Martindale Farm, Ware, Massachusetts

The Martindale Farm in Ware (formerly Enfield), Massachusetts, on April 6, 1946. Image courtesy of the Metropolitan District Water Supply Commission, Quabbin Reservoir, Photographs of Real Estate Takings collection.

The scene in 2024:

This house, located on Webster Road in the town of Enfield, Massachusetts was built around the year 1800 by Jesse Fobes. Jesse moved to Webster Road in 1796 from Bridgewater, MA into a smaller house just north of this property. Once this home was completed, he would move his family to the much larger farm house. When Enfield became an incorporated town in 1816, Jesse would serve as one of its first Selectmen. Ownership of the farm would be passed onto Jesse’s son, Henry Fobes. Much like his father, Henry would also become a Selectmen of the town. Henry would hold onto ownership of the farm until selling it to Joel and William Martindale in 1870 for $8,000. Included in the sale of the farm was a provision that the Martindale’s would have to house and feed Henry until his death. Considering Henry lived another 15 years until dying at the age of 92 in 1885, it seems like Henry got the better end of the deal.

By the 1880s, the farm had a considerable amount of outbuildings. On the 182 acre property were a large carriage shed, garage, hen house, brooder house, three barns, and an assortment of other smaller chicken coops. Joel Martindale would officially call the farm Maple Terrace, in reference to the three terraces that lead up to the front of the house. A sketch of the farm house with its terraces and some outbuildings was even included in the 1879 book History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts. Maple Terrace had become something of a local landmark by this point.

The farm would pass into the hands of Joel’s grandson, Emory Bartlett in 1917. He would drop the Maple Terrace name, and officially incorporate the farm as Martindale Farms Inc. But the glory days of the farm were farm behind at this point. Only a few years later, Emory would sell the farm to Harry Ryther in 1925 as payment for a large debt.

Because of its proximity to the Quabbin Reservoir watershed, the Massachusetts Metropolitan District Water Supply Commission purchased the house and the 182 acres it sat on from Harry Ryther in 1934 for the sum of $11,900. Two Martindale sisters were still living in the farm house when the Water Supply Commission purchased the property.

Martha and Mary Martindale were daughters of Joel Martindale, and both had lived in the house almost their entire lives. This led to debate as to whether or not the home should be torn down. The home appears to be right on the line of the watershed, so some thought the house should stay up and be used as employee housing. Others believed the home was still too close to the reservoir, and should be torn down immediately. An agreement was reached with the Water Supply Commission that allowed the Martindale sisters to live in the home until they either died or moved away. During that time, the home would also be used by Quabbin employees.

Mary Martindale would die in 1952 at the age of 77. Her sister, Martha would decide to move out of the large home into a smaller apartment in Springfield in 1955 so she could be closer to her remaining friends and family. Martha Martindale would be the last private resident to live inside the boundaries of the Quabbin Reservoir land. The home was torn down shortly after, and the landscape allowed to go wild. Building materials from the home were reported as being reused in a future home in the area.

The before photo was taken in 1946, much later than many of the Water Supply Commissions photos of old Quabbin homes. At this point, the reservoir was already fully flooded and the home was now located in the town of Ware, following the disincorporation of Enfield in 1938. Today, the terraces to the home are still clearly visible when you visit the farm. The home’s cellar hole is completely filled in, and much of the yard is overgrown with brambles and vines. The foundations for the outbuildings are easily found out of frame to the right of the photo. Walking down the old driveway leads to the foundations of the barns, as well as some stone walls. The tree to the left of the house in the before photo is almost certainly the same tree on the far left of the current photo. Other old trees can be seen today that would have been very young at the time the home was sold to the Water Supply Commission.

The Martindale Farm is one of the best and most easily accessible spots in Quabbin for history lovers. Located near the end of Webster Road through Gate 53, the old farm is located in a large clearing on the west side of the road. In the summertime, Quabbin rangers will sometimes do history programs at this location and go into greater detail on who the people were that owned this farm.

First Church of Christ, Farmington, Connecticut

The First Church of Christ, Congregational, on Main Street in Farmington, on July 29, 1940. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey Collection.

