Illustrating Portsmouth

The Riverside Club -- "The first drink I ever made for a paying customer was... for your lovely dad."

2010-03-04T07:30:00.003-05:00

I rec'd the following note in response to Jeanne McCartin's recent appeal for old artwork of mine to use in my Illustrating Portsmouth show at the Discover Portsmouth Center this summer:

dear sir, i have had, since 1982(?), a framed ad you drew for a multi-media extravaganza at the masonic temple...including belly dancing and throat percussion! would you like to see it? i don't think its art show worthy, but definitely a flashback. you probably won't remember me from the Riverside (Club)...but the first real drink i ever made for a paying customer was a manhatten for your lovely father. i also,modeled for an art class you guys held in a great apartment on middle street.... poof 30 years later (almost), i am the suburban house wife, mother of 3 in north hampton.if you are in portsmouth or the vicinity,i'd be happy to swing by and show you this treasure of mine/ours. sincerely, J.L.

Thanks J.L.

That image above is an ad I did for The Riverside Club. Awesome new wave graphics, eh? The Riverside Club was a very hot dance club in Portsmouth in the early 1980's. Owned by Jay Smith, with Bruce Pingree in a cage with turntables, and Billy Eslinger behind the bar. I did the logo and signs and other graphics for the place. That was the first real logo I ever designed. Stole the basic layout from some ad I saw in the Boston Herald, I think. Showed it to Sasha Davidson (read more about Sasha in this post) when I just had the type together, and he said, "Give them something more for their money, Bill. Put it in a lozenge shape or something." So I did.

And, dear readers, please let me know (207-439-1717) if you have some old artwork of mine you think would be good in the show.

Kennedy Gallery to Sponsor Bill Paarlberg's Illustrating Portsmouth 30-Year Retrospective

2010-03-03T12:58:00.007-05:00

I am very pleased to announce that Kennedy Gallery and Custom Framing of Portsmouth, NH, has agreed to be the framing sponsor for my 30-year retrospective this summer at the Discover Portsmouth Center. Kennedy's will supply framing and mounting services, as well as help to design some custom installations. This is a perfect partnership, as the Kennedy Gallery specializes in local artwork. Please stop in at the Kennedy Gallery on Market Street, browse their selection of local artists and artwork, and thank owner Wendy Clement for sponsoring my show. For more details about the show see this blog post.

Bill Paarlberg 30-Year Retrospective Show at Discover Portsmouth Center, August 2010

2010-01-13T09:02:00.004-05:00

Ladies and Gentlemen! I am very proud to announce that The Portsmouth Historical Society has invited me to show my artwork at the Discover Portsmouth Center (the old library) in beautiful downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for the month of this coming August, 2010.

I started doing drawings of Portsmouth way back when the Ramones were just achieving their well-deserved fame, and so will be showing lots of old city scenes and of course the Famous Monsters of Portsmouth. Plenty of drawings of the North Church Steeple and newer watercolors and some architectural renderings. Mostly the sort of thing you see here in this blog, and several innovative surprises, too.

Thanks to Portsmouth Historical Society VP Richard Candee for bringing me this opportunity. And if anyone out there has any old drawings or sketches or bar napkin scribbles of mine, let me know and we'll see if we can get them up on the wall.

Thanks also to the Kennedy Gallery, which has agreed to be a framing sponsor. And to KDPaine & Partners, which has agreed to be a technology sponsor.

The ink and wash and Photoshop drawing above of the clock on Portsmouth's North Church steeple was on my New Year's Card in 2002.

Pleasant Street Garage, Portsmouth, NH

2010-01-12T16:04:00.003-05:00

This watercolor is of a cute but scruffy little garage / barn on Pleasant Street at the corner of Gates Street in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

New Castle View, New Castle, New Hampshire

2010-01-07T09:32:00.003-05:00

Here's a little 2" x 2" watercolor of a distinctive view along the waterfront of New Castle, New Hampshire. If you're at the Coast Guard station in New Castle, or at Fort Constitution which is right next door, and take the street upriver along the water you can't miss it. (New Castle is just down the Piscataqua River from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and home to Wentworth-by-the-Se a.) I did this in class with Jan Kilburn, an accomplished watercolorist and instructor from Damariscotta, Maine. She sells her prints of local scenes at the Kennedy Gallery on Market Street in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

The Arcadia Theater, Downtown Portsmouth Cinemas, and Walter Brooks

2009-11-20T12:46:00.007-05:00

This is a pen and ink drawing of the Arcadia Theater, which I did in about 1981 or so, and is owned by Tom Field. I borrowed back the art to use in the 1988 Portsmouth History Calendar, and haven't returned it yet(!). We have been in touch about it, but not for a while. So if you talk to Tom, please remind him I still have his drawing.

