Cape Cod History

1992: Kennedy Museum opens. 1988: Mall changes Wellfleet

Wellfleet changes with new mall in 1988
Kennedy Museum opened in 1992

The museum is at 397 Main Street, Hyannis, and is administered by the Hyannis Area Chamber of Commerce. Admission is free but donations are accepted. Open 9-5 daily, Sun. 12-5.

In the summer of 1992 the Kennedy Museum opened, and the Travel advisory on this day in the Sunday New York Times wrote;

The John F. Kennedy Hyannis Museum, which opened last month in Hyannis, Mass., is the first public facility in the town to illustrate the late President's life on Cape Cod. President Kennedy used Hyannis Port as a summer White House.

Housed in the historic brick Old Town Hall, the museum exhibits some 50 photographs spanning the years from 1934 when Kennedy was 17 to his death in 1963. The pictures, displayed gallery style and interspersed with printed quotations, show the President in candid and formal portraits with family members, his Cabinet and government officials. Others show him playing touch football with his PT-109 comrades, sailing and golfing. Museum organizers hope to add a video and some family memorabilia, such as the scrimshaw that the President made.

The New York Times also reported twenty years ago:
Mall Becomes a Harbinger of Change In the Character of Cape Cod Village

And in August of 1988, the Times reported:
J. F. O'Connell of Ponte Vedra, Fla., who spends summers here, said Wellfleet has changed since last season and not for the better. In particular, he misses the old clapboard post office on Main Street. It served as a place for Wellfleetians to exchange greetings and news and conduct business. The post office was closed last February and officially moved to a new building on the outskirts of town, where it will be part of Wellfleet's first mall.

With it, Mr. O'Connell and many other residents fear, went part of the character and life of Wellfleet, one of the last villages on Cape Cod that retains a vital, old-fashioned center.

Missing Social Contact

''I used to enjoy walking to the post office and saying hi to people,'' Mr. O'Connell said on a recent visit to the new building, on busy Route 6. With traffic at its worst in July and August, he said, ''Many people get their mail delivered and have given up coming here,'' adding, ''You don't get the social contact of the old place.''

Proponents of the mall said it will lessen traffic in town, make more services available and attract new year-round businesses. But critics of the mall fear it will draw the few year-round businesses from the town, which struggles to stay vital in the winter.

Philip B. Herr, a planning consultant to the town, noting Wellfleet's limited space and water supply, said, ''The shopping center may produce services the town couldn't accommodate.''

Unlike most other Cape Cod towns, which have largely a suburban lifestyle, Wellfleet has until now held fast to its village rituals. Its Main Street played a crucial role, with its stretch of town offices, shops and businesses in buildings dating to the early 1800s.

'Feeling Is Already Gone'

Kevin Scalley, owner of a liquor store on Main Street, said his trade has already fallen about 10 percent since the post office moved. ''Once people are on Route 6, they just shoot up to Orleans,'' a town with more commercial activity.

Mieke Spierenberg, an artist and year-round resident, has also noticed a change. ''The nice, old-fashioned town center feeling is already gone,'' she said. ''If the other businesses in town follow the post office, the center will be more touristy in the summer and more closed up in the winter. We may not have a real town anymore.''

In the new post office building there are more mailboxes, room for home delivery service and more parking, said Lillian Grozier, the postmaster. When the post office announced it was moving after 28 years, ''No one in the center of town bid for the lease,'' she said.

A Four-Year Battle

The mall has been in the center of a battle here since June 1984, when The Cape Codder newspaper disclosed plans for its construction just two days before the end of a period for public comment to state environmental officials. The proposal unleashed a furor over potential suburbanization, water and traffic pollution, and what some saw as the secrecy of the project.

State officials received petitions from residents and requests from officials to study the effect of the mall on the environment. Town officials, a commercial landowner and a resident whose property bordered the planned mall filed lawsuits that held up the project.

Construction that was to begin in October 1984 started in January 1987. The project costs soared to $2.5 million from $1.2 million and it was not until last winter that the developer won all the necessary town permits and settled the suit with his neighbor, Maude M. Arnold, who had charged that the mall would pollute her property with noise, light and traffic.

''I was concerned for this pretty little, unspoiled town,'' said Mrs. Arnold, a retired psychiatric social worker. ''The cape is being malled to death. In the 60 odd years I've been coming here, this is the biggest change I can remember in town,'' she said.

Outsiders Are Faulted

Charles Amsler, the mall developer, said, ''I'm pleased as punch that we're opened but saddened by all the personal and business problems it has caused.''

Much of the resistance, he said, sprang from ''crusaders who come across the bridge from New York and New Jersey. They certainly know how to pollute, but blame us'' for overdevelopment here.

Growth in Wellfleet has been restrained compared to the development of other cape towns. There are about 3,000 dwelling units here, most of them unoccupied in the winter, and about 15,000 people reside here during the peak tourist season. The town has a limited water supply and about 60 percent of Wellfleet's land is designated forever wild as part of the National Seashore.

Gerald E. Parent, the chairman of the planning board and a major developer, said rising land and construction costs here have also held growth in check. Mr. Parent, who bought the old post office building to use as a real estate office, estimated that a house that would have cost about $90,000 in 1980 could cost $220,000 today.

As it stands now, only partly completed, the mall hardly looks like the threat perceived by townspeople who have nicknamed it ''Fort Apache'' for its stockade-like appearance. The four-acre site, planned for five buildings with space for a bank and 14 retail shops, so far has only the post office, an entry and a large parking lot.

But Kevin Rice, 35 years old, a year round Wellfleetian, said of the project, ''By cape standards it's very innocent and Charlie Amsler has taken a lot of heat. But by Wellfleet standards it's horrendous.''

He added, ''We were one of the few towns that still enjoyed a Main Street that ran through the center. The pulse of our community emanated from the post office. When they moved it to Route 6 they tore the heart out of the town. What could be more symbolic of the paving over of America?''