The church in 2021:

Farmington’s First Church of Christ, shown here in these two photos, stands as one of the best surviving examples of a colonial-era meetinghouse in Connecticut. It was completed in 1772, and it was designed and constructed by Judah Woodruff, a local builder who was responsible for many houses in Farmington during this period. As was the case for other meetinghouses of the era, it served as the religious, social, and political center of the town, functioning as a place not only for church services, but also for town meetings and other gatherings.

The church was established in 1652, and it occupied two earlier meetinghouses. The details of the first one are unclear, but the second one was completed in 1714, and it stood here in the vicinity of the present-day structure. This second meetinghouse was small and poorly built, and it had to serve the needs of a growing town. At the time, Farmington was significantly larger geographically, and included present-day towns such as Avon, Berlin, Bristol, Burlington, New Britain, Plainville, and Southington. Many of these places had their own parish churches by the mid-1700s, but their inhabitants still had to come here to Farmington for the town meetings.

By the late 1760s, the town had begun the process of planning for a new meetinghouse, and the construction work began in 1771, as indicated by the “July AD 1771” inscribed on one of the foundation stones. It was completed a little over a year later, and the dedication ceremony occurred on November 25, 1772. The architecture of the building is typical for colonial meetinghouses of its era, with a main entrance on the long side of the building and a steeple that is set off to the side. It would not be until the late 18th century that this trend shifted, and it became more common for meetinghouses to have main entrances on the gabled end of the building, and a steeple that rises from the roof above that entrance.

The interior of the Farmington meeting house likewise reflected colonial-era styles. The pulpit was located in the middle of the long side of the building, so that the interior was much wider than it was long, in contrast to later church designs. On the main floor were a series of box pews that were rented by families, and there were more pews on the gallery, along with rows of benches in front of them. As was the case in most colonial meetinghouses, seating reflected social status, and the more prominent families generally occupied the pews closer to the front, while young unmarried people, along with people of color, were usually in the less desirable seats in the gallery.

When the current meetinghouse was constructed, the pastor of the church was Timothy Pitkin. A 1747 graduate of Yale, Pitkin had subsequently married Temperance Clap, daughter of Yale president Thomas Clap, and then became the pastor here in Farmington in 1752. He came from a prominent Connecticut family; his father, William Pitkin, was the colonial governor from 1766 to 1769, and Timothy’s son, also named Timothy, was in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1805 to 1819. Aside from serving as pastor, Pitkin was also a benefactor of the new meetinghouse; he contributed 20 pounds toward its construction, which was a significant part of his 125 pound annual salary.

The meetinghouse was completed right around the time when Connecticut and the other colonies were dealing with questions relating to British authority. Here in Farmington, residents condemned the so-called Intolerable Acts, which Parliament had passed in response to the Boston Tea Party. At a June 1774 town meeting here, the voters of Farmington declared their opposition to “such arbitrary and tyrannical acts,” and they approved a measure to gather food and transport it to Boston to aid the beleaguered residents there.

Then, in September the town approved the purchase of stockpiles of lead, flints, and powder, and in December it indicated its support for the resolutions of the First Continental Congress. However, not everyone in the town was apparently united in their support. The town records also indicate that, at the December meeting, Matthias Loaming, and Nehemiah Royce were declared to be “Open Enemies to their country” for refusing to vote on the measure. As a result, the town voted to “withdraw all connection from them, untill they shall make Public Retraction of their Principles and Sentiments in the matters aforesaid.”

Once the Revolution started, Farmington supported the Patriot cause. At a town meeting here in March 1777, voters approved a bonus system to encourage residents to enlist in the Continental Army. Soldiers would receive five pounds upon enlistment, followed by another five pounds after completing one year of service. Then, in September the town approved providing two shirts and two pairs of stockings to those who were in the army.

Aside from approving expenditures to fight against British rule, another matter that came up here in the meetinghouse was the need to maintain decorum during worship services. In December 1772, soon after the meetinghouse opened, the town addressed the issue. As quoted in Noah Porter’s 1872 Historical Discourse on the church, the complaint was that:

[I]t is suggested by many members of this society that indecencies are practiced by the young people upon the Sabbath in time of public worship by frequently passing and repassing by one another in the galleries, and intermingling sexes to the great disturbance of many serious and well minded people.

