Therefore, I was surprised and happy to discover an Amazon "e-book" with the title: "A Walking Tour of New Bedford, Mass." by Doug Gelbert. I downloaded it to my Kindle E-Reader for the enormous price of 99 cents and spent an enjoyable couple of hours doing a "virtual tour" of my old "stomping ground" and remembering how it was to grow up in such an amazing place.
After showing a map of the area and a bit of local history, the walking tour starts. Part of the downtown of New Bedford is a National Park, and the tour begins at the visitors' center, a former bank and district court building. The tour passes Freestone's City Grill .. a place that serves absolutely the best quahog chowder in the world.. years ago I knew the place as Haskel's bar, a tough joint where I would often pick up drunken fishermen to ferry home to safe harbors in my taxi cab.
The tour visits several historic sites such as the U.S. Custom House, the Andrew Robeson House, the Benjamin Rodman Mansion, the Bourne Warehouse, and the Rodman Candle Works. Most of these places have been restored to their 19th century glory and are well worth a close look.
The tour then visits New Bedford's famous waterfront and focuses on the Bourne Counting House at One Merrill's Wharf. A few years ago, my late wife and I spent a few days at a bed and breakfast within this building. I am sad to learn that it did not last.
Oh.. I forgot to mention.. this tour also has nice black and white photos of most of the stops along the tour!
The tour leaves the waterfront and heads west uphill to visit the Sundial Building, the Double Bank Building, Corson's Block, and of course, The New Bedford Whaling Museum.. a "must see" for anyone visiting the area. The museum, on cobble-stoned Johnny Cake Hill is right across the street from the Mariners' Home and the Seamen's Bethel, immortalized by Herman Melville in the classic book Moby Dick.
We then pass the neoclassical New Bedford Institute of Savings and turn left to visit the Zeiterion Theater. If my memory is correct, the theater is named after Harry Zeitz, who owned it when it was called the State Theater. As a young kid, I spent many an afternoon watching double features over and over while I sucked on green gummy spearmint candy, and ruined my teeth.
During the 1938 unannounced hurricane, my grandmother was watching a movie at the State Theater and she said that she could look up and see the roof bounce up and down. I can also remember that hurricane as my mother and I walked up from the South End just ahead of the tide washing in and the telephone poles sailing through the air. But, we all made it safely home.
Next on the tour is the old "new" Star Store, now being used by the University of Massachusetts. If I recall correctly, this store was the first in the country to have pneumatic tubes and we kids would love to stand around watching the containers being whisked all over the place. They sucked up the bills and spit back the change and receipts.. I guess they didn't trust the clerks to make change.
I also remember that the Star Store had the first escalator in the country. I could be wrong on that.
Now we go up the road to the fortress-like First Unitarian Church, which I recall had a very large Sunday attendance, as did Grace Episcopal Church, a block away, south on County Street.
After Grace Church, the most famous whaling mansions begin: the Bartlett Houses, the Samuel Rodman House, the Beauvais House, the Gerrish House, the famous Rotch-Jones-Duff House, the William Rotch Rodman Mansion, and the Captain Cornelius Howland House.
This brings us to the intersecting Russell Street, where my school-mate Albert Nickerson grew up. We visit the William Tallman Russell House and the Eliza Penniman York House. (Albert may have lived in one of those.. I'm not sure.) At the southeast corner of Russell Street and County Street, we have reached the Joshua Richmond House and are ready to cross the street and begin to visit the mansions on the west side of County Street.
By the way.. further east on Russell Street we would be near the old Allen F. Wood School, where Albert Nickerson and I were students. That was the tough school I have written about elsewhere. It was run by a lady we labeled a Nazi General. She was named Miss Savage. She was the lady who made us wear neckties to school and had biceps that she wasn't afraid to flex. She is also the lady who changed my Stanford-Binet scores so that I would have an expected IQ of 100.
However... it should be noted that she had a tough school to run.. most of the kids were the progeny of families that were very poor, including mine. She taught us to have pride in our appearance and to be good hard-working citizens, and some of our school mates did manage to move up quite a bit from poverty.
