Chapter 3

CAMP REVIVALS AND CARPENTER GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE

By the early 1800s, outdoor religious revival gatherings were popular throughout the country. Known as camp meetings, revivals were born on the western frontier, and revivalism took many forms. In the East, people from a wide range of religious denominations and ethnic and societal backgrounds attended six-day-long camp meetings during the summer. Led by skilled preachers, revivals were both disciplined and festive affairs with preaching and singing day and night. The atmosphere prompted many nonbelievers to convert to Christ’s cause. News that a religious meeting was scheduled was spread by word of mouth, newspaper advertisements and posters. Lured by the idea of a spiritual renewal, families also considered the meetings to be a vacation, a much-needed respite from their day-to-day work where they could meet up with old friends and make new acquaintances. They often traveled for several days to reach the meeting, and once they arrived, they set up tents and camped out.

CAMP MEETINGS COME TO THE CAPE

Methodist preachers found the tranquil, unspoiled landscape of Cape Cod to be an ideal spot to hold camp revivals, and the first meeting took place during the summer of 1819 in South Wellfleet. The tent revivals were a mixture of religion and entertainment, and many of those who attended the meetings were not even Methodists. Camp meetings also took place in Provincetown and South Truro. In 1828, the Cape’s summer revivals moved to Eastham’s Millenium Grove, a ten-acre oak grove beside the ocean that provided a serene natural atmosphere for spiritual renewal.

The low cost of camping out in tents made the excursion affordable for many people. Thousands of people attended for a week every August, listening to numerous preachers for hours on end. When Thoreau visited Eastham in 1855, he commented on the campground:

There are sometimes one hundred and fifty ministers (!) and five thousand hearers, assembled. The ground, which is called Millenium Grove, is owned by a company in Boston, and is the most suitable for this purpose than any that I saw on the Cape. It is fenced, and the frames of the tents are, at all times, to be seen interspersed among the oaks. They have an oven and a pump, and keep all their kitchen utensils and tent coverings and furniture in a permanent building on the spot. They select a time for their meetings when the moon is full. A man is appointed to clear out the pump a week beforehand, while the ministers are clearing their thoughts; but probably, the latter do not always deliver as pure a stream as the former. I saw the heaps of clam-shells left under the tables, where they had feasted in previous summers, and supposed, of course, that that was the work of the unconverted, or the backsliders and scoffers. It looked as if a camp-meeting must be a singular combination of a prayer meeting and a pic-nic.

Thoreau also remarked that “the attention of those who frequent the camp-meetings at Eastham, is said to be divided between the billows on the back side of the Cape, for they all stream over here in the course of their stay. I trust that in this case the loudest voice carries it. With what effect may we suppose the ocean say, ‘My hearers!’ to the multitude of the bank!”

TENT LAYOUT

Campgrounds were divided into family tents and society tents. Tents were made out of canvas and muslin, and if stored away between seasons and cared for properly, tents could last a long time. Society tents were used to provide meals, refreshments, groceries, newspapers and books, haircuts and more. Some of the tents were quite large with painted floors, walls and frames. A typical family tent included a wooden floor, a wooden frame to support canvas covers and wooden ends to the frame. Each end included planking, screened doors and windows. In front of the tent was a wooden platform to serve as a porch. Every summer, families would stretch an inner canvas cover over the roof to the frame and down the sides and tie it to the wooden floor. An inner canvas was also applied to make a double roof. In addition to bringing the canvases from home each year, families had to bring along furnishings, including mattresses for permanently built-in wooden double beds with slats, daybed sofas, cots, tables and chairs. Outside, to the rear of the tent, a kitchen and eating area was established by raising a single canvas tent top supported by poles; the sides of the area were enclosed by wooden lattices. Cooking was done by a kerosene stove.

YARMOUTH CAMPGROUND

Attendees would arrive at Cape Cod camp revivals by horse and wagon, on horseback, by boat and even on foot. To attract off-Cape tourists, camp meetings were moved up the Cape to Yarmouth in 1863 to be near the new railroad. The Yarmouth Campground originally had about 175 family tents and 40 society tents. A circular wooden tabernacle seating 1,500 was eventually built. For seven to ten days every August, meetings took place in Yarmouth through 1939, and during the camp’s peak in the 1860s and 1870s, the largest crowds on the grounds in a single day consisted of between 3,000 and 7,000 people. Not everyone would be at any particular service, but the principle afternoon service would often draw 1,500 to 3,000 people. Although most camp meetings forbade smoking, drinking intoxicating beverages and such sinful pursuits as playing cards, there was a buzz to the revivals and the atmosphere was lively and joyous, as if the event were a fair or festival. Novelist Joseph Lincoln recalled attending a Yarmouth Campground meeting in his boyhood: “The ground moved up and down, stopping occasionally to listen to the preaching, or to join in the singing of Moody and Sankey hymns, or to sample the sandwiches and oyster stews or the candy or watermelons or tonic.”