Naturally, such scandalous behavior as unmarried people sitting with members of the opposite sex could not be tolerated here, so the town designated separate gallery staircases for men and women. However, it does not seem to have had the desired effect, because it was still an issue over 40 years later when, in a similar issue was raised in 1813. As quoted by Porter, the church declared:

that the practice of certain young gentlemen in themselves in the pews on the female side of the gallery in times of public worship is disorderly, and ought to be, and is, by this society, wholly disapproved of.

This issue was eventually resolved in the mid-1820s, when the pews in the galleries were replaced with slip pews, and young people were encouraged to sit with their families, rather than being largely unsupervised in the galleries. The old pews on the main floor were later replaced in 1836, and around this same time the original high pulpit was also removed. Another sign of changing times came in 1824, when the first stoves were installed. Prior to this time, as was typical for colonial-era meetinghouses, people would have to bring their own foot stoves if they wanted heat.

Perhaps the single most notable event in the history of this building is its involvement in the Amistad case. Farmington was one stop in the long odyssey of the survivors from La Amistad, as they traveled from Africa to Cuba to Connecticut, before ultimately returning to Africa. It began when a group of Mende people from Sierra Leone were captured and transported to Cuba. From there, 53 of them were sold in Havana and then transported on the schooner La Amistad. During this trip the Mendes, led by Cinqué, overpowered the small crew, killed the captain and cook, and forced the others to sail to Africa. However, the navigators deliberately kept the ship off course, and it was intercepted by U.S. authorities off the coast of New York City in August 1839.

This incident occurred in the midst of rising tensions in the United States surrounding the future of slavery, and it led to several important questions that the courts had to address. These included the issues of whether or not the Mendes had been legally enslaved, since the international slave trade was illegal in the United States, and also whether or not their mutiny had been a justifiable act of self defense. President Martin Van Buren, under pressure from Spanish authorities and from southern slave owners, favored returning them to Cuba. They were ultimately put on trial in Connecticut, with two different court cases in Hartford and New Haven. The court found in their favor, but the Van Buren administration appealed it to the Supreme Court, which upheld the lower court’s ruling in 1841.

With this decision, the Mendes were free, but they still had to get back home. They would end up spending much of 1841 in Farmington, where the abolitionist-minded community provided them with places to live while also working to raise money for their return trip to Africa. There were 36 survivors by the time they arrived in Farmington, with the rest having died at sea or while in prison. One more, a man named Foone, drowned while swimming in the Farmington Canal in August, but the other 35 remained here until November. Throughout this time, they regularly attended church services here in this building.

The town held a farewell service for them on November 17, here in the meetinghouse. The Reverend Joel Hawes of the First Church in Hartford preached a sermon for the occasion, based on the verse “And hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth” from Acts 17:26. In his sermon, Hawes praised African culture, denounced the effects of slavery on the people of Africa, emphasized the sinfulness of racism, and reminded Christians about how all humans are a part of the same family. After the sermon, several of the Mendes spoke and sang, and then Cinqué delivered a narrative of their captivity. He spoke in his native language, and one of the other Amistad captives, Kinna, translated it into English for the crowd. They departed Farmington two days later on a canal boat, headed for New York. There, they attended another farewell service, and then boarded a ship to Sierra Leone, where they arrived in 1842.

In the years that followed, the old meetinghouse continued to stand here in the center of Farmington as an important town landmark. After 1830 it was no longer used for town meetings, a move that reflected changing attitudes surrounding the relationship between church and state, but it continued to be used by the First Church for its worship services. By the time the first photo was taken in 1940, the building was nearly 170 years old, yet its exterior had largely retained its architectural integrity.

Today, the First Church is still an active church congregation, and this building stands as a well-preserved example of a colonial-era New England meetinghouse. From this angle, there have been few changes aside from the addition of several windows and the removal of the shutters. These shutters would not have been original to the building, so they were probably removed in order to reflect its 18th century appearance. In 1972, the building was named as a contributing property in the Farmington Historic District, and then in 1975 it was individually designated as a National Historic Landmark.

