14

The House That Helped A Town

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Ihe wWwft are for (he benefit and enjoyment of local citizen and distant visitor

alike

The outdoor performing arts facility will provide an open air stage for music, dance, opera, folk songs and plays beginning in July There will be an admission charge (although seating is either on the grass or via bring-your own chaif- for the events scheduled by MAC The stage and grounds behind the Physick House are also available for rental The rod, green and buff trolley gives MAC a "fleet" of two vehicles which provole guided tours along the tree-lined nar-

row streets of this resort, where Presidents once vacationed and the retinued wealthy summered over. The older, open air trolley, pulled by an ersatz locomotive, has proven popular as a partygoer transport, including wedding participants 'twixl church and-reception. It can accommodate more than 30 passengers; already a couple tours are

booked for next January.

MAC PRESIDENT Bejtel points with pride to the Center becoming the first local tour group in New Jersey to receive approval as a bus company from the state Dept of Transportation — no easy

achievement, he notes.

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IN FRONT OF THE open air stage behind the Physick House, MAC director Peg Sinclair and Wade Gordon Cooper, treasurer and performing arts chairman, go over

events to be ataged on the new facility.

Besides trolley and walking tours of the town’s architectural and histories] features (of whilh there are many). MAC sponsors an evening tour, /Wansions by Gaslight, m weekly showing of vintage movies, tours of the Phyafck House and Victorian Museum and several special annual events. * Most of the events and services carry an admission charge. It’s been thru these popular and paying attractions that the Center has raised thousands of dollars over the years to both highlight and perpetuate Cape May’s heritage. "We are continuing to invest all our revenues in these programs for the benefit and enjoyment of our neighbors and visitors alike," Mr. Beitel says. It is a sentiment seconded by Peg Sinclair, the director of MAC. "It is our goal to increase off-season visitation through extended trolley, house and walking tours as well as special events," she notes.

• • •

BUT MOST tourgoers don’t realize the dramatic changes MAC had to initiate on the road to attracting thousands to Cape May for the architecture and Victorian heritage as well as' the bathing and fishing—the resort’s initial lures and principal pastimes naturally. The Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts began as a group determined to save the Emlen Physick Estate -fewn the wrecking ball. Originally the home of a wealthy Philadelphia .physician who never pnactiWd, the 8-1/2-acre esbte --fs dominated by the 18-room main house and

town’s architectural gems, most owned privately, most specially the Physick House. The mouldering mansion became a rallying point. The hardcore preservationists dug in, determined that the Furness creation, albeit then more like a haunted house than an architectural gem, would not fall to the wrecking ball as several authentic Victorian buildings had already, to be replaced to ersatz, nominally Victorian at

most.

The entrenchment by the preservation-minded led to an underground political movement whose participants, novices to applied politics, practiced the art and socialized simultaneously. Cocktail and coffee klatsch conversation coalesced into goals and platform planks. Three individuals were carefully selected after meticulous screening in a social/serious process which took place in livingrooms rather than backrooms by citizens whose professional backgrounds and neighborhood or community influence guaranteed the local political organization

future The political excur : sion by the preservationists served to help educate the community, to wipe away the seamist of ennui that had accumulated over the years, to strip off the many coats of monotony obscuring not only the "gingerbread," but appreciation of

it.

Steadily, the MAC Awareness campaign helped to elucidate while entertaining, to gain revenue for restoration as the benefits of preservation were touted. It was an effort which was mounted literally from the ground up; actually below ground. The basement of the ominous Physick mansion was transformed into a cavernous dungeon, the highlight of an annual communtywide Halloween party on the lawn of the “Spooky House." AS MONEY came in, needed repairs were made to the house. Slowly missing fireplace tiles, mantels, chandeliers, door hardware and other pieces of ornamentation were returned to the house; some from great distances, by people who had acquired the

Then, locally, ‘Victorian’ was still a word most often associated with ‘fire trap’

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the nearby Carriage House (the longtime home of the Cape Mat County Art Leaguel-'—i>efiigned by Frank Furness, famed 19th century architect, the structure by the late 1960s had been neglected by owners and populace unmindful of its past, and vandalized and cannibalized of much of its priceless accouterments — much of the truly unique interior or namentation designed by the renowned architect himself. BEFORE THE "MAC group" ‘could begin the lengthy, slow task of restoring the structure to its past glory, it had to convince virtually an entire town that it was worth sav-

ing.

The MAC preservation movement begun in the early '70s did not have the popular support that restoration enjoys nationwide in today's more costconscious economy. Then, locally, Victorian was still a word mosjt often associated witlK/ire trap. This, despite the efforts of earlier preservationminded townspeople and outside experts who saw the town's past as the way to proceed — the theme around which to rebuild out of the destruction wrought by the March 1962 storm and the general economic malaise which had befallen the Jersey Shore as a more mobile generation of vacationers forsook ocean breezes and surf for airconditioned excursions to more exotic spots. TO THE MAC People, too much lip service and not enough genuine effort was going into preserving the

slate a run for the money. THE PLANS of the preservationists were well laid; their buzzword wasn’t preservation, but responsive. And by the time the Citizens for Responsive Government surfaced with their campaign, the nucleus of preservationist, confident and caught up in an avant-garde mood, had become a grass roots movement seeking to gain a voice in government. Probably as much a secret to their success as careful, professional-like groundwork aitd implementation was the city’s political organization not taking the neophytes seriously^ Were it not for loose lips on election day morning divulging that the insurgents had garnered more absentee ballots than the politicos, the citizens' group might have taken all three city hall seats instead of the two they captured. The citizen’s group occupied city hall for one term; the organization wouldn't be caught napping a second time. But city hall’s reverting to practicing politicians "was due in no small measure to the novelty having worn off for many of the former members of the citizens' group, who had since gone their separate ways; politics for the sake of politics was not their cup of tea THE FOUR YEARS the citizens group had in office sufficed The politicians came to realize the MAC group really weren’t interested in politics; all they wanted was to preserve a town's glorious past for the sake of its present and

pieces over the years at garage sales or by other means, but who now were reading feature articles in metropolitan newspapers and major magazines about the Fhysick-MAC project. Around town, owners of Victorian properties began to take stock of their own treasures. What had/been perceived by some as White elephants or fire traps now became colorful, charming guesthouses where gentility is served with Continental breakfast. And where the elegance of a bygone era provides late-20th century travelers with appreciation of a past usually seen only in movie sets or specialty magazines with words like Colonial or Victorian or Old House in their title and growing circulations of tens of thousands of * avid readers. TODAY. THE Physick Estate, under a longterm lease from the City of Cape May to the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts, continues making dramatic progress from an ev£rwidening base of community and distant support. The beneficiaries are growing in numbers too. Most local citizens and merchants take pride in the Cape May heritage, which is now known virtually around the world. And thousands of visitors travel to this Jersey Shore resort even in the off-season to capture a bit of the charm and nostalgia which is so much a oart of this town thai today countless people say Victorian before they say Cape May.