allan, my Dad, got commissions to build cottages in his distinctive style here and there on the Vineyard.  He hired Herbie Hancock in Chilmark and also brought one or two of his own carpenters down from Connecticut to work for a few months at a time.  Dad told of overhearing up-Island conversations that referred to his small modern cottages as either the Peach Fruit Stand or the Pink Hen House.  And there was the Lehman house on Farm Pond.  His design style was way out ahead of the pack; and I’d like to think he had a lot of fun prodding the norms.

I spent a half year at the Oak Bluffs Elementary School when I was seven, the second half of the second grade.  It must have been 1953-4.  I can see myself practicing cursive letters for the first time, catching up with the rest of the class.  I also remember the social scene, which was a whirlwind.  Recess periods outside were a melee, a scene of activity and swirling dust reminiscent of herds on the Serengeti.  If the crowd identified a boy and a girl that were sweet on each other, or were perceived to be, the guys would grab the boy and the gals would grab the girl and the two sides would advance on each other across the playground like advancing infantries.  When the two sides met, the boy and girl would be smushed together as their handlers attempted to enforce a kiss, each victim of the eager crowd contorting madly and jerkily to avoid each other’s face.

That spring at the OB school I had a friend named John Bunker.  We each actually did have a girlfriend.  Mine was Pam Brown, the girl correctly chosen by the rowdy play period crowd to press against my face.  The four of us had a playdate at the home my Dad built in Harthaven one Saturday.  We adventured around in the swamp behind Ba’s house and triumphantly brought a baby muskrat home to live in a box and be played with.  It turns out that baby muskrats have the very sharp incisors of most rodents – it’s what they are known for – and this one managed to draw blood every single time anyone reached into the muskrat box to play with it.

When playing with the muskrat proved a bust, the four seven year-old kids climbed the fixed ladder up to Lanny’s secret room, first holding open  the trap door until all were jammed into the tiny space, then dropping the door over the hole in the floor to seal off our world, and maybe our fates.

The room was close, warm and smiley.  John’s girlfriend went first.  He closed his eyes.  She kissed his cheek.  She KISSED his cheek!  Then the turn was mine.  The first couple watched.  I shut my eyes.  My heart surely raced like a hot wind.  Pam was close.  I felt her breath very close.  I felt her soft lips on my cheek.  It was done.  We were seven, going on eight, very warm, and thrilled.

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Memories

Charlie Rathbone

In the 1950s when Allan McDowell built "Wind Song" on the narrow parcel between Hamlin Pond and the state road (Everyone said no one could possibly build there -which of course he took as a challenge), the pond water, fed by fresh water springs, drained out via a small creek directly into Hart's Harbor. Spanning this trickle a small wooden bridge had been built, wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair from the Vibberts house'. Within a few years, however, that passageway had filled up and another opened, presumably by a hurricane. This second opening led from the pond across the narrow beach to the ocean; this connection caused the pond to rise and flow with the tides.

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I remember waking up one morning at Wind Song to the sound of frantic splashing. Two sand sharks had apparently come into the pond at high tide but then were trapped and couldn't get out!

Later still, that second exit closed, returning the pond to its original state - a fresh water pond near the edge of the sea. Old maps show this location as "Ice House Pond," from which ice was harvested in the winter, stored underground somewhere and then sold in the summer.

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Changing Perspectives

By Charlie Rathbone

My maternal grandparents were E. A. Moore (president of Stanley Works) and Martha Elizabeth Hart Moore. Although they had their own Harthaven "cottage," when her father (William H. Hart) died, they acquired his centrally located "White House" specifically so that their children (my mother's generation) would have a nearby place to stay in the summer. For each family this meant three or four weeks, depending on whether the summer was split three ways or four. As a youngster, Harthaven of the 1940s and 1950s was a wonderful place to play and grow: traffic was minimal and biking safe; because so many homes belonged to Hart and Moore relatives, we automatically knew a bunch of people (and even if we didn't know them, they knew us); everyone seemed to have a boat to sail or fish from: life, indeed, was very good.

Looking back on this idyllic scene, I now perceive our considerable insularity. As we grew up, we eventually discovered the ECBC and the ECTC (East Chop Beach and Tennis Clubs), because they had dances, but frankly we were oblivious of our neighbors to the north. As a teenager, I recall being impressed by the number of New York vehicles bearing MD license plates, but it really wasn't until much later when I read Dorothy West's riveting novel, The Wedding, that I came to fully appreciate the thriving African American community just across Farm Pond. Had I grown up in the 1960s and 1970s, I'm sure my adolescent perspective would have been quite different. -Charlie Rathbone

FIRE!

by Charlie Rathbone

During March vacation of my freshman year of college, I worked construction on the Harthaven home of Paul and Nancy Lehmann.  My folks had befriended the Lehmanns several years earlier when I attended the Dublin School, and eventually persuaded them to buy a lot on Farm Pond.  Dad (Allan McDowell, my step-father) then designed for them a little cottage and, in the spring of 1955, he came to the island to supervise its construction.  He brought with him from Connecticut one of his ace carpenters, Jim Keyes, and also hired a gruff, heavily accented Germanic islander, Henry Brunkhorst.  Henry and Jim were skilled; I was not.  Accordingly, I was given tasks commensurate with my proficiencies: digging post holes, hauling lumber, clean-up chores, and the like.  I particularly recall the cold March winds that blew in from the sea and the multiple snow showers.