The Arcadia Theater was located next to Daddy's Junky Music on Congress Street in the Franklin Block. I was never in it, but I knew Walter Brooks, who managed it for a while, and also at least a couple other downtown Portsmouth theaters on and off. When the downtown Portsmouth theaters closed in the late 80s, he went up to the Stand in Dover. Walter used to buy ads in re:Ports. magazine, and he'd tell Phillip and I stories about the old theaters and shows in town and what it was like to work in them. He was a big, heavy, quiet guy, who was always very laid back and loved to talk. He told me about a show in which there were horses onstage, I think that was at the Music Hall. He died a few years ago. Read more about Walter Brooks in his obit here.

In the early 1980s, there was still the Cinema (which later changed to Eagle Photo and was next to the North Church on Market Square) and the Civic, which is now the Music Hall. Movies at the Civic cost $.50 in the early '80s, so it was ideal entertainment for us recent college grads who were short on funds. It was usually a bit chilly in there. You could always sneak some beer in under your coat.

Bungee Jumping From the North Church, Portsmouth, New Hampshire

2009-10-02T13:41:00.003-04:00

This is one of my earlier drawings of the North Church steeple. I think I sent this drawing out as a New Year's Card in 2005.

Giant Monster Attacks Bridge!

2009-08-05T21:57:00.005-04:00

Here is the latest in the Famous Monsters of Portsmouth series: The Memorial Bridge is in trouble, and Pier II is history. See the Save Memorial Bridge page here. See the rest of the Famous Monsters of Portsmouth here.

Ceres Street From The Water, or, Is There Something Strangely Fascinating About This Image?

2009-05-10T07:41:00.014-04:00

This view is from the middle bridge (the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge) over the Piscataqua, looking back at Portsmouth from the Maine side. Phillip Augusta, who was my partner in re:Ports. Magazine at the time, (1981) had taken some nice photos from this angle, and I used them as reference material. I moved the North Church steeple over to the right to balance things out. From this angle in real life it's actually over above the tugboats.

At time I drew this, I had been reading a lot about "subliminal perception," and how advertising photos and illustrations were alleged to have disturbing images of sex and death embedded in them to subconsciously stimulate consumers. Things like skulls and sexual organs hidden in the ice cubes. (I have actually found some of these in magazine ads, but I don't know if they affect viewer's behavior.)

So, doing this drawing, I thought it would be cool to put some four-letter words in the sky, and see if maybe people became strangely fascinated by the image. I imagined people staring at it on the wall, saying, "I don't know what it is, but there is just something about this drawing that really gets me!"

So, how is it working? Are you strangely fascinated? At the time I was drawing it I was so worried that people would actually really notice the words that I kept covering them up more and more. So they are pretty much obscured. If you click on the image above, it will come up bigger.

Here's something that you will be able to notice. The clouds form eyes, nose, and mouth, slanting down and to the right. With the steeple going right into the mouth. At the time, I thought a skull face hidden in the sky would be oh-so diabolically devious. Turns out, it is remarkably similar to the now famous mask from the movie Scream, which came out 15 years later.

This image has been hanging on the wall over a booth in Rosa's Restaurant for about 20 years. I wonder if it affects patrons' dining experiences?

The Clam Hut, Badger's Island

2009-04-30T11:03:00.005-04:00

The Clam Hut was located on Rt 1 on Badger's Island, right at the north end of the Memorial Bridge from Portsmouth. It was added to Chase's Market sometime between the late 1960s and early 1980s (sources vary). Badger's Island is in the middle of the Piscataqua River, and is crossed by Rt. 1, which comes over the Memorial Bridge from downtown Portsmouth. The Memorial Bridge, by the way, is currently under consideration for demolition, and is at the center of a bit of controversy. It is on the National Trust for Historic Preservation's list of endangered historic places. Lots of locals, including me, don't want to see it go.

The Clam Hut, which was for a while owned by Bob Schultze, was sometimes known as "Bob's Clam Hut," but should not be confused with the much more famous Bob's Clam Hut a couple miles further north, also on Rt. 1, in the Kittery Malls. The Clam Hut and Chase's Market were replaced by condos and a marina in the late 1980s.

