Ogunquit News
Telling the story of Ogunquit’s heritage
By Melissa Wood
The Captain Winn House was built about 1780, owned by Captain James Winn around 1825. Its many original architectural features include wide wooden floors, feather board paneling, “Indian shutters,” original glass, a central chimney and a federal stair case and mantel. The museum includes a re-created interior of a fishing shack that helps tell the story of Ogunquit’s past as a fishing village. One of the items on display is a fish sculpture by Robert Laurent, whose work can also be found in New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Laurent, along with Hamilton Easter Field, started the Field School of art in 1911.
Photos by Melissa Wood
OGUNQUIT - Once upon a time there was a village by the sea, where quaint fishing shacks dotted the cove and generations of the same families made their living harvesting the ocean waters.
It was so beautiful and picturesque that it drew artists who started a colony.
The Ogunquit Heritage Museum, inside the Captain James Winn House, tells the story of the community that grew from fishing village to an art colony and now popular summer tourist destination.
The museum's exhibitions change yearly, and this year visitors can see a display of the inside of one of those fishing shacks that used to line Perkins Cove, various artworks from the many artists who have made Ogunquit their inspiration and an exhibit celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Ogunquit Playhouse with playbills and posters of performances and stars who made the theatre a destination on the summer "Straw Hat" circuit.
Also new for this year, a recently completed "ell" is home to the Littlefield Genealogical Library, donated to the museum by Charles Littlefield.
The Winn House is a 1785 Cape donated to the town by Phyllis Perkins then moved to the Dorothea Jacobs Grant Common - property that once was home to the horse barns of the Sparhawk Hotel owned by the Jacobs family - at 86 Obeds Lane.
In the re-created fishing shack, also inside the addition, visitors can look out the window to a much different Perkins Cove of the 19th century when the water levels were much lower and a rickety wooden bridge spanned the same place where the drawbridge is today.
"The cove has a really unique history to it," said museum guide Paula S. Cummings, who said that people fished heavily out of the cove until the 1940s and 50s. She also said that Ogunquit had its own dory distinguished by its steep bow. Cummings said the shacks belonged to the fishermen as long as they still fished.
If someone left, "the first person who got there grabbed it," said Cummings, who pointed out that some of those shacks are still there, but have been transformed into the stores that are in Perkins Cove today.
Ogunquit officially became an artist colony when the artist Charles Woodbury started the Ogunquit School of Drawing and Painting on the west side of the cove in 1898, which ran for 36 years.
Then followed the Field School, opened by Hamilton Easter Field and Robert Laurent in 1911, with classes that were a little more avant-garde than the open air observation courses that Woodbury taught.
"There were just all kinds of people," said Cummings. "The artists and the fishermen got along very well."
Cummings said that with the more than 300 artists who attended the schools also came the tourists. In the late 1800s grand hotels were built to accommodate them, including St. Aspinquid, which was built by Cummings' own grandfather Samuel Jackson Perkins in 1898.
"One thing my mom always talked about was the artists always had a big ball at the end of the summer," said Cummings.
Cummings said she often sees visitors who had no idea of Ogunquit's past as a fishing village and artists colony. She also sees people who can tell many stories from those days gone by, including members of the family who once lived in the Winn House.
The Ogunquit Heritage Museum is supported by the Friends of the Winn House Committee, which has worked to restore the house. They welcome any donations - or copies - of artifacts, furniture, family histories, ship's logs, archives and photographs. If you have something you would like to donate please contact the curator, Barbara Woodbury.
To learn more about the story of a beautiful village by the sea, visit the Ogunquit Heritage Museum, open Tuesday through Saturday, June through September. For more about the museum, call 646-0296 or visit http://www.ogunquitvillageheritage.org/.
