Winter Entertainment at the Town Hall

When the town bought the Methodist Church and converted it into a town hall in 1873, one of its great selling points was, and still is, that it would be a multi-purpose building for the town. Over the years the great second floor hall has seen its share of wild and humorous town meetings; knockdown, drag-out semi-pro basketball games; memorable church fairs; theater and musical performances of all kinds; and, before it began to be converted to office space in 1986, it was used in 1985 for a country dance wedding reception and a two-day event put on by the Historical Society to celebrate the town's bicentennial.

But the real heyday of the hall was in the late 1800's and early 1900's when different groups in town would stage performances at the town hall throughout the year, mostly of the humorous, light comedy or farcical variety. (One of our favorites from the turn of the century was "Freezing a Mother-in-Law".)

The Town Museum has dozens of the play bills from that era and the names of the actors/performers are familiar to anyone who knows the old names of Rye. In the winter of 1911 with the new library under construction, the town would have been ripe to see a comedy/drama/farce on why Rye was the last town in the county to get a library, but that play has yet to be written. Some of what they did see was the comedy "Higbee of Harvard" staged by the Jenness Beach Improvement Association starring Irving Rand and Flora Seavey; a comedy in four acts staged by the Congregational Society starring, among others, long time selectman Newall Marden and soon to be librarian Miss Helen Drake; and "Just Plain Folks," a drama in three acts put on by the Ladies Social Union of the Christian Church (the one that was moved in 1947 where the fire station is now). We have no playbill for March 1911 because, we suspect, the wild and often very funny Town Meeting was more than enough entertainment for that month. The final town hall entertainment that year was a drama called "Farm Folks," appropriate indeed for a town whose majority occupation was still farming. The office space on the second floor and the stage is all temporary. Who knows, in the future the great hall may rise again!

~Alex Herlihy, Rye Historical Society and Town Museum

Riding the Rails to Rye

In the real old days, getting to Portsmouth was no mean feat. Aside from walking (1-2 hours) or by horse, Rye folks did have the stage in the 1800's, but in August, 1899 a transportation revolution (or invasion depending on your view point) occurred when the Portsmouth Electric Railway came to town. For some real old timers who remembered the iron horse invasion of the 1840's this must have been a deja vue nightmare and to now have it coming right through the middle of the peaceful village, well, this would not stand. But of course it did, and most people were happy to have it at the dawn of the new century when getting to town was essential.

The trolley came out from Market Square, along Sagamore Road, onto Wallis, through the center of town, down Central Road to the Farragut Hotel on Ocean Boulevard, and on to Hampton Beach. For the next 28 years Rye and the seacoast and the rest of the country had far superior public transportation than we have today. Cars were a novelty in Rye and most places until the teens and especially after the war.

(If the truth be known, the Railway was a losing financial proposition and if the B and M Railway did not own it, the trolley would have ceased to exist much sooner. Trolleys were a profitable concern in larger urban areas, but aside from the summer demand, there were never enough people in the seacoast to justify it.)

But what did the trolley do in winter? Why it donned a plow and, when necessary, the locals dug it out. The trolley must go on and the fresh memories of our recent snow storm help one to imagine what Rye winters must have been like a century ago.

~Alex Herlihy, Rye Historical Society and Town Museum