Watch Hill Windmills by CAPTAIN JACK SPRATT
Once a necessary part of town life, these structures came with the view
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long the sand and boulder shoreline plains of Cape Cod, Long Island, Rhode Island and many of the small islands of the northeast, windmills were a ubiquitous part of the landscape. For over a decade, from 1887 to 1901, windmills were synonymous with Watch Hill, as depicted in a post card of July 3, 1900:
“My Dear Edna, Watch Hill is a very pretty place. Windmills, windmills everywhere windmills, this lovely village could be called Windmill Hill! Love to All, Elmer.”
Above: Postcard of Echo Lodge windmill and water tower in Watch Hill, circa 1900.
WINDMILLS OF WATCH HILL The history of windmills at Watch Hill is a short one. For just over a decade from 1888 to 1901, windmills, wind-pumps or wind engines as they were known, some with water tank towers and observation platforms, became
a most unexpected feature of the Watch Hill landscape. The windmills were designed to pull water from ponds, cisterns and dug wells. Windmills were the latest gizmo in a world where the telegraph, electricity and the automobile were just becoming practical. The
wind water pumps were a must-have for the fashionable Watch Hill colony and a big step up from hand pumping water. Walking around Watch Hill today you might wonder why so many of these stately shingled cottages have a limited, or no, view of the ocean, river or bay. When the majority of these homes were built between 1887 and 1900 the object of landscaping, by such wellknown landscape architects as the Olmstead Brothers, was to minimize the planting of trees to emphasize the natural, windswept, rugged terrain and seascape. In fact, tree and shrub planting was socially unacceptable and frowned upon. If you took away the trees today you would see that these cottages up on the hills of Watch Hill would have magnificent seascape views, ideal for harnessing the wind. However, windmills were considered a blemish upon the glacial canvas. The unadorned, cheap, iron mail-order windmills, with their squeaky mechanisms and very loud fans, were not only considered an eyesore, but a noise nuisance. The windmills became a contentious issue among neighbors as well as hotel guests, as a Providence Journal article of July 29, 1900 notes: “There about as many windmills, all told, as there are cottages; looming up about the homes, and the continual revolving of their patent…, so many of them, located everywhere, makes you feel that you have struck a pretty lively place. They say that the Watch Hill windmills are a cure for insomnia, at least until the novelty wears off, and that will not take long.”
PHOTOGRAPHY: ECHO LODGE POSTCARD COURTESY OF SPRATT COLLECTION; IMAGE OF WINDMILL NEAR OCEAN HOUSE: WAT CH HILL THEN & NOW, A R D I T H M . S C H N E I D E R A N D R O B E RTA M . B U R K H A R D T; P O S T- H U R R I CA N E I M A G E : T H E H U R R I C A N E W E S T E R LY R . I . A N D V I C I N I T Y, L E W I S G R E E N E ; BLOCK ISLAND WIND FARM: JOHN SUPANCIC; RED WINDMILL © ADOBESTOCK.COM
LOCAL HISTORY
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