South Huntington
Cold Spring Harbor
Long Island
The Walt Whitman
Birthplace State Historic Site and Interpretive Center and the Cold Spring
Harbor Whaling Museum and Education Center are located a mere five miles away
from one another and are excellent stops for travelers who want to step back in
time—no admiration of poetry or blubber required.
Depending on your love of
Whitman, poetry, early 19th-century living, or a combination of the
three, your visit to the Whitman Birthplace could be a free thirty-minute stop or a $6 two-hour extravaganza. If you’re contented to read the rather amusing
didactic display on Whitman’s life and work (some real gems, like an original
edition of Leaves of Glass, are
included) and view Whitman’s birth home from a distance, you’ll be fine just
popping in and out of the Interpretive Center (fingers crossed that a screaming school group isn't there). And if you’re not interested in droll
anecdotes about prairie living, I suggest that’s where your visit should end.
But if you’re thinking since
you came all this way you may as well get the entire experience, you’ll have to
wait for one of the very nice, if technologically challenged, volunteer museum
guides to give you a tour. These are generally done on the hour, though
depending on the speed of the guide and inquisitiveness of the group, they can
go over. Actually, plan on it going over.
Do not embark upon the
tour expecting to hear anything specifically related to Walt Whitman’s life or
childhood beyond “This is the room where his parents slept,” or “This is how
his father designed the home.” The actual tour of the home is steeped more in
what it was like to live in small town America 200 years ago.
Before venturing to the
home, however, visitors are treated to a terrible video of still photos of
early America and a man walking along the beach (I assume it’s meant to be a
reenactment of Whitman lost in poetic contemplation) accompanied by a
voice-over of portions of “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” and “Song of Myself.” There is zero historic or biographic
information provided in said video which is played very loudly and has the
production quality of a high school film project from the 1980s. I suspect this
isn’t too far from its actual creation story.
After fifteen minutes of
awkward viewing where the entire group tries very hard to maintain its
interest, something actually interesting happens. The guide plays a CD of the
only known recording of Walt Whitman reading. Two years before Whitman’s death
in New Jersey in 1892, Thomas Edison recorded him reading “America.” The entire
clip is only 36 seconds long from a rough wax-cylinder recording, the
authenticity of which it turns out has been hotly debated, but it’s still nice
to imagine we might actually be hearing the voice of Whitman himself.
That’s where the Whitman
part of the paid tour ends. From this point on, the focus is the practicalities
of domestic life: how women ironed the clothes, how water was pulled from a
well, how the mattresses were stuffed with hay, etc. The home is charming enough,
but as the Whitman family moved from it when Walt was only three or four years
old, there aren’t really any striking anecdotes to be told in regards to his
existence inside the place. Nor is anything inside original to the home, but
all historical approximations. If this sort of thing bores you to death, skip
the tour.
The last part of the tour
is a visit to the Gathering House, a small art gallery built from the remaining
timbers from the original carriage house and barn that were too damaged to
repair and torn down. It now exhibits work from local artists and schools. We
skipped this part of the tour to head over to the Whale Museum. While we’re
glad repeated attempts to sell the home were unsuccessful and a local
organization was able to raise enough funds to buy and save it from demolition
in 1951, we knew our patience for extending the tour further had worn out. We
were ready for some whaling adventures!
The Whaling Museum of
Cold Spring Harbor is modest in size but grand in scope. The entire museum comprises
of five small rooms, one of which displays contemporary sea-based art and a
second which is little more than a playroom to keep the young’uns entertained,
albeit in a sort-of-educational manner. Which means the entire historical
contents are housed in three rooms—a largish one which contains a rather
impressive 19th-century whaleboat fully-equipped with original gear,
and two smaller ones that are filled with artifacts and tools used by whalers,
a sperm whale jaw, and a pretty spectacular collection of scrimshaw—the
carvings and engravings whalers did on whale bones and teeth to help keep their
minds off of how brutally difficult and lonely their jobs were.
Model ship and diorama lovers will be entertained as well. Those not so interested in such things can watch the 23-minute silent documentary film On Board the Morgan, which was filmed on America's last wooden whaling ship. It’s pretty amazing, if a bit disgusting in parts. There’s also a nice little corner on the history of Moby Dick and a glass container with sperm whale blubber next to an original boiling vat. I thought it was a bit smelly, though it may have been my imagination. Sensitive souls will probably want to avoid it, along with the rather scratchy costumes available to pose in for crow’s nest photographs. Though, if you’re that sensitive, you should probably avoid this museum altogether. I, however, thought it was well worth the $6 admission.
