But it doesn't stand out that much.
This, after all, is the land of gingerbread, of storybook decorative details on houses so fanciful you'd think you were looking at dollhouses, It's the land of teeny-tiny rainbow-colored Victorian cottages with high-peaked roofs, dainty verandas, and themed embellishments on the balconies, turrets, cornices, and gables, a lot of which are arguably over the top.
For example, there's the shrimp-colored cottage on Central Avenue, where the balcony cutouts are shaped like children, carousel horses, grapes, the outline of Martha's Vineyard. There are even gingerbread gingerbread men. There's the little house on Fourth Avenue (it once belonged to circus midget Miss Lucy Adams) with dog shapes stenciled in the trim. There's Angel Cottage on Rock Avenue where the railing pickets are a row of angels. There are houses that are top-to-bottom lavendar, or patriotically red, white, and blue, and houses with names that proudly proclaim their littleness, like Sea Shrimp Cottage or Big Enuf or Small Frey.
Many of the cottages are so small in this neighborhood, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, that their roofs touch one another, and residents must haul furniture through an upstairs balcony because the staircases are too narrow. Oak Bluffs carpenter and gingerbread specialist Robert Gatchell once tried to add an exterior wall to a house that was only 6 inches away from the one next door. "The space was too small to swing a hammer," he said. "I had to build the whole exterior wall first, carry it up on the roof, and lower it in place."
Of all the cute cottages in this 34-acre, 312-cottage enclave known officially as the Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting Association Camp Ground, probably none is better known than the very pink "Wooden Valentine." Since 1984, when they purchased it on Valentine's Day, it's been the summer home of Jack and Anita Welles of Barefoot Bay, Fla. Anita maintains it is the most photographed home on the Vineyard. Even former president Bill Clinton has seen it.