Ocean Bank, Stonington, Connecticut

The First National Bank building, formerly the Ocean Bank, on the north side of Cannon Square in Stonington, in November 1940. Photo by Jack Delano, courtesy of the Library of Congress, FSA/OWI Collection.

The scene in 2021:

The first photo was taken in November 1940 by Jack Delano, a noted photographer who was employed by the Farm Security Administration in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In this capacity, he was part of a team of photographers who traveled around the country, documenting life in America during the Great Depression. He was in Connecticut during the fall of 1940, where he visited a number of cities and towns, including here in Stonington. His caption for this photo is simply, “A bank for sale in Stonington, Connecticut,” and he perhaps chose this subject as a way of representing the effects of the Depression on the once-prosperous whaling and fishing port.

Nearly a century before its demise in the Great Depression, the First National Bank of Stonington had its origins in 1851, with the incorporation of the Ocean Bank. This small Greek Revival bank building was constructed around this time, and the bank’s first president was Charles P. Williams, a former whaling ship captain. Williams had gained considerable wealth in the whaling industry, and he went on to further expand his fortune through real estate speculation. By the time he died in 1879, he was said to have been the wealthiest man in eastern Connecticut, with an estate valued at around $3 million.

In the meantime, the Ocean Bank became the First National Bank of Stonington in 1865, and it would remain in business here in this building for the next 75 years. However, the bank ultimately closed in February 1940, leaving the town of Stonington without any financial institutions. The bank’s president at the time, Judge J. Rodney Smith, explained in newspaper accounts that, although the bank itself was financially sound, the business conditions in town made the bank unprofitable for investors. He apparently did not cite specific reasons for this, but a likely cause was the ongoing Great Depression, along with the recent hurricane in September 1938, which battered coastal Connecticut.

As the sign in the first photo shows, the bank building was still for sale when Jack Delano took the photo some nine months after the bank closed. The building would ultimately be acquired by the Stonington Historical Society in 1942. The organization originally intended to turn the building into a museum and headquarters, but over the years it has instead been used as a rental property. Today, the historical society still owns the building, which has remained well-preserved in its 19th century appearance. It has also retained its original use as a bank, and it is currently a branch of Dime Bank, as shown on the sign on the left side in the 2021 photo.

Highland Light, Truro, Mass

Highland Light, also known as Cape Cod Light, in Truro, Mass, on February 14, 1859. Image courtesy of the National Archives.

The lighthouse around 1935-1942. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, FSA/OWI Collection.

The scene in 2014:

Formed by glaciers at the end of the last ice age, Cape Cod is a long, sandy peninsula on the eastern edge of Massachusetts. It extends outward into the Atlantic Ocean with a hook-like shape that bears resemblance to a flexed arm, and beyond its coastline lies a variety of ever-shifting shoals and sandbars. In the four centuries since European colonization of the area, these attributes have made Cape Cod a significant hazard to navigation, and its shores have been the site of numerous shipwrecks over the years.

The first recorded shipwreck on Cape Cod occurred even before permanent European settlement in the area, when an unknown French ship ran aground sometime around 1617. Many more would follow over the years, including the notorious pirate Samuel “Black Sam” Bellamy, who died 1717 after his ship was wrecked near what is now Marconi Beach in Wellfleet. However, it would be many decades before the first lighthouse was built on Cape Cod to warn mariners away from the treacherous shoreline.

Finally, in 1796, at the behest of a group of Boston merchants, Congress appropriated $8,000 for the construction of the first lighthouse on Cape Cod. The site that was chosen for the lighthouse was here in North Truro, atop the 125-foot cliffs that gave the Highlands area its name. The government purchased ten acres of land, plus a right-of-way, from local resident Isaac Small for $110, and they subsequently hired him as the first keeper of the light, with a salary of $150.

The lighthouse was completed in 1797. It was octagonal in shape and built of wood, and it stood 45 feet tall. It featured a whale oil lantern, and it was evidently the first lighthouse in the country to use an eclipser, which gave it a flashing appearance to distinguish it from Boston Light. Aside from the tower, the light station also included the keeper’s house, a barn, and an oil shed.