I lived on Badger's Island at the time, and used to pass by the Clam Hut every day. That's my friend Joscelyn sitting on the fence. As I recall, I traded the drawing to Clam Hut owners Bob and Becky for several hundred dollars in food credit. And ate a lot of take out that summer. I've always felt this pen and ink drawing was a great composition and nice feeling of sunlight on the building. This image appeared in the 1990 Portsmouth History Calendar.

Peace Action at North Church, Portsmouth, NH

2009-04-22T12:53:00.004-04:00

I sent this out as a New Year's card this year. Happy New Year to you, too. Yes, I know that was a while ago. This is another recycled pen and ink drawing of the steeple renovations about 15 years ago. I added the banner and did a fake 4-color out-of-register effect.

Sasha and Sperry Are Gone

2008-04-11T09:08:00.010-04:00

Sasha Davidson was a freelance art director who lived with his partner, writer Ralph Sperry, on Langdon Steet, just off Islington. Sperry had been ill with cancer for a long time and died a year ago on April 6th, 2007. Sasha, who also lost his father this past winter, died suddenly of the flu on March 18th. They had been minor characters around Portsmouth since the late 1970s at least and I'd guess they were about 60 or 65 years old when they died.

The two of them were avid collectors of art and antiques and oddites, and their taste in food and drink was just as exotic. Every visit or dinner made you feel like you had washed up at some time-passed-by sahib's club in a forgotten third world colonial outpost. They'd traveled to Brazil and the Seychelles (and probably much more that I don't know of), and Sasha had a business renting Jamaican vacation properties. Their home and menus and conversations were peppered with tidbits from far-away places. Their house was dark and mysterious, dense with exotic furniture, huge potted ferns blocking half the light, Art Nouveau and Deco accessories at every turn. Big original Pearlstein nudes on the walls. A full set of Manhattan glass, ashtrays from the Normandy, some bizarre little dolls from who knows where (but I wouldn't have been surprised to have seen pins sticking out of them). A pristine set of those cocktail tumblers whose female figures lost their clothes when filled with liquid. They had hundreds of glass Xmas ornaments -- three Xmas trees' worth -- that they would proudly show off each holiday season. Their backyard garden was just as beautifully exotic: a small stone terrace surrounded by dozens of rare hosta, all closed off from the outside world by towering dense greenery.

I met Sasha shortly after I moved here in 1980. At the time I was at 159 Middle with several housemates, (and Sasha and Sperry, as it turned out, lived across the street then). Sasha and Dan Fickett had an ad agency, The Penhallow Group, at the corner of Penhallow and Daniel Streets. Tom Walsh and some others worked there, too, and were maybe partners, I don't recall. Anyway, I walked in, a totally naive kid with a shiny new portfolio. They were nice enough to look it over, and they all were generous with advice and encouragement for years afterward.

One of my earlier pen and ink drawings was of their building in fact. Here it is. (I included this one in the 1987 Portsmouth History Calendar.)

In the late 1970s, Sasha had helped Marjan Frank design the Cafe Petronella, which became a hangout for the oh-so-hip in the early 1980s. Here is a drawing I did of that place, and it was in the same calendar, too.

Sperry became locally minorly famous for his 1981 science fiction novel Status Quotient: The Carrier, and worked for years at Winebaum's News. He wrote columns for local papers, and made a habit of collecting all sorts of items he found on the sidewalks while walking around town.

I can't say that I knew them well, but we kept in touch every few months with a phone call or visit. I'm not really the right guy to write a proper history of those two -- they have friends who were closer and knew them better -- but they were an important part of my life and they gave this town some character and I'm sorry they are gone.

re:Ports. Magazine

2008-04-10T08:54:00.008-04:00

In late 1980 or early 1981, when I was living at 159 Middle Street (here is another post about interesting goings-on there), Phillip Augusta and I began working up ideas for what, after a few trial starts, became re:Ports. Arts and Entertainment Magazine. We began on the dining room table at 159 Middle Street, then got an office at 10 Commercial Alley, then a bigger office on State Street. We published every week for four years and sold it to a publishing company in Dover. Phillip and I took turns as editor and art director: for a month or two he was one and I the other, then we'd switch off. Hardest work I ever did but great fun.