As the nineteenth century progressed, camp meetings offered a desired religious alternative to the secular, middle-class vacation resort. Campgrounds were also established in Craigville and on Martha’s Vineyard in Oak Bluffs. At the Christian Camp Meeting Association’s site in Craigville, there were two hotels, a large tabernacle tent, multiple family tents and smaller tents for sleeping, eating and barbering. As camp-goers discovered that their spiritual awakenings could be combined with leisure time at the beach, the Christian Camp Meeting Association bought 880 feet of prime beachfront property, what is now Craigville Beach. Encompassing twenty-six acres, the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association had a larger campground, known as Wesleyan Grove, so it was able to accommodate even greater crowds than Yarmouth and Craigville had the capacity to handle. At the campground’s revival in 1853, there were fifty-three clergy and five to six thousand people in attendance, and five years later nearly ten thousand people participated in the annual meeting. In 1879, an iron-trussed tabernacle was built that had seating for four thousand people.

CARPENTER GOTHIC COTTAGES

By the late 1860s, camp-goers had begun to replace family tents with Carpenter Gothic wooden cottages. Heavily influenced by Victorian architecture and a variant of the Gothic Revival style, Carpenter Gothic design emphasized verticality and was characterized by scrolled ornaments, lacy “gingerbread” trim and unique jigsaw decorations. Gothic cottages, small and of simple, affordable construction, were a logical successor to earlier tents. They were harmonious with the purposes of camp meetings and seemed religious in nature, with a highly chapel-like appearance, appearing like tiny churches. With front porches running the width of the house, the main entrance was usually a double door opening inward, and often a little balcony off the main upstairs bedroom jutted over the front porch where another pair of double doors would allow furniture to be lifted to the upper rooms, as stairways were twisting and narrow. The outer walls were vertical boards that served as both siding and interior walls.

At the Yarmouth Campground, a cottage could be ordered in May and would be ready for the annual camp meeting three months later. While camp-goers found the prospect of not having to transport their furniture and household goods to the meetings every year appealing, they were also happy to discover that it was significantly cheaper to build a new cottage then it was to purchase a new canvas tent, which could cost upward of $350. In the 1860s and 1870s, the cost to build a cottage ranged from $150 to $250. By 1900, building a cottage was a still relatively modest $250 to $500.

The ten- by seventeen-foot frame of a basic cottage was of post-and-beam construction, with corner brackets resting on cedar posts. Whole walls were created from green lumber, mostly hard pine shipped from the Carolinas or Maine, in dovetail fashion. Two posts without studs were set eight feet apart, and as the wood seasoned, the joints became permanently welded together. Cedar shingles covered the roof. The windows and doors for the front rooms downstairs and upstairs featured pointed or round arches, while the remaining windows and doors were square. Cottages typically featured one or two bedrooms or wide-open sleeping lofts upstairs, while the first level consisted of the living areas. Arches, corbels, windowsills, balusters and brackets trimmed the windows, porches and doors, all of which were newly being mass produced after the Industrial Revolution and were available from lumberyards. Gingerbread was also a stock item, but most owners preferred to design and cut their own to express the individuality of their cottage.

Early campground cottages were typically painted white, and as time went on they began to feature earth tones that receded with the landscape, subtle shades resembling leaves, tree bark and stones. By the turn of the twentieth century, however, colors were brighter, bolder and more whimsical as owners discovered the vibrant shades were not only forms of self-expression but that they also accentuated the unique antique architectural details of the houses. As had been the case with the tents, light in the evenings was provided by kerosene lamps and lanterns. Cooking was done on kerosene or wood stoves, which also provided heat on cool days. It was well into the 1900s before water and plumbing were added to the cottages.

Carpenter Gothic cottage at Craigville Campground. Photo by the author.

