Sandwich museum has its own magic gardens
SANDWICH - Tucked away on a hilltop above Shawme Pond near the 17th-century village center, this estate-like museum complex is not a typical Cape Cod attraction. You can dine al fresco without a seagull taking a run at your sandwich, for example. But even beach lovers can tire of scorching sand or hit a rainy spell, and when that happens, Heritage Museums & Gardens offers something for everyone.
The complex contains three museums, one for American art, one for antique autos, and one for artifacts of American history. It houses collections assembled by J.K. Lilly Jr. (of the pharmaceutical empire) and his son, J.K. Lilly III, who founded the museums.
Perhaps inspired by the overarching theme of Americana, Lilly fashioned some of the buildings themselves after icons of US history. The American History Museum structure is modeled on "The Temple," built by Colonial troops at the encampment in New Windsor, N.Y., where Washington sheltered his army in 1783 during the last winter of the Revolutionary War. The antique cars are housed in a stone Shaker round barn, a replica of the one at Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield.
The art museum houses not only two exhibition galleries but also a still-functioning wooden merry-go-round made in 1895 by Charles Looff, the Danish master wood carver who built the first carousel at Coney Island.
On the museum grounds, clumps of rhododendrons recall the 1930s, when Charles O. Dexter, a textile magnate, hybridized them on what was his private estate. Hybrid day lilies fill an entire garden, and 50,000 spring daffodils blanket the lawns through May. Recent popular additions to the gardens include a labyrinth and a maze composed of evergreens and vine-covered fences.
The Old East Mill, a windmill built in 1800 in Orleans, also adorns the grounds.
This season will see more additions, plus new exhibits. A demonstration cranberry bog will be finished this summer. "It's an educational component with an interpretive history of how the cranberry-growing industry got started on the Cape," says Judith I. Selleck, the museums' director of marketing, who adds that a hydrangea garden also will be planted during the summer.
This month the renovated American History Museum will showcase "Lost Gardens of New England and Cape Cod," an exhibit of photos and memorabilia, co-hosted by Historic New England. The art museum recently opened its season-long show, "A Short Life and Merry: Pirates in New England," back for a second year. Artifacts and images plunge visitors into the age when pirates terrorized the seas, including the waters of New England, in the early 18th century.
Meanwhile, in the Shaker barn, "You Can't Go to Town in a Bathtub: The 100th Anniversary of the Model T" celebrates Henry Ford and his Model T, so roadworthy and adaptable that it stayed in production until 1927. The show takes its name from a farm woman who offered that retort when asked why she had chosen a new Model T over indoor plumbing.
A cafe on the grounds and a full slate of concerts, tours, lectures, and excursions round out the season's offerings - enough to tempt some people to wish for a rainy day on the Cape.
Jane Roy Brown can be reached at regan-brown.com.
