By MICKEY RATHBUN
Stepping through the stately stone gateposts that flank the entrance to Laurel Park, a residential community three miles north of Northampton’s center, is like opening a time capsule.
Overhead is a wrought-iron sign bearing the property’s name in vivid gold letters.
A row of small wooden cottages, some brightly painted and adorned with “gingerbread” trim, a hallmark of the Carpenter Gothic style, are tightly packed, some separated by just the length of an average arm span, surrounded by mountain laurel, which is plentiful on the site, and mature trees.
The wooded hillside that rises in the distance is dotted with similar cottages strung along a Hobbit-like warren of small roads.
You are curious. Who created such a peculiarly cramped, miniature Victorian village, and for what purpose? Who lives here now?
Established in 1872 by the Springfield District Camp Meeting Association (SDCMA), Laurel Park was one of many Methodist camp meetings that were created in the late 1800s, including Ocean Grove in New Jersey. It was a rural summer retreat where worshippers could pray and unwind from the stress of life in a rapidly changing world.
It was originally planned as a “tent community,” with more than 900 closely packed tent sites surrounding an open-air Tabernacle, the camp’s physical and spiritual center.
The tents were cramped and uncomfortable, and many were soon replaced by cottages built within the original tent site’s footprint; most measure about 20 feet by 40 feet.
The cottages in the circle facing the Tabernacle were the earliest, built by various Methodist associations as dormitories.
Today, there are approximately 100 cottages at Laurel Park, nestled between tall trees and bold outcroppings of granite. They are a quirky mix of rustic cabins, brightly painted Carpenter Gothic cottages, and sleeker modern designs.
The first cottages were rudimentary — “vastly under built,” as David Weiner, a former resident, put it. Rectangular two-story structures, they had a communal area downstairs and crowded sleeping quarters upstairs.
People ate in the dining hall, adjacent to the Tabernacle circle.
Sanitation was primitive. An old metal bucket on a long wooden pole is among the artifacts at the Laurel Park Historical Society housed in Parker Memorial Chapel, one of the early cottages. Presumably, campers used it to carry their bodily waste from the cottages to a public latrine.
Many worshippers arrived by train from Springfield and Hartford, Connecticut, disembarking at the Laurel Park whistle stop.
The Hampshire Gazette reported in 1872 that 6,000 worshippers came one day, 8,000 the following day, and that the large volume of passengers delayed trains.
Life at Laurel Park was not limited to prayer meetings. The camp was intended to nurture intellectual, physical and emotional development as well as spirituality. Activities included singing, oration and walking on trails through the surrounding woods.
The camp’s founding dovetailed with the rise of Chautauqua festivals, events that promoted sacred and secular education by bringing famous speakers and cultural figures to speak at sites around the country.
Organizers at Laurel Park eagerly offered to host, and the festivals soon became the highpoint of the summer season, featuring notables including Calvin Coolidge, then the governor of Massachusetts.
Laurel Park prospered into the 20th century. But by the 1930s, camp meetings and Chautauqua festivals had dwindled in popularity, their offerings upstaged by modern entertainments including movies.
Many cottage owners continued to return every summer, and the SDCMA hosted summer camps for young people. A trunk filled with old hymnals and graffiti scratched into the walls of Parker Memorial Chapel attests to their past presence.
The site began to take its present form in 1968, when the SDCMA turned over cottage ownership to the Laurel Park Association (LPA). Individuals began to winterize their dwellings, turning them into affordable homes for year-round residency.
In 1985, the homeowners created a trust and purchased the land surrounding the cottages from the LPA. Like a condominium association, the residents hold the surrounding property collectively and pay service fees for snow plowing and other communal expenses.
Laurel Park’s physical layout has not changed much.
The Tabernacle was restored and reduced in size in the 1970s and still occupies its original site. The handsome blue-gray building with the stout rectangular turret, originally the “Normal School” for training Sunday school teachers, is now Normal Hall, a community meeting space.
The dining hall collapsed in 1948 and was rebuilt in 1957 in the same wooded grove and is now used for social gatherings.
Narrow roads through the site are marked by hand-painted signs that also list residents’ house numbers.
Those numbers are somewhat random, says LPA president Kate Richardson.
“Rumor has it that the people who assigned the numbers were drunk at the time,” she said.
Other signs, such as “Cats Walking About,” reflect the community’s affectionate neighborliness.
Many cottages have postage-stamp-sized gardens adorned with sculptures, birdbaths and wind chimes. Some feature planters and raised beds while others are left to nature’s whimsy.
Modest public gardens include a tiny park just big enough to hold a couple of rustic benches, a statue of St. Francis, and a water bowl for pets.
Unlike in some historic communities, there is no strict design code here. The by-laws only require that homeowners maintain their cottage’s original footprint.
Alison Keehn, a writer who moved to the site last fall, lives in an 1875 cottage that was restored several years ago to its original open interior. She described it as “a combination of a cabin in the woods and a New York loft.”
A few doors down, a cottage that was divided into rooms back in the 1950s has a cozy, dollhouse feel.
Other cottages have been completely renovated so “there’s not an original stick in them,” Richardson said. Despite the uniqueness of each home, their shared scale and compactness creates an overarching sense of cohesion.
Like its cottages, Laurel Park’s residents are a wide mix.
“It’s a good cross-section of people — old-timers, young families, people of different genders and ethnic backgrounds,” said Ani Rivera, who moved to Laurel Park four years ago. “People come for lots of different reasons — they like the cottages, it’s affordable, it’s a good location.”
Rivera, a visual artist who owns Valley Frameworks in Amherst, says the residents are “accepting of each other. As a Latino, I felt part of the community from day one.”
Sandra Matthews, who has lived at Laurel Park with her husband, Norbert, for more than 30 years, raised two children there. “It was a very special place for them to grow up,” she said.
Richardson agreed. She recalled getting phone calls from neighbors who would ask, “Are your kids outside? There’s a black bear nearby.”
The community is also a good fit for single women, Keehn said. “It’s private but not isolated. You can bang on the wall and someone will come help.”
“We have a wonderful mixture of past and present in Laurel Park,” Matthews said. “When we hold meetings in Normal Hall, or potluck suppers in the dining hall, or concerts in the Tabernacle, the atmosphere of these spaces creates continuity with the past.
“We know that in the past the buildings were used, in the summer, by thousands of people at a time,” she added. “I am glad that we have a quieter Laurel Park now, but still with traces of this history.”
Mickey Rathbun can be reached at foxglover8@gmail.com.