Back to the tour: when the tour jumps across the street from 376 County, it misses my house at 372. But take a look back at the house as you cross the street, my ghost will wave at you.
The west side of County has some gems.. The Grinnell Mansion with fantastic columns, the Mary Howland House, the Barton Ricketson House, the Gilbert Russell House, the Benjamin Cummings House, and the Marcia Parker House. The Roosevelt Apartments building is next in line, followed by the James Arnold House, that became the Wamsutta Club. Mr. Arnold was known for his landscaping skills and Herman Melville made a point of visiting the famous gardens in 1857. The text mentions that Mr. Arnold had a bit to do with the even more famous Arnold Arboretum in Boston.
Next is the Jireh Perry House that became a Masonic Temple. And now, the Bristol County Superior Court, where Lizzie Borden's famous trial was held. (An examination of this trial and that of O.J. Simpson reveals a lot of similarities.)
Aha.. here we are.. the old New Bedford High School Building, where I went to school and graduated from many long years ago. The text mentions that this building was built on the property of Charles W. Morgan, famous Quaker whaling merchant, who lent his name to the last existing whaling ship now berthed in Mystic, Connecticut. (In my humble opinion, Mystic stole that ship from New Bedford, and we should mount an effort to enter Mystic harbor on a dark night and steal it back!)
Next.. the Lorum Snow House, Trinity Church, and the Captain Steven N. Potter Mansion. The County Street part of the tour ends here; however, there are a lot more mansions, some quite famous further north. Meanwhile, the tour jumps to the First Baptist Church on William Street. This is the church where my cousin, Charlie Kraihanzel convinced me that I should give up my young life of crime, such as it was. The church had a wonderful library of every Hardy Boys mystery ever written and every OZ book by L. Frank Baum. I read them all...good bye to comic books.
Captain Roberts wrote his famous Rules of Order book during the Civil War, as a means to keep control of the riotous meetings then taking place at the First Baptist Church. Captain Roberts was billeted at Fort Rodman.
Next door to the First Baptist Church is the unseen ghost of the New Bedford YMCA, where I worked and taught and tried to become the strongest guy in the world; and where one of my artistic female cousins sneaked into the locker room to sketch naked guys.
Across the street on North Sixth Street is the Bristol County Registry of Deeds. As a kid, I used to peek into a box kept on its lawn that kept track of the ambient temperature. High tech stuff then.
The tour now comes to what it says is the New Bedford City Hall. Unfortunately, I think they put the wrong picture in. It looks suspiciously like the Wamsutta Mills.
Across the street is the New Bedford Free Public Library (don't tell them that I still have an outstanding book!). This was the second free public library to be set up in the U.S., and has a marvelous collection of incunabula (at one time open to the public and the dirty fingers of urchins.)
In front of the library is the famous Whaleman's Statue.. "A dead whale or a stove boat." The statue memorializes those tough whalers who hunted many-tonned creatures from small boats in high seas. (The model for this statue was a giant of a man. My grandfather was an undertaker when the man died and had the duty of fitting him to a casket. None were big enough so he had to bury him in an upright piano case.)
The tour next passes the New Bedford Art Museum and the Merchant's National Bank. (I can still smell the roasting peanuts given out by Mr. Peanut who stood across from the bank and passed out handfuls of delicious salty peanuts every day, rain or shine.)
The tour ends at the old Cherry's Department Store, "A splash of Art Deco in New Bedford."
Following the tour, there is a very informative section entitled: "Identifying American Architecture." If you have followed this tour, you will have seen examples of almost all of the architecture that is mentioned.
I highly recommend this "ebook".. or the printed copies thereof. I will be taking my Kindle to New Bedford for my NBHS reunion later this year and anticipate with pleasure walking the tour.
Now.. I do have one criticism: I don't know how this book became an "ebook", but I assume it was scanned into a computer. If so, then the typos must be in the printed copy. Typos such as:
thraough
Federa-style
uutside
bluetsne
All of these and a few others could have been caught with simple "spell check" software.
However.. in spite of these few mis-spellings and a missing picture, this is a great resource for persons who want to get to know New Bedford.. "the city that lit the world."
Incidentally, this was the "old days",we now love all whales and do not like it when anyone hunts them!
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