The eclipser proved to be unreliable, and the tower itself also had its own problems, with an 1811 report describing it as having been “wretchedly constructed.” Part of the problem was that the tower was too high, so around 1812 it was lowered, and a new lantern was installed atop it. Following these modifications, this lighthouse would remain in service until 1831, when it was replaced by a new 35-foot brick tower.

Like its predecessor, though, the second lighthouse here proved to be similarly deficient in its construction. It was built by Winslow Lewis, a contractor who built many lighthouses along the east coast. However, his works were generally better known for their low costs than for the quality of their construction, and the upper portion of the new lighthouse had to be rebuilt less than a decade later. This part of the project was done by Lewis’s nephew, I. W. P. Lewis, who was by all accounts a far more competent engineer than his uncle.

Despite these improvements, the second tower ultimately proved to be short-lived. It is perhaps most famous as the lighthouse that author Henry David Thoreau visited several times during his visits to Cape Cod in the 1840s and 1850s. He included a chapter on the lighthouse in his book Cape Cod, including an account of how he put his surveying skills to use here and calculated that the cliff was 123 feet above sea level. He also estimated the rate of erosion here, and rather presciently predicted that “erelong, the light-house must be moved.”

Highland Light would ultimately have to be moved, although it would take 140 years before this was necessary, and it was a different lighthouse than the one that Thoreau saw. His last visit to Highland Light occurred in June 1857, and he noted in his journal that “A new lighthouse was built some twenty-five years ago. They are now building another on the same spot.” This lighthouse that he saw under construction was completed later in 1857, and it is the one that is shown here in these three photos.

The new lighthouse was a far more substantial than its two predecessors, standing 66 feet high, with brick walls more than three feet thick at the base. It was equipped with a new French-made Fresnel lens, replacing the 15 Argand lamps and silver-plated reflectors that had illuminated the previous lighthouse. The Fresnel lens cost $30,000, which was twice the cost of constructing the lighthouse itself, and it required a larger crew to maintain. As a result, the one lighthouse keeper here was joined by two assistant keepers. They lived here in two new houses that were connected to the tower by covered walkways. The head keeper lived in the house to the north of the lighthouse, on the left side of this scene, and the assistant keepers lived in the other house, which is visible just beyond the tower in the first two photos.

The first photo was taken less than two years after the new lighthouse was completed. It shows a man, presumably one of the keepers, standing on the lower balcony of the tower. He was probably one of the three keepers listed here in the 1860 census. The head keeper at the time was 55-year-old John Kenney, who lived here with his wife Jane. The first assistant, Hugh Hopkins, was 59, and he lived here with his wife Sarah along with their granddaughter Eliza Knowles and Sarah’s mother Abigail Smith. The second assistant, Thomas Kenney, was the youngest of the three at 50, and his family here included his wife Sarah and their daughters Mary and Elizabeth.

Despite the presence of the lighthouse, shipwrecks continued to occur here along the northeastern shoreline of Cape Cod. During the 19th century there were at least 60 recorded shipwrecks in Truro, many of which were lost with most if not all of their crews. In some cases, multiple ships would be wrecked during a single storm. A snowstorm on December 26, 1872 claimed two sailing vessels, the Peruvian and the Francis, with very different outcomes for the crews. The Peruvian sank with all hands, while the entire crew of the Francis was rescued by volunteers in a whaleboat, although the captain died of an illness several days later. Another deadly storm occurred on January 3, 1878, when 12 sailors died in three different shipwrecks.

The deadliest single shipwreck here in Truro was the Jason, a British sailing ship that was on its way to Boston from Calcutta. The Jason grounded a little north of Ballston Beach, a few miles to the south of Highland Light, during a storm on December 5, 1893. Out of a crew of 25, there was just a single survivor from the wreck. A few years later, these same shores saw the aftermath of one of the deadliest time disasters in New England history, after the passenger steamer Portland was lost off the coast of Cape Ann on November 27, 1898. There were no survivors, and some of the bodies and wreckage washed up here in Truro, despite being about 25 miles from where the ship foundered.