Although the walls were durable, the cottages were never really intended to be permanent homes. Yet many have stood the test of time, lasting more than a century. The Craigville Campground still exists as a Methodist meeting camp preserve and conference center; many original cottages remain and are privately owned and used as summer homes. While the Yarmouth Campground no longer exists as a spiritual haven, it does have a delightful trove of privately owned nineteenth-century cottages. While most have been insulated and rebuilt to accommodate elements necessary for contemporary living, owners have taken care to retain the tiny cottages’ rustic, original character and detail. Wesleyan Grove is still owned by the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association, and the area, encompassing more than three hundred of the original five hundred cottages, along with the historic tabernacle, is now a National Historic District. A museum in the Grove is devoted to showcasing the campground’s interesting history to the public. Cottages are owned privately, yet owners only pay property taxes on their dwellings, since the land is owned by the association. The community consists of a small number of year-round residents and mostly summer residents, many of whom have had the cottages in their families since the 1800s.

Carpenter Gothic cottages at Wesleyan Grove, Oak Bluffs. Photos by the author.

GOTHIC REVIVAL THROUGHOUT THE CAPE

It wasn’t just campgrounds that favored the Gothic style. Throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century, Gothic Revival houses were built throughout the Cape. Slightly less fanciful and more architecturally mature than Carpenter Gothic cottages, Gothic Revival houses drew inspiration from Medieval architecture and were closely associated with Romanticism. At the time, Gothic Revival was also a favored design of churches, and many were built in the style throughout the Cape. Andrew Jackson Downing, a Hudson River Valley architect, is largely responsible for the popularity of the Gothic Revival house. Downing, who believed that architecture and the fine arts could affect the morals of the owners and that improvement of the external appearance of a home would help “better” all those who had contact with the home, penned several instructional guidebooks on the style, offering advice and house plans for middle-class Americans. He detested the Greek Revival house style, arguing that temples were not suited to American homes, and even demonstrated in his books how one might update a Greek or Georgian house and make it fashionably Gothic.

The Gothic house did not need to be symmetrical, as many prior house designs on Cape Cod had required, and it could be enlarged or expanded without fear of losing its picturesque qualities. The development of scroll saws made it possible for ornate decoration to be produced economically, so houses as well as some public buildings began to sport graceful ornamental gingerbread on bargeboards, porch columns and peaked gables and around windows.

Larger and of more sturdy construction than the small, seasonal campground cottages, Gothic Revival houses were constructed of vertical wooden board and batten siding and featured steep gabled roofs with complicated and picturesque lines with one or several interesting gables. Unlike all Cape Cod house designs prior, Gothic houses seldom featured rectangular shapes. Board and batten siding accentuated the elongated height of the houses as well as the tall pointed or arched windows with diamond-shaped panes that frequently included dormers. Dormers themselves were usually capped with steep gabled roofs and were heavily decorated with gingerbread, as was the rest of the house. Usually one and a half to two stories tall, unlike the camp meeting cottages, which had porches that typically ran along the entire front façade, larger Gothic houses tended to have several smaller porches. Chimneys were seen as important decorative accents and were ganged together in pairs or placed off-center. While most houses of the style had a storybook quality to them, they did not tend to be as whimsical as the campground cottages. Though, as with the cottages, color was an essential element, each home featured two colors: an exterior painted tan, brown, gray or perhaps red or dark brown, with the details painted several shades darker or lighter.

LIFESAVING STATIONS AND KEEPER’S HOUSES

Lighthouse keepers’ houses and lifesaving stations were built along the shores of Cape Cod during the 1860s and 1870s. As a result, many of the stations—built to house relief workers who rescued seamen from shipwrecked or stranded vessels—and most keepers’ homes featured hallmarks of Gothic design. On Nantucket, the first U.S. Lifesaving Station on the island was built in 1874 at a cost of about $10,000. A rare example of the Gothic style, the building is clad with shingles rather than board and batten siding. Elaborate exposed trusses at either end of the structure, pointed second-story windows and a cupola are indicative of the embellishments associated with the style.

The first U.S. Lifesaving Station on Nantucket exhibited elements of Gothic Revival architecture. Photo by Cortlandt V.D. Hubbard.

Located next to lighthouses, as the moniker implies, keepers’ homes housed the lighthouse keeper and family, if he had one, as well as the occasional overnight guest—Henry David Thoreau spent the night at Truro’s Highland Light on more than one occasion, an experience he quite enjoyed. Built by the government, keepers’ houses were intended to be functional, spare quarters, yet this didn’t prevent them from exhibiting understated Gothic details. The keeper’s house at Nobska Lighthouse in Falmouth, built in 1876, is an elongated structure with steeply pitched gables featuring decorative scrollwork around the edges. While windows are not arched, as are found on more elaborate examples of Gothic architecture, they are tall and narrow and outlined by molding. Small porches are found on three sides of the house, which is painted a dark color; the details of the structure are accented in white.

