Historic Listing

SHRC at the State Library

Yesterday, the State Historical Resources Council (SHRC) voted to list New London’s Whipple Memorial Town Hall in the State Register of Historic Places. The building’s significance was attributed to its Classical Revival architecture and its important role in the town’s development.

Boston hotelier Amos H. Whipple (1856–1916) bequeathed land and $15,000 for a public library building in his hometown of New London. The selectmen, however, asked his executor to alter the terms of the will, and so the proposed library became Whipple Memorial Town Hall, honoring Amos's parents, Dr. Solomon and Henrietta Whipple. Dr. Whipple, a Croydon native, had served the people of New London as their physician for his entire medical career, commencing in 1849 and ending shortly before his death in 1884.

The executor of Amos Whipple’s estate was his younger brother, Sherman L. Whipple (1862–1930). By 1916, Sherman was an eminent Boston trial lawyer. An alumnus and trustee of Colby Academy, he maintained lifelong ties to New London. He saw the new town hall as benefitting both the townspeople as Amos had wished, but also Colby Academy students, who would use Whipple Hall’s auditorium regularly over the next forty years. Sherman chose a Boston architectural firm, Strickland & Law, for the project—the firm’s first known public commission.

Sidney T. Strickland (1880–1954) graduated from MIT in 1905 and in 1914 was awarded the terminal degree from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. At MIT, Strickland had written and illustrated an undergraduate thesis entitled “Design for a City Hall…”. He had learned the symbolic and functional requirements of civic spaces, and he adapted those principles to the rural town hall in New London. Strickland also studied Colby Academy's nearby Colgate Hall, a Classical Revival design by George Harding of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Colgate Hall was completed in 1912 by New London contractor Horace Stanley, who would also build Whipple Hall, completed in 1918.

Whipple Memorial Town Hall included a jail cell, selectmen's office, town records archive, kitchen, meeting/function room, auditorium and stage, and a moving picture projection booth. It had electric lights and two wood furnaces producing steam heat. Unanticipated later uses included the municipal and district courts, basketball court, civil defense and ham radio station, police station, produce and craft market, and children's recreation. The original building is largely intact above the basement level. Two additions have been made at the rear (in 1985 and 2000), which today house the Police, Dispatch, and Recreation Departments. The town of New London is currently assessing the building’s need for historic preservation and other repairs.

Four other buildings in New London were previously listed in historic registers: the Dr. Solomon M. Whipple House (1985), the First Baptist Church (2005), the New London Barn Playhouse (2006), and Kentlands (2008). Whipple Hall is the first municipal building in New London to be listed. Still in daily use, Whipple Hall’s centennial of service will be observed in June 2018.

Road Signs

This morning New Hampshire Public Radio aired the first in a planned series of reports on historical markers positioned along roadsides throughout the state. Administered by the Division of Historical Resources and the Department of Transportation, the program was started in 1958.

Unveiling the town's first historical marker in 1963.

A few years later, New London created its own roadside marker program in order to highlight people and places of historical interest throughout the town. Its first marker was installed in 1963 near the site of the first town meeting on Knight's Hill, and a new one was added each year until the town's bicentennial in 1979.

In conjunction with a graphic design project by students at Colby-Sawyer College, we revisited those signs recently. The subjects and text on most of our signs have held up well, but in two cases the houses that once sat in close proximity to their descriptive signs have been moved farther away, altering the setting and perhaps giving a false sense of the place. We hope to remedy that problem by offering historical photographs of the buildings accessible via smartphones and other web-enabled devices that can read QR codes.

The NHPR story mentioned that some people are taking the time to visit each of the 236 official roadside markers in New Hampshire. Those marker-baggers will bypass the entire set of bicentennial signs here in New London, installed at town expense, but you can find them in person or online using the Google map embedded below. Clicking on each location displays the corresponding marker text, somewhat edited, and its installation year.

Whipple Hall

Amos H. Whipple

In 1916 the town of New London did not want a new public library. It wanted a new town hall. So when the conditional bequest of Boston hotelier Amos H. Whipple (1856–1916) offered land and $15,000 for a library, the selectmen asked its executor to alter the terms, and Whipple Memorial Library became Whipple Memorial Town Hall—named for Amos's parents, both deceased.

Sherman L. Whipple (1862–1930) was executor of his older brother's estate. Sherman was by then an eminent Boston trial lawyer, having earned in a single case the extraordinary fee of $225,000. An alumnus and longtime trustee of Colby Academy, he maintained ties to New London, where he was born and raised. The new town hall, he knew, would benefit not only the townspeople, as his brother wished, but also Colby Academy students, who used the performance stage and auditorium regularly over the next 40 years. Sherman chose a Boston architectural firm, Strickland & Law, newly formed in 1916. It may have been Sidney Strickland's first public commission, but he was prepared.

