Conn. town preserves a history built on ivory

April 17, 2005|Ellen Albanese, Globe Staff

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The Connecticut River Museum sits at the foot of Main Street, in a warehouse on what used to be the steamboat landing. Exhibits include ship models, manifests, and navigation tools; a full-scale working reproduction of the ''Turtle," the country's first submarine, a clunky, wooden, egg-shaped vessel; and a display from Comstock, Cheney & Co. of ivory combs, hairpins, buttons, and two elephant tusks. In the boathouse children can try on fur trappers' clothing, touch models, identify animal tracks, and dig for archeological treasures in the sand. The vessel River Quest plies the nearby waters looking for bald eagles and migratory birds.

Leaving Essex Village on Grove Street, you pass Grove Cemetery, the small but ostentatious resting place of members of the Hayden family, decorated with ornate Egyptian obelisk monuments.

''As a culture dies," Malcarne said, ''artifacts of that culture become more elaborate and more self-serving." By 1840, the shipbuilding culture the Haydens had been so much a part of was dying in Essex; this cemetery was their last chance to commemorate it and themselves.

Along Centerbrook's Main Street (Route 154), you can catch a glimpse of the airfield Howard Hughes used when he was courting Katharine Hepburn and see the original Congregational Church, built in 1790. The handsome brick building at 67 Main St. on the Falls River, occupied by Centerbrook Architects, was originally a drill bit shop powered by the river.

The Ivoryton Library, built by Comstock, Cheney & Co. in 1889, is a gem. The main reading room features a brick fireplace and leaded-glass windows in amber and purple. In the foyer are two 5-foot elephant tusks and a display of ivory objects including buttons, piano keys, dice, and cufflinks.

You can drive by the former Comstock, Cheney & Co., now an industrial park, and the original men's dormitory, now Cugino's Restaurant. On the hill across the street is the occasional boxy, two- or three-story house the company built for immigrant workers, a sharp contrast to the mansions along Main Street where company owners and executives lived. The Museum of Fife & Drum is in the former Polish Falcons Club, a social club for Polish factory workers. The Ivoryton Playhouse produces live theater year round.

Local historians feel a certain ambivalence toward the town's ivory legacy, said Storms.

''For all the pride of achievement and the opportunities it created for immigrants," she said, ''it involved a great deal of suffering -- serious suffering." The book she coauthored with Malcarne, ''Around Essex: Elephants and River Gods" (Arcadia Publishing, 2001) is dedicated to the curator of the Deep River Historical Society ''and to the elephants that were killed before our communal consciousness was raised."

Ellen Albanese can be reached at ealbanese@globe.com.