The image above is a cover of the magazine, featuring a panel from one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic books. The two guys who invented the series lived in Dover, and one day one of them, either Eastman or Laird, I don't remember which, walked into the re:Ports. office when I was art director and whipped out some art and said, "Hey we do this comic you want to use any of it in your magazine?" I remember the art was fabulous and I could have picked any of a number of great images. So that's where this cover came from. They gave us signed copies of their first comic, and if I had known it was going soon be worth a bazillion bucks I wouldn't have let spraymount get all over it. I don't know what happened to Eastman and Laird, except that TMNTs took off and I hope they are living happily ever after.

Kongress Street

2008-04-10T07:33:00.007-04:00

This, without Kong, was one of the earliest drawings I did of Portsmouth, in 1979 or 1980, as maybe you can tell by that car in the foreground. Heck, it was one of my earliest big pen and ink drawings. I was selling prints of it locally, but it was never a big hit.

In about 1982 or so, while I was publishing re:Ports. Magazine (with Phillip Augusta), just for fun I did a quick sketch for the cover with King Kong up there. I shamelessly cribbed him from an old movie poster, and added an FB-111 in his grasp, because at the time people were talking about closing the local Pease Air Force base, (out of which flew FB-111s) and re:Ports. was a weekly that had commentary on local events. See this illustration I did of Pease's entrance.

The magazine cover was a big hit so I did a proper drawing and made a print and it sold very well. For the print I put a female figure into his hand, instead of the airplane, figuring it would have more general appeal. This print was the first of my Famous Monsters of Portsmouth series, which includes the Piscatasquid and a giant lobster attacking Wentworth-by-the-Sea. Those prints have been hanging in Ceres Bakery -- yes, in the bathrooms, but hey -- since the mid-1980's. Which gives me some kind of claim on the longest running art show in town. See all three of them at my website here.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2008-04-09T07:40:00.006-04:00

Here's the image from a card I sent out for Valentine's Day 2007. Yeah, I know it's not Valentine's Day today; I just ran across this in my files and decided to put it up here. And the repair-guy-on-the-steeple subject goes with the previous post.

As of right now, the North Church steeple is bright and white and clean-looking. But a couple years ago it was in serious need of repair and paint. The rust and stains and peeling paint gave the thing some interesting character. But cleanliness is next to godliness. Is the purpose of the steeple to point the way to heaven? Or maybe it's a kind of lightning rod for spiritual energy, drawing down holiness into the church. Other, non-Christian religions have steeples too, right? Mosques have minarets. So maybe steeples/minarets are a human thing, rather than a Christian thing.

New Year's Card 2008

2008-04-04T09:36:00.009-04:00

I sent this image out as a New Year's Card for 2008: "Time to take down the lights." I did the pen and ink drawing about 15 years ago or so when the steeple was being worked on.

New Hampshire Colonial State House

2006-04-28T10:09:00.001-04:00

The old State House used to stand in the middle of Market Square, twenty or thirty feet in front of the front of the North Church. In this view, the church really would have been visible just to the left of the State House, and would have blocked some of the view of it. The State House was built in the 1750s and 1760s, and removed in 1836. About one-third of it is now in numbered pieces somewhere, being preserved with hopes that the structure can be eventually rebuilt. A good reference for more information on the State House (and indeed for Portsmouth architectural history in general) is Richard Candee's book "Building Portsmouth" (Portsmouth Advocates, 1992).

In 1988, Paul Gosselin, who is a principal of Salmon Falls Architecture and for whom I do the occasional rendering of proposed designs, approached me about drawing what the old State House used to look like. He had been Portsmouth's architectural historian, or something like that, and was working with Jim Garvin, architectural historian for New Hampshire, to try to get the thing rebuilt. Paul studied the remains of the building and drew up some plans and gave them to me and I drew up the building.

I did the drawing with black Prismacolor pencil on tracing vellum. As I look at it now, I am strongly underwhelmed by those midget elm trees, looking here an awful lot like mutant brocolli stalks. Stately American elms were once common along the streets of Portsmouth and New England in general, and would have been much taller than the ones I showed here. We used to have a line of them in front of my house where I grew up in Hampton, NH. Elms are typical features of drawings, paintings and photos of historic New England, but are now largely gone due to Dutch Elm disease. I am proud of how the horse and cart look in front of the Athenaeum, and the way the sky works. I recall having to do a bit of research to try to get the clothes on the figures approximately correct, and to understand what a typical horse cart of the times would have looked like.