Whipple Hall lantern

Sidney T. Strickland (1880–1954) graduated from MIT's architecture program, completed a three-year course of study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and then worked as a draftsman for the respected Shepley, Rutan & Coolidge, three assistants of Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–1886). When Strickland's father-in-law, Charles Rutan, died in 1915, that collaborative dissolved, and Strickland was on his own.

Strickland's undergraduate thesis of 1905 was entitled "Design for a City Hall...". He considered the special requirements of civic spaces and developed guiding principles that he could apply even to a much smaller project like New London's town hall. We also know that Strickland studied Colby Academy's nearby Colgate Hall, which in 1912 replaced the ruins of an earlier building, burned in 1892.

Whipple Memorial Hall included a jail cell, selectmen's office, records archive, kitchen and dining area, performance stage and auditorium, and a moving picture projection booth in the gallery. It had electric lights and two wood furnaces for steam heat. Unanticipated later uses included municipal court offices and courtroom, a basketball arena, a civil defense and ham radio installation, a police station, and now a recreation department.

Despite all of those activities, the building remains intact in most respects. Two additions were made at the rear (in 1985 and 1999), but the front facade remains intact, even if its formal entrance is disused and overgrown. Above it all is the cupola, or properly "lantern" because of its large, arched windows. Last overhauled in 1957, the character-defining feature once again requires a preservation effort—repairing windows, replacing lost trim, and painting the exterior. The restoration of its original weathervane, last seen in photographs from the 1960s, might also be included in such a project.

We hope to list the building on the State Register of Historic Places for its significance as an example of Classical Revival architecture, for its reflection of the town's development during the 20th century, and for its association with the family of Dr. Solomon and Henrietta Whipple, whose accomplished boys left the state for greater opportunities but cherished their New Hampshire roots, even to their dying days.

View of Sargent Common and Bandstand from Whipple Memorial Hall

Factory Village Tour

Selected slides from last Saturday's presentation on the Factory Village of New London have been posted on our exhibit gallery site. The talk was followed by a walking tour along the waterway from Pleasant Lake down past the former Tannery, Forge Shop, and Grind Shop Ponds.

Only current and historical images held at the Town of New London Archives have been posted. Slides showing other research materials gathered at the Rauner Special Collections and Baker Library at Dartmouth College (Tyler water wheel patents, published census data), the Cleveland-Colby-Colgate Archives at Colby-Sawyer College (some scythe company business records), and the New Hampshire State Archives (1773 Masonian map, original census returns) are excluded, as they may have restrictions on publication or online distribution.

We thank the Society for Industrial Archeology, Northern New England Chapter, for the invitation and the Masonic Lodge for hosting the morning event at the 1872 Mechanics' Hall Association building in Elkins.

Shepard's Barn

March 14 is called Pi Day for its numeric notation as 3.14 — a truncated version of the infinite but constant ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Here in New London this day marked the finite end of a truncated barn.

Shepard's Barn (original length)

The Shepard Barn has been a fixture on Main Street for 112 years, but its story begins 20 years earlier. The structure was built in 1881 by the New London Scythe Company. For the next six years it served as an axe-making factory located along the Blackwater River between Elkins and Wilmot Flat. After the scythe works closed in 1887, its assets were auctioned off and its buildings reused or recycled.

We do not know what happened at the 30' x 120' axe shop over the next decade, perhaps nothing, but in 1900 its frame was disassembled and hauled up New London hill to the former Sargent Homestead on Main Street. Charles E. Shepard had purchased the property in 1890 and was operating a carriage and livery business there. When the frame was reassembled, its roof was changed to a gambrel style in order to provide more storage volume for Shepard's hay and feed. Although gambrel barns are prevalent elsewhere, they are unusual in this area.

In 1947, James E. Shepard, II, removed over half of the barn. He took it down to Newport Road, where it became the New London Locker Plant, the modern version of his father's ice business. Within two years the venture failed, but it was soon reopened by Eliot Clemons, who sold groceries in addition to refrigeration services. That building, "a specially-designed and handsome structure" according to historian J. Duane Squires, was recently converted into the dental offices of Drs. Gutgsell & Phipps.