Lighthouse keepers here at Highland Light, as was the case elsewhere, had a variety of responsibilities, including maintaining the lighthouse and other buildings here at the facility. However, their most important duty was to ensure that the light was lit promptly at sunset, remained lit throughout the night, and was extinguished at sunrise. Each of the three keepers worked a shift during the night, with one keeper on duty until 8:00 pm, another from 8:00 to midnight, and then the third from midnight to 4:00 am. Then, at 4:00 the keeper who lit the lamp would return until sunrise.

By the late 19th century, Highland Light was illuminated by a Funck float lamp, which consisted of five concentric wicks of varying diameters. The lighthouse initially burned whale oil, but it later used animal lard and then eventually kerosene. The lamp produced about 500 candlepower of light, which was then greatly amplified by the prisms of the Fresnel lens. The original 1857 lens increased the intensity of the light roughly twentyfold, creating a fixed beam of about 10,000 candlepower. However, by the turn of the 20th century this was insufficient for the needs of maritime traffic, so in 1901 the old lens was replaced by a new first order Fresnel lens. The old lamp was retained, but the new lens further amplified its intensity to about 192,000 candlepower, or nearly 400 times the intensity of the lamp itself. The new lens also rotated, creating a flashing effect that made it much more noticeable at sea than the old fixed lens. A temporary light tower was in use here while the lenses were changed, and the new lens went into use on October 10, 1901.

The second photo was taken around 1940, as shown by the license plates on the cars in the foreground. The massive Fresnel lens is clearly visible in the lantern room, but in 1932 the old oil lamp had been replaced by a thousand-watt electric bulb. This gave the light an intensity of four million candlepower and a range of up to 45 miles, making it one of the most powerful lighthouses in the country. By this point, many American lighthouses had been automated, but Highland Light was still manned by resident keepers. However, this was far from the isolated outpost that Thoreau had visited nearly a century earlier. Automobiles had made the outer parts of the Cape far more accessible than before, and the photo shows a number of tourists here, including two cars from New York and one from Ohio. One sign on the fence indicates that the lighthouse visiting hours are from 10:00 am to noon, and then from 2:00 to 4:00 pm. Another sign advises that the grounds are closed to visitors from sunset until 9:00 am.

The head keeper at the time of the second photo was William A. Joseph. He had served here at Highland Light since the early 1920s, and he held the position of assistant keeper until 1935, when he was promoted to head keeper. By 1940 he was 52 years old, and he lived here with his wife Nellie. That year’s census lists his salary as $1,500, while the two assistant keepers earled $1,320 and $1,260. He remained here until his retirement in 1947, and he appears to have been the last civilian keeper at the lighthouse before the Coast Guard took over the operation of the light station.

Overall, despite being taken more than 80 years apart, the first two photos do not show major changes to the lighthouse or adjacent keepers’ houses. The alterations to the houses were mostly superficial, including the addition of a porch and a dormer window on the head keeper’s house, along with shingles that replaced the earlier vertical boards on the exterior of the houses. The lighthouse itself barely changed in the period between the two photos, aside from the upgraded lens and the addition of some sort of a pipe next to the lantern room.

By contrast, the second and third photos were taken less than 75 years apart, yet they show far more substantial change here at Highland Light. The old Fresnel lens only lasted a few more years after the second photo before being removed in the late 1940s and replaced by an aerobeacon. Then, in 1961 the assistant keepers’ house was demolished, and a new ranch-style duplex was built just to the southeast of the lighthouse. The lighthouse would remain actively staffed by Coast Guard keepers for several more decades after this, but it was ultimately automated in 1986 and a new aerobeacon was subsequently installed.

As lighthouses around the country were automated during the mid to late 20th century, this often led to the deterioration of the keeper’s houses and other associated buildings, which were typically rendered obsolete. However, here at Highland Light it was not just the keeper’s house that was endangered in the late 20th century. By the early 1990s, Thoreau’s prediction that the lighthouse would need to be moved was fast becoming a reality. The 1857 lighthouse was built on the same spot as its predecessors, which had been more than 500 feet from the cliff when the first one was completed in 1797. By the 1990s, though, the ocean’s steady erosion of the sandy cliffs had reduced this distance to just over a hundred feet.

