I fell in love with a building once.
It had been a tough day, a busy day, a day of unfinished business, and I was weary, so when I arrived at Brooksby Farm in Peabody at the end of that day, I was hardly in a celebratory mood for the wedding I was about to officiate.
It was late autumn, early evening and the sky was overcast, the air smoky, just past Halloween, and the farm fields around were stubble-flat. I was scuffing my way in the leaves and looked up to see this. Rising, unchallenged, out of the mists was the most lovely building, very tall, culminating in a steeple, and thin, lithe, wooden, in shades of brown with its details tricked out. Immediately my mood lightened.
It lifted so appreciably, that I felt joy. This grand, inanimate object had completely redeemed my day. Mostly we tend to think about what our homes, our furniture, our things say about us, but these as well as the neighborhood buildings and our public buildings say things to us as well. More than that they affect what we think and how we feel. That historic Peabody firehouse now on the Brooksby property (whose delightful name is "Torrent") made me happy. It is the subject of the book, "The Architecture of Happiness," by Alain de Botton. He writes that the power of a house, furniture, a tea cup, a public building is a modest ambition, an ephemeral art, subtle and yet palpable in its ability to make us better, to make us happy. He says, "We don't think the same way wherever we are. We are not the same people wherever we are."
My experience at Brooksby Farm with Torrent was way out of the ordinary, possibly unique, but I've been contented in a sunlit corner of a friend's house, whereas a gloomy hotel room can make me question the meaning of life. Few of us experience extremes as did Oscar Wilde who said that the wrong wallpaper affected him worse than a death in the family. And beauty does not always redeem as in the case of Nazi murderer Herman Goering, who lived in a beautiful home surrounded by beautiful — stolen — art. Nor is the lifted spirit, the subtle joy a static state. De Botton writes of moments of appreciation, of flashes of happiness, of joy.
Architecture does not necessarily change the world, but it can change us. Gloucester's roof lines have this effect on me, especially approaching the west end from Tally's, or the irregular march of buildings — houses, mostly — up the hill from East Main Street, or the wild extravagance of Beacon Marine. Edward Hopper's paintings of the roof lines of houses from Prospect Street to the harbor capture this subtle joy. And I especially love his painting of the Universalist Church and its neighbors from up on Church Street. Not the front of the church, the back.
De Botton suggests that this momentary joy that can help to make us happier, better people has a bittersweet quality that presupposes the problems and griefs and sufferings that come to us all. There is a contrast necessary for that momentary ray of joy to find us. The author writes that his 3-year-old son doesn't and can't possibly have this appreciation, being still and blessedly in a natural state of happiness. Happiness is an essential value for Unitarian Universalists. Our spiritual ancestors embraced a mission to "happify" humanity with their message of God's love and universal salvation.
They believed — and I believe — that happiness and goodness are intimately linked, and this was a radical notion in the Calvinist atmosphere of the Bay Colony. More than 375 years of living proximate to death and loss at sea makes for a bittersweetness in our town. Perhaps this heightens our lovely tenaciousness about what gets built and what gets torn down here.
Janis Stelluto died last year. She was a city planner who loved Gloucester. She taught me theories of "Smart Growth" and "New Urbanism," philosophies that incorporate ideas of the architecture of happiness. Janis made me aware that the curve of Main Street from the Blackburn building into the west end is an example of a pleasing sense of intimacy, with a further feeling of happy surprise that the street continues past the point where it seems to have ended.
This is subtle, it's true, and the appreciation is momentary, but it is the built environment, sturdy in life, unique. Reader, I know you love this city, too. Bittersweet, yes, but hasn't it made us happy? We shall be thoughtful in our care for her.
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The Rev. Wendy Fitting is pastor of the Independent Christian Church — Unitarian Universalist. Midweek Musings is a column rotated among Cape Ann clergy.
