Women of Watch Hill

LOCAL HISTORY by CAPTAIN JACK SPRATT

Discover the trailblazing female artists behind Village Park

Above: Vintage postcard of summer trolley trips to Watch Hill.

The end of a beautiful Watch Hill day in Village Park: The salt air is filled with music from the Flying Horse Carousel and sprinkled with children’s laughter; the melody soars up and over the village on the wings of gulls, gliding down Bay Street. A line forms at the ice cream window of St. Clair Annex. Beach-goers heading for the parking lot congregate, as the yacht club prepares its signal gun. Boaters come on deck carrying drinks and air horns, while couples spread blankets on the grass. BOOM! The club gun fires; startled, the unsuspecting jump, and the harbor reverberates with the ear-piercing sound. In the words of writer Edith Wharton, it is another spectacular Watch Hill summer sunset “lagooned in gold.”

The Artists of Village Park

Women of vision and skill have given Watch Hill a lasting gift of beauty. Here in Village Park lives the spirit of Chief Ninigret, depicted crouching, noodling Kwam (fish) and gazing across the Bay, enshrined in the statuary fountain by sculptor Enid Bland Yandell (18691934). The Dreamer, a sculpture by Sylvia Shaw Judson (1897-1978) atop the water fountain, captures a boy in peaceful contemplation. The subtle effects of sunset shadows upon the seascape and plantings were envisioned by prominent landscape architect and summer cottager Marian Cruger Coffin (1876-1957). The park is a historical monument to these artists and to generations of Watch Hill women.

Watch Hill Improvement Society

Chartered by a group of eight men in 1889, The Watch Hill Improvement Society (WHIS) facilitated a Fire District Charter and brought town water, fire hydrants, sidewalks and street lighting. The men turned the Society over to the women of the Hill in 1901, having “rendered Watch Hill a more inviting and desirable place of residence.”1 In 1996, it was renamed Watch Hill Memorial Library and Improvement Society (WHMLIS).

While men pursued careers in the city, visiting for short stays, women summering at the seashore enjoyed new-found freedom, unimaginable from the subordination to patriarchal dominance and pigeon-holes of society life described in the writings of Edith Wharton and Henry James. James coined the term “new women,” emblematic of women pushing back against society-imposed limits. Although unable to hold office or vote, the women, self-proclaimed “IMPS” (from “Improvement Society”) essentially ran Watch Hill’s quasi-municipal fire district.

The Society had dirt streets oiled and boardwalks built to the club and beach. They secured year-round police presence and a jail cell; maintained the Flying Horse Carousel; sprayed for mosquitoes; eliminated sewage in the bay; and advocated for an American La France pumper and fire station after the devastating 1916 fire. The Society raised funds through donations; fête champêtre; art, fashion and pet shows; and water carnivals. They also sponsored children’s events like the Fourth of July bicycle parade.

In spring 1938, a fire burned the central Sisson block, and a hurricane followed that fall. The “IMPS” were instrumental in rebuilding the community.

Village Park Preservation and the Future

Looking at the park’s evolution from 1889 to 1940, one can appreciate the impact of women and their role in resort community government; the arts and architecture; and the changes in American attitudes toward nature and landscape.

Through the stewardship of the “IMPS;” generous female patronage; and the pioneering artists Enid Yandell, Marian Cruger Coffin and Sylvia Shaw Judson, a remarkable sisterhood has endured, and the park has survived disaster and development.

REFERENCES

1. Barnes, Chaplin. (2005). Watch Hill Through Time. 2. Healy, Harry. (1922, August). The Garden Magazine. 3. Blog. (2012, May). "Enid Yandell’s The Gibson Girl." Kentucky Online Arts Resource Blog.