Back when I first did this drawing, Paul Gosselin and his restoration group were unsure about the cupola on the top. Their best guess at the time was that it would have been similar to the one on Boston's Old State House, so that's what I drew in. We decided to leave it a bit dim and faded, however, thinking that such a tactic might indicate our uncertainty about its form. Here is what that original drawing looked like:

A couple years ago, in 2004, Nancy Carmer, who worked for the city of Portsmouth, called and said she wanted to use this image for a plaque that was going to be put up in Market Square. But, she said, the design of the cupola had been further researched (I am not sure exactly by whom) and so I changed the drawing to reflect the new design. You can now go to Market Square and see the plaque. Look Look here in the Portsmouth Herald for an article about the plaque's dedication. If you are interested in seeing more of the old State House, there is a recent wooden model of the building, very nicely built and detailed, that was in City Hall a couple years ago. It might be there still.

Pease Air Force Base Entrance

2006-03-24T09:01:00.000-05:00

Editor Dan Wise asked me to do the cover illustration for Business New Hampshire magazine's July 1989 issue on Pease's makeover from a SAC base to a industrial/office park. It's done with markers and colored pencils, a style I use for architectural renderings (see this page of my website for more in that technique). This style has been made very popular by Michael Doyle's book "Color Drawing", which is recommended for anyone who wants to learn a very accessible rendering technique.

Pease's entrance was far more interesting when it was an air base than afterwards. This drawing shows the handsome little guard house that was there, and also one of several airplanes that were parked, museum fashion, out on the lawn. A rather sinister reference to the purpose of the place was visible in the mushroom cloud insignia for one of the military units stationed there (just barely visible on the sign in this drawing). Here you can see a much better view of that insignia and also photos of Pease's military history. Here is more history on a page which also includes a bomb's eye view of the base from about two miles up.

Atkinson Street, Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth, New Hampshire

2006-03-23T14:44:00.000-05:00

Here's the view looking northwest up Atkinson Street, from Strawbery Banke out to State Street way in the distance. Those two tiny figures in the distance are about in the spot from which my drawing of the Thomas Bailey Aldrich house was made. This drawing is done in broad-stroke pencil, a style popular among architects in the early 1900's and popularized in drawing technique books by Ernest Watson and Ted Kautsky (both excellent and highly recommended). You sharpen your pencils to a wide, flat point, and lay down a single layer of graphite. Broad stroke purists insist that you should never go back over a mark once you have made it, and that you always use the same pressure on the pencil, varying the darkness of the mark by using a different grade pencil, not by pressing harder. (Limited edition prints of this image are available directly from me.)

In the left center of this view is the William Pitt Tavern, site of interesting goings-on during the time of the Revolutionary War, and which Strawbery Banke has restored. It is also part of Portsmouth's Black Heritage Trail. Strawbery Banke Museum is one of the cultural institutions that makes Portsmouth a great town. It is very popular among tourists and school field trips, but somewhat less so, I would say, among the local citizenry, who, IMHO, seem to take it for granted.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich House, Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth, New Hampshire

2006-03-22T17:41:00.001-05:00

I did this drawing in ink with a crowquill pen (which can be messy, but gives interesting thick or thin lines, depending on how hard you press) for a Pontine Movement Theatre marketing piece when I was on the Board of Directors there in about 1990 or so. It shows the view across Atkinson and Court streets to a house where Thomas Bailey Aldrich lived for a few years as a kid, and which Strawbery Banke has restored as a memorial.

It was in the street in front of this building where Tommy Dale saved me from being beaten up. In the early 1980's in Portsmouth there were several instances in which small groups of young men would assault individual guys who were walking down the street. Jan Frank, brother of Marjan who ran the Petronella, was assaulted this way, and subsequently announced that he was heading back to NYC, where it was safer. One of my old housemates at 159 Middle Street, Michael McCarthy, suffered the same fate right around the corner from the police station, which was then on Penhallow Street. After being assaulted he had run to the station, but the police apparently showed little interest in either heading out to catch the perps or comforting Michael. I was home when he arrived, in torn clothes and tears, furious at his double humiliation.

One night about 11pm in, roughly, 1982, I was walking with a female friend down Court Street toward the river. A small car full of people drove past and then pulled over behind us as we kept walking. Four or five young men got out and came up to us. I at first thought they needed our help, but, no, they began acting beligerently. I remember one of them, the largest and loudest, had his shirt off, and another one announced, "This is going to be fun, I wish I brought my numchucks."

