Manchester's winter wonderland

Derryfield Park Winter Carnival showing people ski-jumping, via Manchester Historic Association.

While doing research for an upcoming post, I happened upon several old photos of Manchester's discontinued Winter Carnival. The information available on the defunct annual event is sparse, but it seems that Manchester used to hold a multi-day event celebrating winter by holding parades and transforming city parks into devoted sledding areas, luges and ski hills.

Group portrait of eight people during the Winter Carnival, on a New Hampshire Fire Insurance Company horse drawn Parade Float, via Manchester Historic Association. (1920s)

Copy photograph, view of the Snow Shoe Carnival a girl or young woman is seen being tossed in the air as a group of people gather around, via Manchester Historic Association. (ND)

Manchester started the Winter carnival in 1924 to some great success until it was discontinued at the end of the decade for unknown reasons (maybe the 1929 stock market crash). The carnival surfaced again in 1957, and by 1967 it had become the second largest in the nation, Minneapolis' and St. Paul's being the largest. The event featured a parade of 30 floats, 50 clowns and a 16 foot high animated rendition of Sir Winterhurst, the carnival's mascot. Skiing, ice fishing, hockey tournaments, sledding, snow shoeing, ice skating and snow mobile races were featured activities. The 1967 event, in particular, showcased the Parashoeing Championship, a skydive/snowshoe race that sounds like something right out of the X-Games.

The usual fanfare of music, food and games were staples of the Winter Carnival, along with the crowning of a Winter Carnival King and Queen. Beyond 1967, the carnival's fate becomes unclear, but it was eventually discontinued again. Smaller iterations have popped up over the years under the title of "Winterfest".

A medal from the 1967 Queen City Winter Carnival.

View of the 1927 Winter Carnival, via Manchester Historic Association. (1927)

As we rely less and less on the entertainment outside of our homes, it seems unfeasible that Manchester would resurrect this event again, but it's a wonderful idea that the city once regaled against the collective loathing of the cold season by transforming its parks and streets into a winter wonderland, embracing the snow and ice that garners so much disdain the rest of the year.

View of the Manchester Winter Carnival showing Textile Field Hockey. Melrose American Legion is playing against the Manchester Hockey Club which lost 1 - 0. David Leslie is one of the players on the field, via Manchester Historic Association. (1928)

Benched

Driving down Bridge Street or jogging along its sidewalk near Trinity High School, you may have noticed something doesn't look right when you pass by the Derryfield Park. It's not a bad looking park; nice, grassy field, new playground and even a gazebo, but something is amiss. Maybe it's because it looks like there should be a bus stop every 50 feet along the sidewalk. 

The benches that line the park's outer edge, along Bridge Street, all face one the city's most heavily trafficked corridors instead of the nice park behind them. It's a weird decision in urban planning and the only conclusions I drew from it were that either the original parks planner thought the benches might be better utilized in winter if they faced south, melting the inevitable snow build-up, or that the homeless would be more conspicuous sleeping on them.

Curious, I sent out an email to Manchester's Parks Planner, Jessica Fleming. She kindly responded with a call and explained that she had asked the same question a few years ago when she took the job. When she asked around, the answer she received was that the benches were rest areas for walkers and joggers heading up the steep hill that the park sits on. But no one knew for sure, as any person could take the extra step to sit on a park facing bench, or the city could have settled on backless benches giving joggers and park goers the option to sit either way. 

There were no definitive conclusions, as the benches have been there for many years now, but Fleming mentioned that if the benches were to be replaced, they would probably face the park or be backless instead.

The slanted benches of Livingston Park.

Along with my inquiry into the Derryfield Park benches, I asked about the benches in Livingston Park that are slanted towards the ground. Once again, I thought it was a deterrent to keep people from sleeping on them, similar to the rash of anti-homeless benches springing up in Tokyo. Fleming explained that was not the case at all, and that they are sloped downwards from overuse. "It's one of our most trafficked parks and they're the wrong benches for the application," she said.

Rail road trestle to River Walk

While I'm finishing the next Central High School post, enjoy this top and bottom view of the Manchester River walk that was once a rail road trestle spanning the Merrimack river. I was very pleased to see this thing put to good use and help further bridge that natural gap between the East and West sides of Manchester.

Weston Observatory

Often the most engaging history lesson is one you can see, touch or walk through. The Battle of Bunker Hill is always associated with the 294 steps I climbed in the obelisk that memorializes it, and the dull ache in my legs when I reached the top. I remember the warm, metallic smell on the lower decks of the USS Wisconsin, an Iowa Class battleship commissioned in World War II, marveling at the idea that men had once hunkered down there during the bombardment of Okinawa and how the texture of the Vietnam Memorial lingered on my fingers for a seemingly impossible amount of time afterwards. These are the types of moments that people never forget.

Granted, Manchester is not the navel hub that Norfolk is or the historical convergence that Boston was, but the city has a rich history that is often memorialized with simple statutes sitting stagnant in the middle of its parks, but I discovered this is not entirely the case. On a recent schedule-wrecking, focus-stealing jaunt through Google Earth, I happened upon a photo of something called the Weston Observatory, a rogue lighthouse looking structure that had escaped the coast.



Curious, my girlfriend and I hopped in the car one morning and drove up to Derryfield Park. We were greeted with a motorized gate and no signs indicating the existence of the observatory. We parked to the side of the small road and slipped by the gate on foot. Sure enough, it was there, along with an overgrown clearing, several graffiti laden boulders and two memorialized canons overlooking a barbed-wire clad Oak Hill Water Reservoir (certainly, what the motorized gate was all about). The observatory is surrounded by an old, intimidating wrought, iron fence and a locked gate. The door is boarded up along with the windows. We searched for an information kiosk or plaque to give us a little back story to the structure's history, but there was nothing, just the word "WESTON" carved into the stone above the door. The place felt forgotten, a reminder that every building and space is on a trajectory.



Manchester's website has a quick blurb about the tower and James Adams Weston, a four time mayor of Manchester and twice elected governor of NH in the mid 19th century. Weston left $5000 for the observatory to built after he passed in 1895. Considering the state of his monument, I found it serendipitous that Weston (a gifted engineer by trade) happened to be renowned for commissioning many city beautification projects. He was also instrumental in modernizing Manchester's water and sewage infrastructure, the subject of a future post or two.

Despite the tower itself being in amazing shape, it's sad to see a piece of history locked up and neglected. Think of the micro field trips the local schools are missing or the theatrical first kisses teenagers are being denied atop the Weston Observatory. Imagine donning a parka and throwing a telescope over your shoulder for a casual night of looking at the stars or giving your kids a sense of geography during a simple picnic.



Understandably, the city government already cares for several recreational areas, and one more potentially under-utilized and difficult to maintain property is last thing on the collective political mind, but I'm curious as to what department the minor maintenance of the observatory falls under. Looking at Google Maps, you can see the observatory is not technically within the borders of the Derryfield Park, though it feels it should be. Is it still Parks and Recreation's responsibility? Or perhaps it is the Water department's job based on the monument's proximity to the reservoir? Maybe, nobody.

A few facts about the Weston Observatory:
- The first cornerstone was laid September 7, 1896
- The tower stands 66 feet tall
- In World War II, it was used as a spotting post for air raid wardens
- It is made entirely of local New Hampshire granite
- Weston left $5000 for the observatory to be built when he died in 1895 (isn't this kind of like buying your own birthday cake?)
- The Knights Templar oversaw the project as Weston was a high-ranking Mason