Remembering a Tourist Home
It's not just any old place that was a tourist home--it is my house!
We live in my husband Harry's boyhood home. We recently replaced the furnace oil tank in the basement that obviously was quite old. Because behind it we discovered this sign:
It is a two-sided sign that must have pointed up the hill on what is now Selma Drive. My mother-in-law, Eloise Ridgeway, named the hill on which our house sits "Robin Hill." According to Harry, my in-laws built the house in the 30s, took in boarders before and during World War II, and stopped before he was born. The sign could be from the 1930s or 40s.
If you live in or have lived in Winchester, a great Facebook page to follow is "If you have lived in Winchester a long time, you would remember . . . " It is a closed group that requires you to sign up.
I found the sign so fascinating that I posted a picture of it to the group. I received many interesting responses! A few people confused it with the tourist home that used to be on Boscawen Street across from the Handy Mart or with the mansion Selma that is just a little southwest of our house.
We also heard from some younger folks who were asking their parents if they were related, which they are. Other people remembered Harry's father, Harry senior, from the Amherst branch of Farmers' and Merchants bank that was in the same shopping center at the A&P.
Two individuals spotted a signature at the bottom of the sign that I had not noticed. They remembered that Tom Halterman had a sign shop on Morgan Street and thought he had painted it. So I looked closer:
I am not sure if this is the way Tom Halterman usually signed his name but what a great local connection!
Several people told me that their parents had stayed at the house. According to Harry, they rented out rooms in the basement, the attic and on the 2nd floor. I bet the line to the bathroom looked like this:
According to several articles about boarding houses on the web, they were very common until after World War II when the move to suburbia began.
I loved finding out more of our home's history. The sign now sits on our living room mantel!
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