Born
to a pioneering east coast family in the last decade of the 1800s, my mother
grew up wandering the rooms and corridors of a large Inn and trading center
built by her grandfather and known as “The Linnwood House”. The wreckage of the
burned and razed landmark was still there, hidden by a generation of tree growth
and a rampant blackberry jungle when I was a small boy, but I grew up in the
very mental shadow of its image and place in local history and lore.
Like many neo-Victorian structures
of its time, its three stories were capped with an imposing cupola which I
learned from my mother had been her secret hiding place as a red-headed child
seeking privacy in a largely-adult world. The tall “minaret” looking out over
the whole town had clearly been a hallowed sanctuary of some meaning in her
life, so often did she share with me stories from her youth in which it played
a part.
Surrounded by grand buildings whose
architecture was similarly festooned, I was very familiar with the term cupola,
and its correct pronunciation (kyoo’pe-la).
In time, I learned that the word came from the Italian, where it literally
means “upside down cup”. The
Junior/Senior high school I attended in New Jersey claimed a dome-like cupola,
and the Dutch Reformed Church in our town had a cupola rather than the usual
steeple, and on Boy Scout nights, I used to climb into that cupola/belfry in an
attempt to capture resident gray squirrels while being careful not to ring the
bell which hung there.
Our move to New England brought even
more cupolas into my life, for it is here that the rooftop galleries are an ever-presence
wherever one looks, and a matter of pride in every community, large or small.
While most are simply ornamentation nowadays, they once served a number of practical
purposes, especially in seaport communities where “widows’ walks” gave the
family a perch from which to keep an eye-out for the return of their sea-faring
men and other harbor comings and goings. Then too, early “Colonial” and
“Federal” design multi-story dwellings often featured a circular stairway at
their center, and before the days of electric lights, a glassed-in cupola
overhead provided some much-needed illumination for otherwise-gloomy interiors.
For architects and builders of the day, the unique design of such “cap stones”
served as a distinctive trademark of their individual craftsmanship and a
matter of personal pride.
For New England barns, the cupola
was an absolute necessity, its venturi affect drawing air currents through
lofts of summer hay, subject to a moldering dampness which was an invitation to
spontaneous combustion-spawned barn fires. The typical maple-sugar house
likewise requires an outlet for the billowing steam clouds produced by the huge
evaporators housed inside, often with adjustable louvers which can be closed
when not in use or controlled on windy, stormy days. I have spent many hours
coaxing sled-loads of newly-gathered sap into carefully-marshaled gallons of
finished syrup in a now-distant, but fondly remembered youth.
Over the years, whether as a tour
guide or in solitary exploration, I have
hunted down these roof-top wonders with camera in hand, and my photo
files bulge with the recorded memories from among which I only have space to
share these very few.
Overlooking
a historic Atlantic seaport, this enclosed “widow’s walk” offers residents a weatherproof
view of nearby
harbor activities.
My
personal favorite cupola photo; a near-perfect combination of subject and
composition.
Until
the 1970s, every U.S. train carried a caboose, from whose cupola crew members
could maintain
a visual watch
over the entire train’s length.
A
classic New England “bank barn” sports a typical and very important cupola
feature.
All photos by Al Cooper
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