Nearly surrounded by water and splashed in sunlight from dawn to dusk, Westport Point held as much allure for Native Americans centuries ago as it does to the residents of that village today. Westport architect James Collins, Jr. shared his fascination for the Point’s unique location and the rich architectural heritage of its residences with a capacity crowd at Lees Market Community Room at a recent meeting of the Westport Historical Society.
Mr. Collins is president of Payette, a firm that has become one of the nation's most award-winning architects for high technology health and research buildings. You could probably fit the entire village of Westport Point into one of his Boston firm’s current projects, a study of how to renovate a million square feet of national historic buildings in MIT’s main campus.
In order to appreciate how architectural styles varied within themselves and how some houses on the Point mutated from one style to another, Collins gave a spirited slide-show tutorial that showed classic examples of residential architectural styles from the 1600s to the mid twentieth century. He followed this with photos of dozens of Point homes that currently line the last mile of Main Road.
The Collins house in the heart of historic Westport Point, MA has evolved since its first owner built it in 1776.
Mr. Collins’s family has owned property in Westport for three generations and unhappily lost three beach houses to hurricanes in 1938, the mid forties, and 1954. His talk was buoyed by an infectious enthusiasm for the Point neighborhood he’s lived in for the past fifteen summers and an obvious grasp of the principles of architecture.
Mr. Collins made the case that Westport Point is one of the most unusual harbor villages in the country. First, it’s protected by a barrier beach and surrounded by an estuary with a river that splits around it. Next, the area is not that wide and there’s a road running smack down the middle of it. “The result is that you’re equally aware of the urban aspect of a central street and a rural quality that allows you can look past the buildings and over the grass behind them and see water on both sides of the street,” Collins said.
The wild card for Collins is that the entire area faces south so both sunrise and sunset are visible from most of the houses.
“There will be people who say you need to travel thousands of miles to get these four different experiences but here have them within feet of each other,” Mr. Collins said.
How did the village get this way? “Enlightened self-interest zoning” Mr. Collins said with a bemused laugh.
From the beginning, it seemed that everyone built close to the street to take advantage of using the back yard for gardens, animals, or water access. The roofs of the cape and colonial style houses in the Point are all pitched the same way and that creates a natural grade down to the water.
Mr. Collins insights about “ventilation” and “rhythm” should register clearly with anyone who has walked past the houses near the end of Main Road and wondered how the views down to the water on both sides were orchestrated.
He noted that most of the village houses “huddled up” to the north side of their lots and didn’t build in the middle of them. Next, the lots are random widths, depending on how much money the property owner could afford to spend.
“No one ordered them to build on the north side of their lots but the fact that they did and the random lot widths create a rhythm of openings between them,” Mr. Collins said. “You look left and say ‘nice house,’ look right and say ‘nice gap to the water,’ and you can say this all the way down the street.”
When families got bigger and more space was needed, they “telescoped” their houses by adding on to the back so the village got denser “but those all-important gaps (views to the water) didn’t get filled in,” Mr. Collins said.
Heading north, away from the river from the Paquachuck Inn, most of the houses are capes or colonial styles. The capes are one story, never two, have simple detailing, and perhaps sport dormers or an attic. Classic colonials are usually two stories, have regularized sets of windows, a central chimney, and several types of roofs.
And oh, what a range of them there are. Full capes, 3/4 capes, half capes, and in one case a cape that morphed into a colonial. Owners continually tinkered with their Cape and Colonial style homes, adding, subtracting or replacing windows and adding porches and extending living space. Chimneys have been added to some houses and in one case built partially over a window on the side of a house. Hardly any of them are carbon copies of another.
Farther up the road, the architecture gets more kaleidoscopic. Styles including Greek Revival, Arts and Crafts, Italianate, Gothic Revival, American Foursquare, and Bungalow Craftsman are all represented.
“When architecturally knowledgeable people come to the village they flip out. This is an important place because it houses as many great homes of architectural style as anyplace I’ve ever seen in my life,” Collins said.
On a stroll through Westport Point with his dad when he was five years old, Mr. Collins asked him why he loved the neighborhood so much.
“Oh, Jim, this is a special place, this is sacred ground,” his dad replied. Now that he’s lived there for fifteen years, Jim Collins feels the same way.
SIDEBAR
Of the architecture described by Mr. Collins, Westport Point contains examples of Cape, Colonial, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Victorian Shingle, Georgian Revival, American Foursquare, Arts and Crafts, and Bungalow styles. Some houses are a mix of two or more styles.
Architectural styles described by Mr. Collins
1626 - 1725 First Period Architecture
1600s - 1960 Cape
1725 - 1775 Georgian Colonial
1780 - 1830 Federal
1830 - 1875 Gothic Revival
1825 - 1850 Greek Revival
1845 - 1860 Italianate
1860 - 1880 Second Empire
1870 - 1900 Richardsonian Romanesque
1875 - 1925 Victorian Eclectic
1880 - 1910 Queen Ann
1880 - 1900 Victorian Shingle
1895 - 1930 Georgian Revival
1895 - 1930 American Foursquare
1905 - 1930 Arts and Crafts (Craftsman)
1905 - 1930 Bungalow
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