Three Visionary Artists Leave their mark on historic Village Park

Marian Cruger Coffin

Landscape Architect

During the Great Depression, WHIS engaged trailblazing landscape architect Marian Cruger Coffin to design Village Park, including 17 memorial benches. Above: Marian Cruger Coffin at her Watch Hill Among Coffin’s home. landscape designs are Winterthur, the Henry Francis du Pont estate; New York Botanical Gardens’ rose garden; and smaller projects around Watch Hill, including those at her cottage Wendover, and The Lottery, home of Sara Means Spencer, who was instrumental in her commission.2

It was acceptable for women to design domestic gardens; however, men dominated public commissions and landscape architecture. As a pioneering professional Coffin had her challenges, writing of attending M.I.T. in 1901: “I was fired with desire to enter the Institute in spite of the fact that at the time, as noted by Martha Brookes Hutcheson [another female landscape architect] it was considered almost social suicide and distinctly matrimonial suicide, for a woman to enter any profession.”

Coffin’s work was featured in The Garden Magazine, and she maintained homes in New Haven, CT, and Watch Hill. Even during the Great Depression, she was able to employ an assistant and driver.

Above: Designs for Village Park by Landscape Architect Marian Cruger Coffin (1936). Enid Yandell

Artist

Enid Yandell, following American artists and writers to Paris on what David McCullough described as The Greater Journey, studied or worked with Lorado Taft, Auguste Rodin Above: The artist in her and Augustus Paris studio with a model Saint-Gaudens, from Buffalo Bill Circus. eventually opening her own Paris studio. She became nationally recognized for her caryatids on the Women’s Building at the Chicago Columbia Exhibition, World’s Fair of 1893; her miniature designs for Tiffany; and the Daniel Boone and Pallas Athena statutes. Her Gibson Girl sculpture “embodied America’s modern ideal women, with her new (often daring!) feministic values of self-reliance and self-assurance. All while maintaining her sense of femininity.”3

Yandell’s Chief Ninigret commission was a gift to Watch Hill by land developer Frances Canby Biddle Griscom in memory of husband Clement Acton Griscom, a shipping magnate who died in 1912. The Chief Ninigret statue—like the sachem Ninigret, who trekked throughout what is today New York, Pennsylvania and New England negotiating with tribal leaders—traveled exhaustively from Paris to Watch Hill. Chief Ninigret was re-dedicated on the south end of Village Park, then in a later park restoration to the north end of the park where it lives today.

Above: Enid Yandell’s 1914 sculpture Chief Ninigret was orginally located at Ninigret Avenue and Westerly Road. Today it graces Village Park's north end. Above: Sylvia Shaw Judson’s 1940 sculpture at the south end of Village Park.

Sylvia Shaw Judson

Artist

The Dreamer, donated by Gertrude Hoy Watts (an accomplished and award-winning gardener and Garden Club of America member) Above: The artist Sylvia Shaw Judson in memory of husband Ridley Watts, was added to the park in 1940. It was commissioned by the Society from Sylvia Shaw Judson (later Sylvia Shaw Judson Haskins), known for many years first as the daughter of Chicago architect Howard Shaw. Judson, who trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, followed in Enid Yandell’s footsteps, journeying to Paris to study at the Academy Grande Chaumière with Atelier Bourdelle. Judson’s works include garden sculptures and her 1959 monument of Mary Dyer, a martyred Quaker. In 1960, First Lady Jaqueline Kennedy acquired a second casting of The Little Gardener for the White House Rose Garden. After Judson’s death, her Bird Girl, photographed by John David Leigh II, gained fame on the cover of John Berendt’s 1994 book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and in the movie directed by Clint Eastwood.

Left: The Dreamer after restoration was completed in 2017. The project was overseen by Watch Hill Memorial Library & Improvement Society (WHMLIS).

Captain Jack Spratt Captain Jack, Master and Captain of sailing vessel TRIM AGAIN and Motor yacht ENCORE, is a Watch Hill resident, retired fire department member and has sailed these waters for 35 years. Known for historical talks at Ocean House and Mystic Seaport Museum, he’s written three books on area history. Look for his talks at OH during the summer months. To learn more and for additional reading, visit Captain Jack Spratt’s blog watch-hill-RI.com.