Fairhaven's fabulous manse

The original Mr. Rogers's neighborhood is filled with striking architecture

Author: By Bud Collins

Date: SUNDAY, October 25, 1998

Page: P15

Section: Travel

Perfect. As Halloween approaches, aren't buzzards the ominous birds of choice? Alas, none of the bay's namesakes appear out of the mist and drizzle to complete the mournful tableau, and wish us splashers ill. Not even a funereal vulture or a lugubrious raven. Too bad. Their loss. We'd brought gourmet bird seed for them from the Mattapoisett bird-lovers shop called Wings & Things.

Never mind. Just down the street are ghouls, goblins, and wraiths aplenty at Mattapoisett's cherished Haunted House, an eerie place that Stephen King would give a high approval rating. Cobwebs, skeletons, witches, and other scary creatures abound on the property of Joan and Paul Garib, whose fright delight of a frame house has become a seasonal tradition. Nothing supernatural about the Garibs, who appear friendly and welcoming, with no hint of Addams family values.

``People have come to expect this, and we like to do it,'' he says. ``They come to the door to ask about the decorations, and thank us for the scene, just as you have.''

My friend, Aurelio, cautions, ``Don't tell them we went swimming today or they'll think we're the ones into weirdness.''

Not a word. Besides, Terry Aufranc, a local, is nudging us toward the car with, ``Come on, it's time for breakfast at Margaret's'' in neighboring Fairhaven. Don't want to get shut out. It can get very crowded.''

For good reason. Lesley Bouchay in Margaret's kitchen relentlessly turns out yummy crepe-thin Norwegian pancakes with lingon berries, home fries, and Portuguese sausage. At one table, Tom Kramer, a husky football player for Milton Academy, hopes the pancakes come by the bushel, and says their fame has wafted as far as his hometown, Hong Kong. Katie Smith, a waitress, says that's nice, but he better not try paying in Chinese money.

Pleasingly filled, Terry suggests a post-meal stroll around ``the original Mr. Rogers's Neighborhood,'' as she calls it. ``I don't know if it's as famous as the pancakes -- or Channel 2's Mister Rogers -- but it should be.''

She's absolutely right. The Rogers in question was Henry Huttleston Rogers, a Fairhaven boy who made good in a very big way with Standard Oil around the turn of the century. His impressive legacy, solidly imposing in brick and stone, is a couple of blocks worth of striking architecture at the center of town.

It's puzzlement at first sight. What's a Gothic cathedral doing here anyway? Buttresses flying in Fairhaven? Gargoyles climbing a soaring tower from which you can spy Martha's Vineyard?

``We believe there's nothing quite like it in America,'' says Paul Almedia, the caretaker of this beguiling pile of cloudy granite and limestone, the Unitarian Memorial Church. A generous guide to its artistic glories, he says, ``It has been called the finest example of 15th-century English Gothic style in this country. Mr. Rogers, who grew up in the congregation, built it between 1901 and 1903 as a memorial to his mother.''

The Middle Ages are alive and well-resurrected in the sort of monument that used to take medieval generations of artisans and craftsmen to raise in Europe. Rogers got it done within Teddy Roosevelt's first presidential term, importing Bavarian woodcarvers to detail the oaken interiors and Italian sculptors to deal with the marble and limestone. He studiously pursued marble, bringing in green slabs from Switzerland, pink from France, yellow from Italy, beige from Tennessee.

An American painter, Robert Reid, brilliantly stained the Tiffany glass windows in vivid scenes and colors: the Nativity above the pulpit, and the Sermon on the Mount at the opposite end of the nave. Almedia points out various residents of other windows such as Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain), a pal of Rogers, and Rogers himself as a knight holding a torch. If you build a church, you should be able to leave a personal mark, right?

Though the overpowering bronze doors, populated by numerous saints and weighing 2 1/2 tons apiece, look hernia-inducing, they move easily on their hinges.

Rogers's neighborhood also includes Millicent Library, a tribute to his daughter, and City Hall. You can't beat this city hall, aesthetically at least. A red brick triumph of archways and a clock tower, it was designed by the celebrated architect H. H. Richardson, who did Boston's Copley Square masterpiece, Trinity Church, and several Harvard buildings.

Neither he nor Rogers, however, was responsible for another of the area's renowned structures, the saloon called the Foxy Lady just over the bridge in New Bedford.

Leaving town, we pause at Bob and Pat Clarkson's Fairhaven Chowder House to look at Peter Duff's splendid sailing ship models, enhancing the decor. There sits Spray, a small replica of the sloop in which intrepid Joshua Slocum circumnavigated the globe between 1895 and 1898. It was in Fairhaven that Slocum found and rebuilt the broken-down 37-footer, and where he ended the 46,000-mile voyage, the first such solo.

Aurelio says, ``I read his book, `Sailing Alone Around the World.' Marvelous. It must have been so peaceful without any backseat driving.'' She looks purposefully at me.

Peaceful enough is Mattapoisett, devoid of the summer invaders, and no longer the ship-building hive of Herman Melville's time. In 1841, Melville shipped out on the whaler, Acushnet, that was constructed here, gathering seagoing experience that would lead to his ``Moby-Dick.'' Named (``Place of Rest'') by earlier residents, the Sippican Indians, and later called the ``fair enchantress of repose,'' by one author, the town at the moment fits those descriptions.

Ned's Point Road, flanked by old, attractive summer homes, is empty. Leading through a forest until the sea makes a sudden, exhilarating,in-your-face appearance at the end, it halts at whitewashed Ned's Point Lighthouse.

Things weren't so quiet the day one of the summerers, a young boy, dumped a gang of eels in the midst of his mother's bridge party. That was the troubled, unpredictable poet Robert Lowell, who later would win two Pulitzer prizes.

Nor is serenity the product on weekend nights at the venerable Mattapoisett Inn, across the street from the town wharf, where the lounge was jumping and thumping to a good band called Snow Monkey Plum a few evenings ago. You have to shiver your timbers once in a while, says Marc Goddu, the innkeeper of 20 years whose establishment must have witnessed more than a few homecoming seamen having a whale of a rum time.

Billed as the ``oldest seaside inn in the nation,'' celebrating its 200th birthday next year, the white wooden pleasure dome on Water Street is fronted by porch and balcony that give drinkers a fine view of the big boat-dotted drink. Put together to last by Joseph Meigs, a skilled shipyards carpenter, it was first operated by him as a general store and tavern.

As skilled with her tools is chef Marlene Goddu, Marc's wife. Lobster potato cake with melted brie, cappuccino mousse, and black tie cookies are among her winners. The cookies, baked daily, come in five varieties, such as tuxedo: black and white chocolate chunks with hazelnuts.

``If you're romantically inclined,'' she says, ``try our `Decadent Feast' -- chateaubriand for two, champagne, and a bedroom.''

``If you're unromantically inclined,'' says Aurelio, ``come swimming with us tomorrow morning. It's enough to make buzzards seem warmhearted.''