The tall, narrow Nobska Lighthouse keeper’s house featured decorative scrollwork when it was built in 1876. Photo by Baldwin Coolidge, courtesy of Woods Hole Historical Collection and Museum.

FALMOUTH HEIGHTS

While camp meetings brought the first summer visitors to the Cape, by the early 1870s, other groups of middle-class individuals, lured by the attractive seashore, began to chart out the territory as a seasonal destination. The first planned resort community on Cape Cod was in Falmouth, in a section known as Great Hill, the highest point of land along Vineyard Sound, which had spectacular vistas of the ocean and bluffs. In 1870, the resort site had just been cleared of the town’s last saltworks, which had become unprofitable when a group of Worcester investors discovered and purchased the land that encompassed more than one hundred acres.

The developers incorporated themselves as the Falmouth Heights Land and Wharf Co. and immediately set about establishing the infrastructure for a middle-class resort community complete with cottages, hotels and stores, known as Falmouth Heights. The land was divided into six hundred tiny house lots, and several large areas of land were set aside for open space and park usage. Parks followed the natural contours of the land and included the picturesque Central Park, which provided a link between the hills to the west and flat lands to the east. Observatory Hill, the highest point in Falmouth Heights, was also a focal point. Targeting the largest possible market—the family of modern means, the average American—the developers’ intent was to provide themselves with the maximum profit. The subdivision layout was centralized on the concept that cottages would have standard designs—the Carpenter Gothic style—and could be mass produced. Yet even though the cottages were cut from the same mold, they would exhibit individuality with imaginative detail and coloring schemes. Property deeds had extensive restrictions: dwellings were required to be set back at least ten feet from the road and five feet from adjoining lots; and the lots were to contain only one dwelling and necessary outbuildings. The original deeds also stated that “neither spirituous, intoxicating nor malt liquors shall be made, sold or kept for sale on the granted premises; that no game of chance shall be played for money or any other consideration; and that no mechanical trade or manufacturing shall be carried on on the granted premises.”

A prominent Worcester architect, Elbridge Boyden, was chosen to design the layout of the community as well as spec cottages and a home for himself around Observatory Hill. Boyden designed cottages in Carpenter Gothic style that were small in stature but far more impressive and intricately detailed than those built on campgrounds. One of the most unique cottages was located at 3 Crown Avenue. The cottage is Y shaped, with the stem forming an open hallway, while the arms encompass the living quarters. With an ample front porch and an extremely steep roof, the house’s gables and dormers are adorned with richly carved barge boards. The intersection of the three arms is crowned by a detailed cupola. Arched windows are narrow, long and framed with Gothic moldings. The house, constructed in 1872, was sold for $1,000 in 1880.

Whimsical, Y-shaped Carpenter Gothic cottage designed by Elbridge Boyden in Falmouth Heights. Courtesy of Falmouth Historical Society.

The other original cottages in Falmouth Heights were based on a T-shaped plan, with the cross forming the back of the house, while the stem formed the front’s open living hall. The stem of the house was flanked by porches so that when one includes both the interior and exterior spaces embraced by the house, its plan was essentially square. The cottages were designed with an ample supply of windows, doors and porches to let in summer breezes.

A couple of the fifty Carpenter Gothic cottages built in Falmouth Heights in the 1870s. Courtesy of Falmouth Historical Society.

By the end of 1871, more than one hundred lots had been sold in Falmouth Heights for about $200 apiece. Most of the buyers were from Worcester and its surrounding towns, with a few from Falmouth, and many of the purchasers were speculators who bought more than one lot, seeking to make profits of their own. Sales of lots continued through 1872, when the price was raised to $250, and developers sold nearly one hundred more. However, only about fifty Carpenter Gothic cottages were ever built—a fraction of the envisioned six hundred cottages. In 1873, the financial recession known as the Panic of ’73 caused the Falmouth Heights Land and Wharf Company to fail. Yet the area slowly continued to grow through the ensuing depression. Plans to build a steamboat wharf and an observatory, used as a gathering place where mail was distributed and news was discussed, were actualized. When the nation’s economy recovered in 1890, interest in the development of Falmouth Heights soared, as did other planned communities across the Cape where vacationers could buy or build houses of their own and pursue a group-oriented social life based around evening dances and concerts at the hotel and daily boat trips, sunbathing and picnics.