Mention “Sugar Hill” to most folks and they think of the Robert Frost home located on a quiet North Country lane with a spectacular view of the White Mountains. The site is a place apart, one defined by the poet’s imagination, by words touched by New Hampshire and Vermont, an aesthetic space.
The other Sugar Hill – of which I speak – is situated in a corner of nearby Hopkinton bordering on Weare, a modest rural scape of homes (some dating back to the 18th century), to Drew Lake (a popular fishing spot), to a subtle rise – no spectacular views here – with rather pleasant outlooks to nearby Putney Hill, to Craney Hill and Pats Peak in Henniker and to Mount Kearsarge in Warner.
Past and present maps of the area feature Sugar Hill Road, Bassett Mill Road and the unimproved Old Holmes Road, a layout reflecting the array of farms with stone-walled fields harking back to the agricultural era. Even now, cattle, horses, even a sawmill define the area, not to mention wild turkeys, occasional beaver and bear, more frequently deer – and one time in recent memory, an immature eagle badgered by courageous blue jays.
Modest as the district is, the current exhibit at the Hopkinton Historical Society teases out a more complex take on the town’s Sugar Hill. It is anchored by the naive paintings of one homestead over time.
Gerhard and Louise Schade bought an 1830s home in 1943, making it their summer getaway from the hubbub of Concord. He painted a first image of the house on Old Holmes Road – ell, woodshed, breezeway and barn surrounded by fields and second-growth woodland – in 1949. Over the 40 years of ownership, he repeatedly rendered the place on canvas board – many of the charming paintings currently on display. Put differently, the unspectacular place became his artistic focus, became an aesthetic space.
What is striking and effective about the exhibit is the display of artifacts in support of the images.
Schade painted an interior view of the living space, for example, and the society saw to placing the cast-iron Franklin stove nearby, the very one rendered in the painting. A scythe, a length of an oak log gnawed by beaver evoke the area.
Photographs of the assembly of buildings, both formal studies and candid snapshots, complement the paintings, allowing for a greater appreciation of the painter’s work, as well as making a statement themselves.
The spirit of the place is evoked by explanatory panels, not only by factual explanations but also by reminiscences prepared by Schade family members.
“The Farm” takes on a multi-generational reality, whether the texts speak lovingly of childhood memories of swimming, of interesting neighbors, or of day-to-day life on Sugar Hill. And all is embedded in well-researched statements about other homes and persons on Sugar Hill, as well as a display about the one-room Sugar Hill schoolhouse replete with schoolbooks.
As if this multivalent take on Hopkinton’s Sugar Hill were not sufficient, the society has printed a selection of painter Schade’s poems entitled “Going into the Woods.” Perhaps inspired by Robert Frost’s work, the poems engage the ever-changing natural surroundings, the context within which the homes and paintings belong – as in an opening strophe of one poem:
Changing Views (Hopkinton)
Woods have a way
Of blocking out your view
Of distant mountain range
Or hillside paradise.
Woods change,
They rise and rise.
In sum, the Hopkinton Historical Society’s exhibit offers a differentiated, multidimensional narrative of a place in New Hampshire, one exploring the past as the foundation of the present Sugar Hill district of Hopkinton.
(Richard Schade is a summer resident of the Sugar Hill district of Hopkinton. For many years until 2013, he taught at the Advanced Studies Program, St. Paul’s School, as well as being a professor at the University of Cincinnati. “Hopkinton’s Neighborhoods: A View from Sugar Hill,” will be on display through August 27 and is free and open to the public. The society is open on Thursday and Friday from 9-4 and Saturday from 9-1. For more information, contact the society at 746-3825 or visit HopkintonHistory.org.)