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Note to readers: The Center Harbor Memories story started as a writing exercise that I assigned myself years ago when developing an introductory writing assignment for my graduate students in the Historic Preservation Program at the University of Vermont where I serve as a professor. The intent of this first assignment in my researching historic structures and sites course has been for my students to write a short essay about a place they remember from long ago. I tell them to write their stories as accurately as possible from memories, but to avoid conjecture. "Trust your memory and present just the facts as you remember them!" Thus the descriptions are developed based on recollections that have weathered while stored in the brain. Recognizing that we do not remember every specific detail of every place, room, person or event that we have experienced through every day of our lives, this exercise is also intended to help explore how surviving memories of places can serve as a filter to help identify features that define the character of places and events that were meaningful. Often it may be a first impression of a place or of a person that we remember most strongly, or perhaps a special event or a personal incident that happened at a place for which we continue to hold an emotional attachment in our memories. It may also be that items such as old photographs or saved objects may serve as symbolic reservoirs of memories. But this assignment is also intended to help students appreciate the value of recording memories of places through oral histories as a way to gain insights into the cultural history of communities. In essence for this assignment, the students are interviewing themselves. It has been a remarkable experience over the years to read through these student essays as virtually everyone has told wonderful stories in rich detail of places they remembered from long ago! As historians of places, there is often a temptation to conduct research by gathering as much information as possible in the time available "leaving no major stones unturned," and then after sorting through this information gleaned from a broad a range of primary and secondary archival (and now on-line) sources, to develop a timeline of filtered facts that then are used to craft a narrative that typically tells the story of the history of a place by recounting a sequence of events, generally in chronological order. This sort of linear "march of time" approach to history narratives has the advantage of following a commonly understood structure, but it also often implies that one event leads to directly another in a sort of logical evolutionary sequence, especially when written in the passive voice (as I am certainly guilty of doing sometimes!) Thus, for example, "After the old hotel burned, a new one was constructed in its place." But often these histories are mainly records of just what was found by the researchers in the time available based on the sources tapped. And what is often left out of these histories is the information that was not recorded in newspapers, deeds, maps, directories, letters and photographs or other archival sources. But by taking an investigative reporter's approach, one may gain deeper understandings of the context and human impacts by "reading between the lines" and by "digging deeper" into the unwritten realms and considering, for example: How did the fire start in the old hotel? Was it set? By whom? Why? Who gained from it? Who suffered? Who were cited as heroes? Who were castigated as villains? The other traditional way of researching the history of places has been to follow the architectural historians' approach that starts with the documentation and recordation of buildings and associated places based on site surveys, followed by the writing of detailed building descriptions that emphasize building elements that reflect an established litany of architectural styles. The frequent result is that those features that best typify the established vocabulary and rubric are emphasized because they can be identified as such, whereas those that do not are either ignored or are politely described as being vernacular or are dismissed as alterations. And with a common emphasis on "the best example" of a "noted" architect's work or on the "integrity" of the design or on the "significant" buildings associated with "important" historic figures, events or "broad patterns of history," a bias and gate-keeping snobbery has long permeated this field. I certainly know that some may object quite strongly to my previous statement, but I trust this may further validate my point! But lately, the concept of "intangible heritage" has become more recognized as an important domain for the study of older places and culture. This awareness of intangible realms associated with the cultural histories of buildings, places and communities has been an important theme through much of my own scholarly research. Indeed I recall a profound sense of frustration that enveloped me as a graduate student while studying American architectural history as I discovered that many of the structures that I found to be of great interest could not be analyzed through the lens of architectural styles. Specifically, one group included rural farm buildings. And so I launched an independent study into researching the history of barns. Then with a generous grant award from the National Endowment for the Arts, I was able to travel to a selected assortment of representative places across all the New England states to conduct intensive field studies based on observations and photographic documentation of thousands of older farm buildings. But what proved to be the most valuable dimensions of the field study were the many unsolicited interactions with residents. What often started as a casual wave and an informal question, often led to wonderful oral history accounts and impromptu guided tours through many old barns and outbuildings, many of which had been long abandoned and were on the verge of being