I do recall telling my friend to keep moving, and she did; the guys didn't show any interest in her. They got around me in a circle, and I remember her walking away. I've never been in a real fight my whole life, and I just stood there pretty clueless. As they say, it looked like curtains for our hero. But just then a car drove up Court Street and stopped and out jumped Tommy Dale: "You OK, Bill?"

Tommy Dale ran the Oracle House Restaurant down at the end of Court Street, facing Prescott Park. He used to buy ads in the weekly publication I had back then, re:Ports. Arts and Entertainment Magazine. One night I filled in as dishwasher at the restaurant, but I kinda blew it; I used up all the hot water too quickly, and was not invited back.

Anyway, that night on Court Street, Tommy, who was gay and quite notorious for prowling the darker areas of town late at night, knew exactly what was going on. He walked up and the guys backed off and it was over just like that. He saved my ass, no doubt. What a guy. Tommy died of AIDS within a year or two, but don't quote me on exactly when. Housemate Michael died of the same thing, later in the '80s.

Now at the same time, there was a shady character named Gunnar who used to come over to the 159 Middle Street house where I lived and hang out. My housemates and I were suspicious that sometimes really late at night he'd sneak in through the sunporch windows, maybe sleep for the night, then sneak out again before anybody got up, but no one ever caught him at it. Gunnar usually wore a lot of black leather with studs on it. He had very short black hair, aggressive sideburns and enough strabismus to make holding a conversation awkward. He was a bouncer at The Riverside Club, and was rumored to always carry weapons. People said he had some kind of neo-Nazi leanings, but he never talked too much about anything. When confronted about his possible late night visits to the house, he never admitted anything, but he did claim, with modesty, that if it did happen to be the case that he was around our house late at night, well then we were all much safer for it. I never knew him to be anything but a nice guy. Rumor was that he had the occasional late night assignation with my housemate Janet. This speculation was especially gossip-worthy because Janet was Jewish.

Anyway, supposedly one night Gunnar was walking down the street and a gang of young tough guys thought they'd work him over. He stabbed one of them and scared the rest off. I never heard this from him, but it makes a nice story. The random assaults seemed to taper off after that. I don't know what ever happen to Gunnar.

2006-03-20T14:29:00.001-05:00

Here is a drawing of Wentworth-by-the-Sea, the large old hotel that many refer to as being in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but is actually of course in the town next door, New Castle.

I did this drawing first, without the lobster, in the early 1980s. The hotel was then still the size that you see in this drawing, and still open for business. Some friends of mine worked there and lived in the worker's rooms which were located way down at the end.

(The original black and white drawing of mine is still available for sale as a limited edition print. I did a very limited run of hand-colored versions of that print that sold out long ago. They sold well, but I got really sick of coloring the same print over and over, so I just ended the series at about 30 or so.)

In the late 1980s, when the Wentworth was closed down and most of us thought it would never reopen, I added the lobster to the original drawing and did another series of prints. (These are still available for sale. See this print and the others in the Famous Monsters of Portsmouth series on my website. [You can also see them all hanging in Ceres Bakery [in the bathrooms!] where they have been since the late 1980s, at least.] I also did a SAVE THE WENTWORTH t-shirt and there are a few of those still available, too.) The hotel is now up and running again as a Marriott, but only about a third of the building in the drawing was saved for this new incarnation.

When I was a kid in the 1960s, growing up in Hampton, New Hampshire, I had a friend down the street, and her mom used to take us to the Wentworth to swim. They had the hugest pool in the world, with a really high diving board and smaller diving boards on each side of it. Across the street at the main building was the snack bar, where we would get sandwiches with the crust cut off. There was a grass tennis court, with people dressed all in white playing tennis. And there was a practice putting green with many holes, each with its own flag.

The pool was next door to The Ship, a ship shaped building that was used for functions. Between The Ship and the marina was an old saltwater swimming pool that I never saw used. The Ship and saltwater pool have now been replaced with a building that looks like it is condominium residences. We had my high school senior prom at The Ship. Just uphill from the swimming pool was a funny little miniature golf course, built like a real golf course set in a garden with very short holes. At the prom my date and I went out there in the dark and rolled around on the grass and made out. That garden golf course is now the site of a great many residences all crammed in close together, as is most of the old grounds of the hotel. They are apparently quite sought after and expensive.

Here you'll find a photo of how the Wentworth used to look, and a novel by Sue Melanson, who knows the place a whole lot better than I do. And on publisher Peter Randall's site, you'll find Wentworth By The Sea, Life and Times of a Grand Hotel by Dennis Robinson which I believe is the best source for overall history of the place.