Wednesday, March 13 (4:50 PM)

Thursday, March 14 (9:15 AM)

Shepard's Riding School having closed, in 1947 the remaining portion of Shepard's Barn and 3 acres of land were purchased by Colby-Sawyer College for its maintenance department. Since that time the property has had several owners, none of whom found much use for the barn. Meanwhile, roof shingles started leaking. The foundation settled, bowing outward. The window frames racked and glass panes broke free of sashes. The trim and clapboards blew off in the wind. The barn had become a potential liability rather than the productive asset it once was.

Its days were numbered. Until today. Pi Day.

Old Barns

Over its long history, the Town Archives Committee has undertaken projects that today might fall under the purview of a Heritage Commission. These include publications, road signs, house markers, and surveys or inventories of historical resources. Continuing in that role, we recently provided research and advice to our town administrators as they developed a process to evaluate applications made under RSA 79-D, New Hampshire's so-called "Barn Law."

The state law is now ten years old, but this spring marked the first time a local homeowner had applied for the discretionary easement and tax abatement designed to keep historic agricultural structures on our landscape. The law was meant to alleviate a tax-induced disincentive for keeping barns and other outbuildings in good repair — namely, the increased assessment (and corresponding property taxes) resulting from the maintenance of those buildings, which once represented income-producing assets but are now more often seen as useless liabilities.

Between 1850 and 1870, the federal census included detailed agricultural schedules. In 1870 New London had 128 farms, each of which probably had at least one barn and a number of outbuildings. Our 2012 field survey of extant barns indicates that fewer than 50 might be older than 75 years, and far fewer date from 1870 or earlier. So when the owners of a 1792 farmstead approached the town about a preservation easement on their barn, we saw this as the perfect inaugural case. Our research traced the history of the property's ownership from its first lotting-out in 1773 to the present. Using census data and tax records, we also gathered snapshots of the farm's agricultural operations until the late 1800s when it was converted into a guest house to serve New London's summer tourist trade.

In assessing historic properties, preservationists look for two things: significance and integrity. The terms have technical definitions that set a high hurdle for recognition programs like the National Register of Historic Places. This farmstead would probably not clear that hurdle because its significance is not of a national scope, but it would be considered eligible for the State Register. Its significance stems from its association with the area's agricultural development and later transition to a more recreation-based economy. Its integrity stems from its construction of hand-hewn timbers, its prominent setting on a working hayfield, and its design as part of a connected farmhouse complex. For all those reasons the town administrators decided at a public hearing that this barn represented a public benefit worthy of consideration for tax abatement under RSA-79D.

When people ask what purpose the Town Archives serves, we are hard-pressed to come up with a succinct response. We never know where the next inquiry into our town's history will lead.

Historic Demolition

A brief update on an earlier story...

After a year-long delay, the former SAU 65 building on New London's Main Street was demolished and trucked off to a landfill. Before the Kearsarge Regional School District acquired the building, it had served as a restaurant and as the town's first place of Catholic worship. Learn more from Catholic Heritage, posted here last April.

Demolition of the former SAU 65 / Our Lady of Fatima Church - April 26, 2012

An Industrial Imprint

The H.F. Walling map of Merrimack County (1858) contains an inset of Scythe Factory Village, located at the outlet of Pleasant Pond (now Pleasant Lake). Here the Phillips, Messer, & Colby Company began forging scythe blades in 1835. The business operated for over fifty years, and its product line expanded to include hay knives and axes.

Over the period, its small, wooden factories were enlarged or rebuilt, and water-power systems were upgraded. Iron, steel, coal, and grindstones, once delivered by teamsters from Concord, arrived at Potter Place storage facilities on the Northern Railroad. Mechanics Hall and later the Masonic Hall were built. The village merited its own post office. At its peak, the reincorporated New London Scythe Company employed about 75 workers, and the new schoolhouse enrolled forty children, though rarely did so many attend.

The map depicts a compact village, complete with mills and factories, warehouses, company-owned tenements, owner-manager houses, a school, store, and blacksmith shop. Altogether it's a fine example of the industrial landscapes scattered around New England's flowing water courses.

After a long series of building removals and demolitions, that former landscape has nearly faded from view. But by tracing the millponds, sluiceways and tailraces, you might still see the imprint of our 19th century industrial heyday in unexpected places.

To learn more about Scytheville, find a copy of Reflections in a Millpond, published in 1984 for its sesquicentennial celebration, or stop by the Archives to browse the book and see more images, documents, and maps of the area.

Lincoln Logs

Sorting a box of miscellany, we ran across this numbered certificate.