lost, along with the sharing by many older residents of memories about these places that they knew (and loved) so well. Ultimately these findings were published in my first book, Field Guide to New England Barns and Farm Buildings. My second major scholarly work focused on the concept on liminality, that intangible realm that lies betwixt and between. In buildings this is well represented by the porch, a place that is neither fully indoors nor outdoors, but somewhere in between, and a place that is also neither fully public or private, but somewhere in between. As one student reminded me so eloquently early on, "You know, Tom, in the South there are things that happen on porches that happen nowhere else!" And indeed through my own memories I knew this to be profoundly true and certainly not exclusive to the South! Thus I launched a major project that involved studying porches in person by crisscrossing the United States and Canada from Newfoundland to California and from Florida to British Colombia. But again many of the most important discoveries during this research came from informal impromptu conversations with people on their porches as they shared memories from long ago! The product was my second book, Porches of North America, published in 2012. But let me conclude this rambling conversation by returning to the points I made at the start about memory and place. As I now approach my seventh decade, like many in this condition of life, I find myself becoming more aware of memory. Both on a personal day-to-day level as I worry that I may have forgotten something important or mundane, but also as I wander about my home and neighborhood, looking at these surroundings through the new perspective brought on so suddenly by this pandemic that is forcing many into prolonged physical isolation. I certainly know I am not alone in this situation! And after many relatively solitary months at home, I now look at the old furnishings and inherited objects about the place with renewed interest, and yes, more than a touch of nostalgia! With travel, library access and intimate personal connections not possible for the foreseeable future, this has also presented the opportunity to conduct research at home, digging through my family archive scattered in boxes of inherited family papers, photographs and slides, and drawers of knickknacks with memories and stories waiting to be discovered. I hope this project will also help to inspire others to delve into their family archives and then to document and to share the findings. And so with an inescapable awareness that I am in a high risk group to succumbing to or being debilitated by this new rampant disease, as a scholarly exercise, it has seemed appropriate to revisit that assignment I gave to myself along with my students fifteen years ago when I drafted my first essay from my own memories of long ago, which I titled, Center Harbor Memories. To share this with my students as an example of what the professor had intended for the assignment, I posted Center Harbor Memories on the web though my university account and have linked it to the course syllabi. And since we also explore how web sites are produced in this course, as an exercise, I have continued to update the website as new memories came to mind and to explore new trends in website coding methods. But lately as I began sorting through jumbled boxes of old family photographs and slides that had been tucked away for years after being inherited from my father, it became apparent that there were many photographic images and old postcards in my collection that related to those Center Harbor memories from long ago. And so, one-by-one I started adding these to this Center Harbor Memories web site. And here we are! Although I never promoted it, due to the longevity of its URL and the clicks from my students, the website's ranking started climbing in the Google search algorithm. The unforeseen result has been the receipt of many email messages from others with fond memories of Center Harbor. These messages have been an absolute delight to read. It has felt wonderful to connect with so many people with whom we share something in common, although we may have never met, or perhaps we did meet long ago without remembering it! Although tempted to fold many of these stories into this piece, I have encouraged others to share their stories of Center Harbor memories on social media. Somehow the thought of sharing all this seems to help in the face of the inevitable. I am sure I am not alone, and I hope this will at least help inspire others also to share their rich memories of places from long ago! If you do, please send me a link! I also want to acknowledge the deeply supportive role of my younger brother, Charles, who has traveled with me through this journey of shared memories and critical thinking. Not only was he cast in that supporting role as younger brothers inevitably find themselves in from an early age, but to this day he has been my closest family confidant, fact-checker, proof-reader, and source of many of the old family images in this lifetime project! And so I now present this "expanded edition" of Center Harbor Memories. In this version I have not tried to constrain the narrative just to my memories of Center Harbor as a place per se, but rather to explore other memories (and some images) associated with what happened while living there at a young age. Of course there have been times when I have asked myself whether this is getting too personal and thus would anyone care, so please excuse me if it seems this way! So yes, memories of weekend trips to Laconia and other wanderings beyond are now included. And as more memories come to mind from this time and as images come to-light, these also may be added, so bookmark this and check back again! We'll see where it goes... I just hope others find these stories to be of interest! But the common thread here is that sense of place and community drawn from memories from long ago based in that amazing place that we called home: Center Harbor, New Hampshire!
Thomas Durant Visser |