This Was Then: Cottage City snoozes

Have lunch, take a nap and “wake me for dinner.”

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Summer in Cottage City tended to be a low-key affair. - Chris Baer

“What a place Martha’s Vineyard would have been to the late Sancho Panza for his morning snoozes,” remarked a cigar-smoking Cottage City visitor, sitting with his feet resting high upon a railing and overheard by a Boston Globe reporter in 1890 — “‘I declare I haven’t done anything but eat and sleep since I came here, three days ago.”

In a gossipy piece titled “Cottage City Snoozes. The Guests Eat, Sleep and Meditate,” the Globe reporter concluded, “It seems as if the only object in life at such a resort as Cottage City is to eat, sleep, and smoke … there surely is something in the air about these regions which is totally demoralizing to wakefulness and energy. It might also be added, truthfully, that most of the summer sojourners take very kindly to this sort of listless life, so unlike the hurly-burly of the work-a-day world.”

Chris Baer teaches photography and graphic design at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. He’s been collecting vintage photographs for many years.