Lincoln Farm Association certificate (1909)

Dated June 17, 1909 and addressed to “Lottie Brown” the text reads, in part:

You have been this day enrolled as an honorary member of the Lincoln Farm Association, a patriotic organization formed by American citizens for the purpose of preserving as a National Park, the farm on which Abraham Lincoln was born.

Here's the story.

Abraham Lincoln was born in a cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm (Kentucky) in 1809. As the centennial of this event approached, a group of citizens felt that his birthplace should be preserved for future generations. In fact, the cabin had been moved many times and was exhibited in 1897 at Nashville, Tennessee, where it was united with another from Kentucky—purportedly the cabin in which Jefferson Davis was born. Both cabins were later dismantled and shipped to New York. After an appearance at the 1901 Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, their logs were stored in the basement of a Long Island mansion.

Formed in 1906, the Lincoln Farm Association purchased the Lincoln logs for $1,000 and the Sinking Spring Farm for $3,600. (This was the same year that President Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act, which offered protection for federally-owned sites.) The expensive part of the project was the grand Memorial Building, in which the reconstructed log cabin would be enshrined. Despite donations from over 100,000 people, financial concerns forced the building plans to be scaled down (along with the dimensions of the cabin), but still the cornerstone was not laid by President Roosevelt until 1909. The memorial was dedicated two years later by President Taft, whose signature is printed just above "Mark Twain" on the Lincoln Farm certificate.

Lottie Brown at Low Plain School (c. 1905)

Lottie Brown had just turned twelve years old when she received the certificate, issued to all who donated between 25 cents and $25 to the project. The tenth and youngest child, Lottie attended the Low Plain school at the foot of Seamans Road. Her father was Alston Brown (1847-1938), who joined New Hampshire's First Volunteer Cavalry at the age of 16. He lost his left arm during Wilson's raid on Nottoway Courthouse, Virginia, on June 23, 1864. Six days later he was captured near Stone Creek by Confederate forces and imprisoned for two months. Whether he contributed to the Lincoln Farm project in Lottie’s name, or whether she donated her own money, we cannot know, but we can imagine that the preservation of Lincoln’s memory would have appealed to her family, as it did to the families of so many northern veterans.


Sources:

• National Park Service chronology at www.nps.gov/abli/planyourvisit/sinkingspringfarm.htm
• Alston Brown profile at www.nh.ngb.army.mil/images/stories/History/1st_NH_Cav.pdf

Catholic Heritage

Voters in the Kearsarge Regional School District recently approved funds for the demolition of the former SAU 65 offices on Main Street. Unfortunately, the building has perhaps even more historical significance than its also-vacant neighbor, the New London Central School (1941).

The Green Maple (1931-1936)

From its construction in the fall of 1930, the building provided area Catholics with a year-round worship space—first in the rear meeting hall and later in the main section of the building. Its gambrel frame was raised by two French Canadian storekeepers from Blodgett's Landing, Joseph and Philip Bourgeau. Joe's ice cream and novelty shop was called The Green Maple, but he closed the shop and tea room after five years and sold the building to Bishop Peterson, Diocese of Manchester, in 1936. 

By then about 30% of New Hampshire's population was Catholic. Most were immigrants from Quebec, Ireland, Germany, Lithuania, and Poland, and highly concentrated around the textile cities. In the Lake Sunapee area, the Catholic population was small, and Father John McCarthy traveled from St. Helena's in Enfield to celebrate mass. After the summer of 1936, the novelty shop closed and was converted into worship space. The second floor became a parsonage for Father Walter Blankenship after the parish was officially established on October 31, 1952. Sometime after the new Our Lady of Fatima building was dedicated in 1967, the old church was turned over to the newly-formed school district, which used the space for a classroom and later for administrative offices until 2010.

Catholic Chapel (1931-1952); Our Lady of Fatima (1952-1967)

As the site of the earliest Catholic worship in New London and the product of two French Canadian immigrants, this building reflects an interesting point in our history and society. Not too long before its construction, non-Protestants had been actively discouraged from vacationing at many of our hotels and boarding houses. In 1928, the Democratic party nominated a Catholic as its presidential candidate, Alfred E. Smith of New York. His religion reportedly contributed to his sound defeat by Herbert Hoover. In 1936, however, New Hampshire elected its first Catholic governor, Francis P. Murphy, who served two terms.

This modest commercial/religious building, built in the popular Dutch Colonial style, will soon be destroyed, but at the Archives you can still see its mark on New London's cultural landscape through photographs, newspaper articles, and oral histories.

Further reading: Upon This Granite: Catholicism in New Hampshire: 1647-1997 by Wilfrid H. Paradis (Peter E. Randall Press, 1998).