A few square miles of geography

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The Vineyard has been a place for celebrities to gather far longer than we might imagine. We learn this, among many other fascinating facts, in the newest exhibition at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum. “The Lost History of Innisfail” teems with information about the multiple stories that a few square miles of geography hold. Through visuals and texts, it describes how the Island shifted from a whaling-centered economy to a tourist destination that even by the end of the 19th century, was attracting, among others, celebrities seeking to escape the public eye.

The engrossing show’s guest co-curator, Brenda Horrigan, explains, “‘The Lost History of Innisfail’ is the culmination of a journey that began in 1997, when, in a cobwebby corner of an old cottage my husband and I were renovating, I stumbled upon a letter, map, and glass plate negatives from 90 years before. It sent me on a decades-long journey that uncovered a forgotten time when famous singers and actors gathered at Innisfail, a summer musical colony, to relax and regale one another as they recuperated from yet another season of entertaining America.”

Horrigan didn’t have an exhibition in mind when she first delved into Innisfail’s history. After extensive research, she published an article about the hotel in the Martha’s Vineyard Historical Society’s publication, the Dukes County Intelligencer, in 2001. So when the museum sought to create a show on Innisfail and the summer cottage development it was part of, curator of exhibitions Anna Barber asked Horrigan to be involved. A team was created to bring the exhibition to life, which, in addition to Horrigan and Barber, included Bow Van Riper, the museum’s research historian, and guest co-curator Chris Baer, an expert on Vineyard history whose mother’s family had grown up near the neighborhood where Innisfail was situated.

The grand Victorian-style hotel, with its five-story tower and wide verandas, once stood high on a bluff above Lagoon Pond, not far from the museum. Although it is the centerpiece of the show, the exhibition begins by introducing us to the summer resort neighborhood, named Oklahoma for reasons that remain a mystery. A detailed 1872 subdivision map of the development shows 664 small lots designed for simple cottages, and ample open spaces. Although the hotel was constructed, only about a dozen cottages were eventually built.

While some summer visitors today seek out remote locations in which to stay while here, the lack of a proper road to the hotel made travel from Vineyard Haven to the Oklahoma resort a challenge. Van Riper notes that Oklahoma was part of a string of summer-cottage developments in what is now Oak Bluffs and Vineyard Haven that didn’t quite make it. “No one remembers that Oklahoma was once this vast dream that stretched halfway up the Lagoon.” Baer adds, “Oklahoma, as a resort development, was a disaster. The people who bought land there were literally picking up the cottages and putting them on schooners and taking them to Connecticut.” 

Within this context, a series of artistically inclined owners tried to keep the hotel alive by reimagining it as a place for musicians to gather, and eventually, for singers, actors, and friends to study, perform, and enjoy the summer. At its core were Irish-born tenor Tom Karl and his partner, Dellon M. Dewey, who took over the hotel in the mid-1890s. 

The curators bring the era to life with photographs of the hotel’s exterior and interior, as well as wonderful publicity shots of Karl in costume. There are also recordings of songs that Karl would have sung, including some from the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas “H.M.S. Pinafore” and “Pirates of Penzance.”

Referring to a wonderful black-and-white photograph, Horrigan says, “Katharine Cornell stayed in Innisfail as a child. Her father was a big theater buff who owned a theater in Buffalo, and brought his family to the hotel in its final years. She later said that hearing Tom Karl and his friends sing and perform lit a desire in her to go onstage.” 

A massive two-day fire that began on May 13, 1906, marked the end of an era. “It burned down more than just Innisfail. The fire made the front page of the Boston Post,” says Horrigan. 

Van Riper refers to the incident within the broader context of the Island’s history. “It’s important to underscore that the Vineyard in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had a history of massive wildfires. There was one in the 1910s that burned more than 20 percent of the Island. The fire that destroyed Innisfail was a grass and brush fire that got out of control, which was easy to do when you didn’t have motorized fire equipment, let alone helicopters and air tankers. It was basically guys with axes, rakes, and hoes desperately trying to create a firebreak before the flames reached them.”

What was once Oklahoma descended into what locals referred to as Ghost Town, with only the three cottages remaining until the mid-1990s –– bringing us to when Horrigan and her husband bought one themselves, where she discovered the intriguing remains in a crumpled bag.

Van Riper remarks, “The exhibition is a beautiful example of how, everywhere you turn on the Vineyard, there are layers and layers of stories, going back hundreds of years, that are sometimes visible only in fragments of buildings and people’s memories. But that’s Vineyard history. If you dig deep enough, everything is woven together at some level, and it’s amazing what you can uncover.”

“The Lost History of Innisfail” is on view at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum through Jan. 11. A curators’ discussion will take place on Dec. 3 at 5 pm. For more information, visit mvmuseum.org/exhibition/the-lost-history-of-innisfail.