Just Playing Along
“Welcome! The Cranes will be happy to see you,” says the housemaid. “You all must have taken an early train to get here.”
“Not me!” I say cheerfully. “I just hopped in my Cessna! What a beautiful day for a flight! Hi, I’m Amelia Earhart!” This is how my guided tour of the Crane Estate begins. I call it “setting the tone for the rest of the group,” in a playful way. Not in a psychotic break with reality way. Including me there are five of us in the first tour of the morning. The other four people laugh, a little, and glance around, a lot. I realize that when you’re the odd one on a guided tour presented in a light reenactment style, this is maybe not a great look.
I’m visiting The Crane Estate at Castle Hill in Ipswich, Massachusetts for the photo/travel book I’m working on highlighting unique day destinations in and around the Boston area. During the Gilded Age period of the late-nineteenth century up through the 1920s lots of Richie Rich types like the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers gobbled up properties along the New England coast. They built palatial seaside mansions where they’d stay for about two or three weeks every summer before boarding a steamer to France or Italy. These people were living the dream, and I don’t mean accruing landfills of cash. I’m talking about a family vacation that consists of spending fourteen days “together” in a 60,000 square foot house set on 3,000 acres. What did they do for Christmas, rent out Morocco?
The Crane mansion is a grand Tudor Revival style built between 1926 and 1928. Richard T. Crane, Jr. was a plumbing fixture magnate from Chicago. He purchased the land along with 7 miles of beach in 1910. Crane inherited the business from his father, capitalizing and expanding on the “modern” indoor plumbing craze. The motto of the Crane company was “Make America want a better bathroom.” It’s not exactly a slogan that rolls off the tongue like “Just do it!,” but you have to give it to Mr. Crane for aggressively leaning into his industry niche.
There was already a couple milling around the courtyard at the front of the house when I arrived. I stood near the steps and waited. On the lawn to the side of the house workers were busy assembling billowing white tents for a wedding or other formal event. You could hear muffled voices behind the broad wooden door. Someone fiddled with the latches and it swung wide. A tall, skinny young man in his early-twenties dressed in a sharp black morning suit greeted us, waving inside. Other staff stood around in the vestibule. They were mostly women and also dressed in period attire: black dresses overlaid with smart, white aprons. The young man reappeared at my side holding a laminated card. I glanced down. The name “Amelia Earhart” was written across the top with a sketch of the infamous pilot. The card contained five or six major facts.
“Play along as much or as little as you’d like,” said the young man. “But you will be asked to introduce yourself.”
I was raised in a family that offered two coping mechanisms: alcoholism and humor. I chose the latter. Also, I think these jobs are way harder than they look. We have all sorts of tours in Boston that require guides to dress and sound the part of Revolutionary era citizens. They have to commit an ungodly long list of facts and arcane historical details to memory. They have to deal with people who scrolled a Wiki page on whatever the topic of the historic place, but are convinced they have a PhD in it. They have to deal with the public in a highly interactive way. I don’t know if you’ve met the public, but we are pretty gamey.
There were a total of five of us in the group-two couples and me. We gathered near the grand staircase on the first floor and formed a semi-circle around our guide: Anna, a housemaid at the Crane mansion. She asked us to introduce “ourselves” and welcomed us to the property, the first season the Cranes were summering: June, 1929. The date came up a lot. Anytime someone mentioned something modern like plastic, Anna would demur and say, “I’m sorry, I do not know what is this ‘plastic?’ It sounds like something made up!” And we’d all smirk. “Maybe I read about it in a sci-fi story,” the man who mentioned it said and I nodded. Yes, see? See how much nicer it is to play along?
Before we headed upstairs, Anna beckoned us toward the far wall. There was a panel that melted seamlessly into the wall. She opened it to reveal a walk-in safe. The door was black as a magician’s top hat. It had one of those turnstile type handles just like in a James Cagney movie. Anna gave the handle a deft twirl and the massive door glided open. She invited us to come inside and have a look around. The walls were lined in lush green velvet. Shelves and small draws filled the three sides from floor to ceiling. This is where the Cranes keep most of their silver and other valuables, Anna told us.
“You might have heard of the story of some children playing around in here and were accidently locked in! We had to find a criminal to crack it open!” said Anna.
It didn’t matter to me that nothing about this anecdote tracked. Why would the safe be gaping open wide or did one of the kids know the combo? And if that was the case, talk about a shifty little bastard! Plus, wouldn’t these kids have jobs, because 1929, or school or both? How exactly do you find a safe-cracking criminal? Are they in the phone book? And if I were this criminal you can bet a Google infinity amount of dollars that I would slip back into this place and crack it back open first chance I got! None of this was as relevant as what I took as my cue:
“Hey, I bet I know where they found that criminal. A BANK! Am I right, 1929? Fat cat Capitalists rich guys and such. Right?” The polite chuckles I got were all the encouragement I needed.
For the rest of the tour I, Amelia Earhart, “assisted” Anna with small remarks I considered unobtrusive, but that added (I thought) to the spirit of the experience. When she mentioned the Cranes’ daughter, Florence, was very stylish and didn’t care much for this odd trend of women wearing trousers, I, again, heard my prompt: “C’mon now! There’s nothing like a good pair of pants when you’re in the cockpit!” I grinned. What a good player I was! Besides, I’ve done my share of improv (most of it pretty badly). I know what it’s like to say something you think is pretty clever or witty and to be met with a few dry coughs and the sound of seats squeaking as people shift around uncomfortably thinking, “Good God, let this end.” And in that moment you’re thinking the same thing, too. I did not want that for Anna who was obviously, earnestly just doing her job. Help me, help you, Anna of 1929, I silently, and not so silently, conveyed.
The tour concludes in the dining room. Six plastic champagne glasses filled with ginger-ale sit on a silver tray on a sideboard. Anna invites us to each take one and sip. It’s a special cocktail, she explains, that transports us far into the future, to 2023. She wraps up the tour by giving us a Crane family epilogue. Who died when, where, and how; what happened to the Crane children, to the plumbing fixture business. She brings us up to speed on how the mansion and estate was almost dismantled and entirely sold, but the current preservation non-profit stepped in to restore, conserve, and protect for future generations of guests. It’s remarkable that this place exists. It’s a bold move to invite visitors, aka truly awful public, to participate in the tour in this creative way.
We hand in our cards.
“S’long Amelia,” says a man from one of the couples as we all start to drift away. He smiles.
“Are you from New England?” I ask.
“Yes,” he replies.
“The funny thing is, I live in Medford. Our house is two blocks from where Amelia Earhart lived until she left for her transatlantic flight.” The man chuckles.
“Someone must have known you were coming,” he says with a grin.
“I know, right?” I say, just playing along.
Lens Zen!
The Crane Estate is truly astonishing and quite beautiful. The grounds are pure artform with an Italian garden, a rose garden, and 1/2 mile, rolling Grand Allee—a kind of undulating lawn with statuary lining the sides and probably at least one story to tell about a mower gone rogue to tell. Here are a few more images from around the property with PLENTY more in my upcoming book: Boston Road Trips: Exploring Hidden Charms and Natural Wonders in a Day (Globe Pequot, 2024) *Shameless plug, I regret NOTHING!
This sounds like so much fun! The only thing that could've been better is if it had turned into a murder mystery halfway through. :D
This made me laugh, I don’t know whether that poor lady considered you the worst or the best tour participant she had that day! What a neat find, where do you look for ideas for places to tour?