The only real option for saving the lighthouse was to move it, but moving a 66-foot-tall, 450-ton masonry structure is no easy task, especially one that is nearly 140 years old. The lighthouse was first stabilized with a series of vertical two-by-fours that were strapped to the tower with steel wire. Then, 20 steel beams were inserted through the foundation, with two support beams laid perpendicular underneath these beams. These support beams were then slowly pushed along seven parallel roller beams. There were two sets of these roller beams, and the sets were alternated as the lighthouse moved along the beams. It took 18 days to move the lighthouse 450 feet west and 12 feet south of its original location, and the move was completed on July 29, 1996. The keeper’s house was not moved at the same time, but it was later moved and reattached to the lighthouse.

As a result of the move, the 2014 photo was taken a few hundred feet west of where the first two photos were taken, although it faces the same direction and shows the same view of the lighthouse as the other photos. The lighthouse remains an active aid to navigation, standing as both the oldest and tallest on Cape Cod. In the years since this photo was taken, the lighthouse has undergone a major restoration, including repairing the masonry, replacing or repairing corroded metal, installing a new ventilation system, and repainting the exterior. The lighthouse and keeper’s house have been closed to the public during this time, but they are expected to reopen for the upcoming 2022 season.

William Tecumseh Sherman Statue, New York City (2)

The statue William Tecumseh Sherman, in Grand Army Plaza at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street in New York, in September 1942. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection.

The statue in 2019:

As discussed in an earlier post, this statue was designed by prominent sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and dedicated in 1903, in honor of General William Tecumseh Sherman, one of the most successful Union generals of the Civil War. The statue features Sherman seated on his horse, Ontario, while being led by the goddess Victory. She wears a laurel crown and is holding a palm frond in her left hand, both of which are classical symbols of victory. The statue stands atop a pink granite base, which was designed by architect Charles Follen McKim.

The first photo in the earlier post was taken only a few years after the statue was dedicated, but the first photo here was taken much later, in September 1942. In the interim, the statue had been moved 15 feet to the west in 1913, and then later in the 1910s it was temporarily removed from the site entirely, in order to make room for subway excavations. It was subsequently returned here by the early 1920s, and it has remained here ever since.

By the time the first photo was taken, America had been involved in World War II for less than a year. The photographer was Marjory Collins, a noted photojournalist and New York native who documented life on the home front as part of the United States Office of War Information. The only obvious clue about the war is the sailor seated on the base of the statue, but Collins likely included the photo as a way of connecting the war to past conflicts in the nation’s history.

In the nearly 80 years since the first photo was taken, the statue has undergone several restorations, including re-gilding the surface, and today it looks essentially the same as it did back then. Much of the background has also remained unchanged during this time. There are newer high-rises on the left side, but the two buildings on the right side of the first photo are still standing. On the far right side is the Metropolitan Club, built in 1893, and just to the left of it is The Pierre, a 41-story luxury hotel that opened in 1930.

Jefferson Memorial, Washington, DC

The Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC, on April 12, 1943. Image taken by Ann Rosener, courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2018:

The Jefferson Memorial is, along with the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, one of the three major monuments to prominent United States presidents here in Washington, D.C. It was built on the south side of the Tidal Basin, nearly in line with the White House and the Washington Monument, and its construction was championed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who admired Jefferson.

The design of the memorial was the work of noted architect John Russell Pope, who was also responsible for the National Archives building and the West Building of the National Gallery of Art. Like these other two buildings, Pope’s designs for the Jefferson Memorial drew heavily from classical architecture, and it features a large columned portico on the front. It bears a particularly strong resemblance to the Pantheon, with its domed rotunda behind the portico.

However, Pope never lived to see the project completed; he died in 1937, two years before the cornerstone was laid. The construction took four years, but it was completed in 1943, in the midst of World War II. The memorial was formally dedicated on April 13, 1943, just one day after the first photo was taken. This was the 200th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth, and the ceremony was attended by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who gave the dedication address.

Today, more than 75 years after the first photo was taken, essentially nothing has changed in this scene except for the size of the trees on either side of the memorial. During this time, the only significant change to the memorial has been the 19-foot statue of Jefferson in the center of the rotunda. This statue, which is not visible from this particular angle, was delayed because of wartime shortages of bronze, but it was installed in 1947, and it has stood here ever since, facing across the Tidal Basin in the direction of the White House.