Sense of History: The Place of the Past in American Life

6. Rethinking New England Town Character

6 Rethinking New England Town Character 131 Fig. 28. Adolf Dehn’s poster for Our Town in 1938 depicted an idealized New England village at the turn of the century. The Harvard Theatre Collection, The Houghton Library. W HEN CHRISTOPHER Kenneally interviewed Ken Burns for USAir magazine, he traveled to Burns’s home in Walpole, New Hampshire, which he described as ‘‘a small quintessential New England village on the banks of the Connecticut River.’’∞ Keneally’s words bring to mind a picture of white houses clustered around a church and common, of Burns and his family taking their place in the community alongside a set of sturdy characters who have just stepped out from the Thornton Wilder play Our Town or a Norman Rockwell painting. There is a certain timelessness implied in Keneally’s vision of the New England village as well—as if, should he have visited Walpole 50 or 100 or even 150 years earlier, it would not have looked or felt substantially different from today. The essential character of the town had been established in the colonial era, when its first English settlers laid it out. If the landscape of Walpole and countless other New England towns at the turn of the twenty-first century have a historical look and feel, it is the result of the activities of recent years as much as those of the past. In fact, many of these towns look much more colonial now than they did 150 years ago. And in the face of pressure for new development, many residents of the towns are more determined than ever to keep this historical character intact. 132 CHAPTER SIX Notions of town character exert a powerful influence on the way that New England residents look at and consequently shape their environment . In 1990, the Massachusetts Special Commission on Growth and Change listed preserving ‘‘community character’’ at the very top of its list of goals for guiding future development in the commonwealth, declaring , ‘‘We need help in keeping the identity of our communities intact.’’≤ The following year in Boston, the Northeast Regional Office of the National Trust for Historic Preservation issued a four-page ‘‘report card for protecting community character.’’≥ As in other regions of the nation, city governments in New England attempt to improve the character of ‘‘slum’’ neighborhoods, and that of their residents, by encouraging their renovation into historic districts that attract a new urban gentry. Suburban developers seek a market edge by investing their instant neighborhoods with historical ‘‘character’’ by means of design details that suggest a distinctive feel. And various public and private initiatives are under way to control development in agricultural areas and preserve their rural character. What do New England residents mean when they talk about the ‘‘character’’ of their town or neighborhood? What gives a town or neighborhood its distinctive look and feel? How do residents with different ideas of what constitutes the essence of their town or neighborhood decide what characteristics are most vital to enhance and protect? Through close examination of the meaning of town character in three New England communities, we can learn more about the role that notions of history play in the creation of a sense of place. We have already investigated the many different perceptions of history present in places such as Orange, Massachusetts, and San Francisco, and the politics of how some versions of the past became the public history; here we will explore the many different senses of place in a locale, and the process through which some representations of place become the prevailing ones. The making of a public history in a community and local residents’ senses of place are inextricably intertwined. Individuals attach histories to places, and perceive places differently when they are designated as ‘‘historic’’; similarly, public debates over land use often reveal conflicting perceptions of local history. Our rethinking of New England town character will raise not only questions of historical interest—when did idealized images of the colonial past come to dominate the New England landscape, who promoted these images and why, how have they changed over time?—but also im- RETHINKING NEW ENGLAND TOWN CHARACTER 133 portant questions of professional practice, especially for historic preservationists . While implicit notions of town character have influenced development patterns in New England throughout its history, making such ideas explicit and investing government with the power to re-form the landscape according...