One Saturday morning while working on the roof, I heard the town siren go off.  At first we thought it was the noon whistle, but when it persisted we listened carefully to the sequence, for in those days the fire department used a code to communicate the approximate location of a fire so that volunteer firemen from anywhere within earshot could drive directly to the fire and not waste time assembling at the fire station.  When a sufficient number of volunteers had gathered, the signals would normally stop.

On this day, however, the signal went on and on –meaning that the fire was a big one and that more help was needed.  It turned out that a major forest fire was raging out near the airport and that all island towns were being asked to pitch in.  By mid afternoon, this meant the Bartlett Tree trucks and all towns’ mosquito spraying apparatus were pressed into service.

Begging off work, I reported to the Oak Bluffs F.D. and was assigned to one of their newer trucks, a sleek, powerful piece of equipment that could mow down small pine trees as it made its way down unpaved, overgrown mid-island lanes.  For the next six hours, I rode the truck, racing up-island with a full tank, locating some part of the fire, pumping out the water, then racing back to the nearest fire hydrant to refill.  A couple of times, we were instructed to hoist individual Indian Pump canisters on our backs and to venture out into the bush in search of flames.  The contrast between the freezing rides and the intense heat of up-close work was absolutely draining.

At one point while deep in the woods, I saw the experienced fireman next to me suddenly go pale, jump off the truck, run up front and tell the driver to turn around fast.  Within perhaps a minute, the wind-whipped fire that he had seen coming through the underbrush had moved directly over the spot where our truck had been standing.

It was determined later that the fire destroyed nearly two square miles of woodland, but no houses.

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Allan McDowell Remembered

Dr. Jack Thomas

I first came to Martha's Vineyard in the summer of 1969, the year that Ted Kennedy proved himself to be such a good swimmer. That was the year in which traffic jams caused by morbid curiosity seekers trying to see the infamous Dike Bridge, stretched all the way back through Edgartown, sometimes as far as the triangle. It was also the year, if I remember correctly, that men first landed on the moon. Which was the most significant event? Certainly not my coming to the Vineyard. One of the other events may have changed the course of American presidential history; the other, who knows?

 

I came to the Vineyard at the urging of Allan McDowell, the father of Ba Dutton and Lanny McDowell. Allan had been a patient of Benjamin White, the senior partner in our medical partnership. When Ben retired, Allan, even though he lived way out in Kent, Connecticut,continued to come to Hartford to see me for medical advice. In the spring of 1969 it came out in conversation that my family and I were planning a summer vacation on Cape Cod. Allan expostulated " Oh no, Jack, come to the Vineyard instead ! "

 

Fortunately I was able to extricate myself from the Cape Cod arrangements, and we rented the main house at Crow's Nest for three weeks that year, and the Mess House for the next two years. Russ and Barbara Hart were our landlords

 

Allan was a tireless advocate for Harthaven and eventually convinced me to buy the lot back here in the woods where my house now is. I have been coming here ever since.

 

A few more words about Allan McDowell. He was a courtly Virginia gentleman who used to speak fondly of growing up near the North Fork of the James River. I think he would have found me some property there if I shown any interest. He was an accomplished artist and architect. His small house, perched between Seaview Avenue and Ice House Pond, was a masterpiece of design. Its interior reminded one of the interior of a yacht, with custom designed storage areas for almost everything in the house. It was similar in design to the Lehmann house in Harthaven, which he also designed.

 

Allan was a great raconteur, and appreciated the finer things of life. Among these fine things was a cocktail called a Negroni, named after some obscure Italian nobleman. For those who don't know, a Negroni is made of equal parts of gin,sweet vermouth and Campari over ice. Orson Welles also liked Negronis, and was once quoted as saying that the bitters are good for your liver, the gin is bad for you, but they cancel each other out. Allan's yardstick for judging the quality of a restaurant was to be able to walk in, order a Negroni, and have the bartender know how to make one without having to look it up. Only a few restaurants made the cut.

 

I once had a piece of laboratory glassware known as a graduated cylinder which I presented to Allan. He was greatly pleased, knowing that he would henceforth be able to make Negronis with absolute accuracy.