A Tale of Two Galleries

Here on Plum Island, we look across the marsh to the mainland, a flat sea-level view of about two miles west as the crow flies or as a car drives along our single straight-line causeway.

No buildings interrupt that view except for those few along the road on the mainland side of the modest bridge: A semi-circle of about a dozen houses on a side-street called Plumbush Downs, a few more between there and Bob’s Lobster, a couple more set behind Bob’s, and a dilapidated boat house well past it, all of them along the outbound lane, a few of them set high upon stilts.

Along the inbound lane, a modest chip shot away from the road, is a single, two-story pink house. Turning 99 this year, it looks its age for having been abandoned about half that time. Thanks to its location, location, location and to its venerable visage, The Pink House has long been a mecca for painters and photographers, rivalling a fishing shack on a dock in nearby Rockport for the title of coastal New England’s “Motif #1.”

And now the National Fish and Wildlife Service, which has jurisdiction of the land where the Pink House sits, for some reason feels obliged to tear it down. Full disclosure here: Though not a full-blown member, I’m sympathetic to the group fighting to keep the house where it is. A “Save the Pink House” decal is on the back of my Nissan, and in 2017-18 when demolition was first broached, I wrote three Daily News columns questioning, attacking, and–okay I confess–ridiculing the plans.

A most imaginative reader, Andrew Griffith of a group called “Plum Island Outdoors,” turned one of those columns, “House of the Rising Sea,” into a song set to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun.” According to the chorus:

There is a house on Great Salt Marsh

They call the House of Pink

Alone along Plum Island’s road

Its legend is distinct

https://plumislandoutdoors.org/outdoor-history-plum-island/the-pink-house/ *

To cut to the chase: Though it may contain asbestos and be irreparable, and though it may never be of use, what harm does it do just sitting there for portraits, posing for pictures, and providing a chimney that is a favored resting place for owls, hawks, falcons, and occasional eagles?

Moreover, the Pink House is an attraction listed by the Essex National Heritage Coastal Scenic Byway, a 90-mile drive connecting communities from Lynn to Salisbury with “sights of interest, culture, heritage and value” according to the brochure which adds:

The Pink House has been on this list for years and only further cements it’s meaning as a notable landmark, deeply woven into the fabric of what makes New England special.

I’m heartened that there are so many local folks in the movement we call “Save the Pink House.” But, last I heard, we are running out of time. As I understand it, the need is to find someone who can exchange a piece of unused land the same size–not much more than the Pink House’s footprint–that abuts NFWS land anywhere in the United States.

Just this week, barely 30 miles west of us, the Mass Audubon Society purchased the legendary and revered Pawtucket Farm in Lowell to preserve it as a natural setting. That move had the added intent of preventing development.

Preserving the Pink House has no such intent. Nothing will be built there other than possible renovation or re-purposing that would barely extend the footprint. None of which would be funded by tax dollars. Nor is there anything near it that its existence might depreciate, no neighbors its peeling Pepto-Bismol paint might annoy.

And if NFWS claims that a natural setting will be regained, I can tell them that after forty years of looking out my window, I have never seen a lack of room for migrating geese and duck–and I’ve seen thousands at a time. Double or triple their numbers by factors of ten or twenty, and there will still be ample room on this, the second largest saltmarsh on America’s east coast.

NFWS has claimed that the house is expensive to maintain. But if it’s abandoned, what’s to maintain? Makes one wonder if there’s an ulterior motive. Do they not want painters and photographers along the causeway?

Do they not want art?

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Covid put everything, including NFWS plans, on hold. While I was on hold, I started writing memoirs, including one called “Painted on Downtown Walls” about murals found in cities west of the Mississippi that…

… often included a scene of musicians jamming in a park, at a block party, or on an outdoor stage. What made me take note was the ethnic make-up: The guitarists and fiddlers might be anyone, but–apart from Native Americans in groups of their own–the drummers were always Black and Hispanic while the wind players were always Asian and White.

And so I described my own vagabond experience as a white flautist who often busked Larimer Square in Denver with an African-American drummer. For a blog, I went looking for a similar image and found this:

Hoping to credit it, I spent hours running into dead-ends on several websites. I found only that it was a mural, or part of a mural, on the side of the triangular Lafayette Building in downtown Detroit. Note the past tense. Although more than one writer described the Lafayette as “historic,” preservationists unsuccessfully tried to place the 1923 structure on the National Register of Historic Places. As is true–to date–of those of us trying to save Plum Island’s Pink House, they failed to find a purchaser.

When the wrecking ball hit in 2009, not only was that mural lost, so, too, were others. Or was it one large mural, mostly of musicians with a few Detroit Lions scenes back in the glory years of Barry Sanders, that filled a wall outside the first of the building’s 13 stories?

Never in my life have I been in Detroit, but three years ago when I learned of the lost murals–when, looking for but one, I found one after another that appealed to me–I went on a mission to find the name and whatever I could learn of the artist.

How many inquiring emails did I write? Well, I admit, just one, but with versions that went to the Detroit Public Library, the Detroit Historical Commission, the Detroit Free Press, a weekly newspaper, two radio stations, three colleges, and a Detroit writer named Alvin Hill who had just published Driving the Green Book, which begins in Detroit, and which I reviewed. I asked my son-in-law’s parents, both Detroiters, and a classmate of mine back at South Dakota State, a native of Flint with academic ties throughout Michigan.

What I got were mostly referrals to places I already tried, and just two emails telling me that they had nothing on hand but would keep looking. Nothing since.

Last week, I spotted a fellow wearing a Detroit Kronk jersey at the Moby-Dick Marathon Reading in New Bedford. He took genuine interest, but emailed me three days later that he came up empty. ”Kronk,” by the way, is the name of a legendary boxing gym that opened in 1921, proving that we Melvillians, like Ishmael himself, “try all things [and] achieve what [we] can.”

But I can take consolation that last week’s shot in the dark reawakened me. While I failed to find the artist’s name, I still have the pictures, the murals (or maybe The Mural), and can offer an anonymous gallery. Like images of the Pink House, we can still appreciate art occasioned by the Lafayette Building.

Difference is that the Pink House may yet occasion so much more.

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Lafayette Building Gallery:

* Pink House Gallery:

*For many more photos and more lyrics to what may be the only song ever adapted from a newspaper column, “House of the Rising Sea,” go to:

https://plumislandoutdoors.org/outdoor-history-plum-island/the-pink-house/

(Andy, if Adaptation of a Newspaper Column were a category, a Grammy would be yours.)