Once a booming mill town on the banks of the Taunton River, Fall River, Massachusetts, has experienced some hard times in the last century. Now residents are trying to capitalize on the city's rich history and waterfront location to bring back its glory days.
by Malerie Yolen-Cohen photographs by Bryce Vickmark
In its heyday Fall River, known as "Spindle City," was the world's largest producer of printed cotton cloth. Its looms turned out thousands of miles of fabric a year, making wealthy men of over a hundred mill owners. One mill alone produced 85,000 miles of cloth annually. Because of its concentration of wealth, Fall River was also the hub of the multivessel Fall River Steamship Line, each ship a luxurious 450-foot 2,000-passenger "floating palace" that took rail travelers from Boston on to New York City. But as mill towns were abandoned, Fall River fell hard, and, though many of the factory buildings were eventually repurposed as outlet centers, it never fully regained its footing.
Fall River today offers a rare opportunity to visit a working-class river city on the verge of change. Shells of decrepit factory buildings, set on the long-buried Quequechan River ("Falling Waters") after which the city is named, dot the landscape, and for boaters who consider distressed warehouses romantically grungy, this may be the time to visit, before gentrification manicures away the city's raw appeal.
I began my two-day visit at the only private Fall River marina that welcomes transients, the Borden Light Marina. That's Borden as in Lizzie Borden, daughter of textile mill owner Andrew Borden who, along with his wife, was murdered in 1892 in a house about half a mile from the waterfront. The Lizzie Borden story pervades the city and is a huge draw for anyone fascinated by the case.
The Borden Light Marina is an immaculate 270-slip series of docks and pristine weathered-gray buildings that house the office, the showers and bathrooms, a pool and a floating tiki bar and restaurant--all owned by a hardworking 33-year-old visionary named Michael Lund. Drawing more and more transients from Connecticut and Long Island, the private marina sits in the foreground of an identically hued condo development. Nearly 20 years ago Mike's father bought slum property within a line's throw of the saltshaker lighthouse that bears the marina's name, took down the decrepit houses and began to install docks. Mike showed me a photo of what the marina property looked like back then, and I would venture to guess that most boaters would probably picture Fall River that way today. In some places it is, but certainly not here--and not a few hundred yards upriver either at Battleship Cove, which houses the world's largest assemblage of World War II naval ships.
Battleship Cove put Fall River on the map in 1965, when the 608-foot battleship USS Massachusetts came to stay. The destroyer Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (used in the movie Thirteen Days), the submarine Lionfish, a Russian-built missile corvette, PT boats and military aircraft followed over the years, and the museum now takes up acres of water beneath the 5,780-foot span of the Charles Braga (Interstate 195) bridge and hosts more than a hundred thousand visitors every year.
To understand Fall River from the water, I grabbed a ride with Chris Nardi, curator of Battleship Cove and director of the adult Community Boating program, on a small wooden skiff. Nardi pointed out what is so problematic and what is so right about Fall River as we traveled its shoreline. The waterfront is a jumbled collection of leafy and developed, industrial and residential. Buildings that in cities like Baltimore or Providence would have been converted to condos or retail/commercial complexes lie vacant or underused. The shoreline, now cut off from downtown by an ill-conceived multilevel roadway, will benefit from plans to demolish or reroute some arteries and create better access to the river, as well as from a project to reestablish rail service from Boston to Fall River by 2017.
Just north of the marina lie a still occupied but shabby building and several oil tanks. North of that, the floating behemoths in Battleship Cove adjoin the new Community Boating Center. A couple dozen Optimist Prams and Cape Cod Mercury sailboats zigzagged in front of us, skippered by 9- to 16-year-old junior sailors as part of the city's popular Community Boating program. Sitting behind it is a two-story clapboard structure that houses a historic 1920s carousel, with families happily entering and exiting like bees at a hive. Fifteen state moorings put visiting boaters in the shadow of the battleships.
As we made our way up the Taunton River, I saw joggers and walkers on the mile-long boardwalk that extends from Heritage State Park and Battleship Cove to leafy Bicentennial Park and its replica of the famous Iwo Jima statue. Despite its promise, Fall River remains, as tourist destinations go, a fractured city. Is it a historic textile city? Is it infamous as the home of Lizzie Borden? Is it a memorial to World War II? Is it the headquarters of the International Institute of Culinary Arts? Is it the place where inner-city kids learn to sail in the shadow of massive battleships? Is it where you can get the best Portuguese food around? Fall River is all of these things, I discovered. And, due to the confounding nature of its streets, it really is easier to come by boat.
"The Lizzie Borden House is less than a mile [uphill] from here," Michael Lund at the marina offered. So up the hill I hiked. Lee Ann Wilber and her boyfriend Don Woods bought the eight-room Lizzie Borden House Bed and Breakfast three years ago, after staying there over Valentine's Day in 2002. (The house first opened as an inn in 1996.) Weekends are often fully booked and between 10 and 100 people stop in each day to tour this macabre landmark.
Wilber, who drives a BMW with vanity plates "FRTYWX" (forty whacks), is a self-taught expert on the provocative Lizzie Borden case--a double murder of which Borden was acquitted. Publications with titles like Did Lizzie Borden Ax for It? line the B&B's bookshelves, along with newspaper clippings having to do with the case. On August 4, 1892, Lizzie's father Andrew and her stepmother Abby were found bludgeoned to death in their Second Street Greek Revival home. Spinster Lizzie, 32, and the housekeeper, Bridget Sullivan, 23, were home at the time of the murders, though both claimed that they heard nothing unusual. After the trial and her acquittal, Lizzie moved to a house she called Maplecroft in the fashionable part of town, where she died in 1927 at the age of 66.
I took the 11 a.m. tour of the forest-green three-story Borden house. Samantha, who wore silver hatchet earrings, led us first into the dining room where the Bordens had their last meal, then into the back parlor where Andrew was found lying on the sofa, his head on a blood-soaked pillow. Samantha took great delight in showing us photos of the crime scene, including shots of the bodies and the subsequent autopsies that were performed right away on the dining room table. Replicas of Andrew and Abby's skulls--or what was left of them after the murders--were displayed daintily in the dining room curio cabinet.
We then trudged upstairs, looking to our left about halfway up to see the room in which Abby Borden was discovered face down on the floor. Nineteen strokes from a hatchet had all but obliterated her head.
Theories abound about the case, which is still unsolved. There may have been a violent itinerant. Lizzie could have been abused by her father. Andrew (his net worth was estimated to be $12 million in today's dollars) was notoriously frugal, and Lizzie might have felt entitled to a more luxurious lifestyle. Lizzie was not fond of her stepmother; that much is known. Also known is that Abby Borden sustained 19 "whacks" to the head, while Andrew received 10. "Forty whacks" came from a children's jump-rope rhyme popular during the trial.
Lee Ann offered to put me up in the bedroom where Abby was axed to death and where a crime scene photo is displayed conspicuously on the wall. It's a charming room, with a beautiful carved bed, cream-colored crocheted bedspread and Victorian knick-knacks, but I just couldn't get past that bloody snapshot. I opted instead for Lizzie's room, an equally attractive space, because, honestly, I'd rather be where the murderer slept than where the killing occurred. But that's just me. Apparently the murder room is highly sought after, as evidenced by the fact that an annual eBay auction to spend the night in that room on the anniversary of the killings brings in around $1,000, which includes breakfast.
I was the only guest on this midweek night, and, as I was feeling slight unease at the thought of being in the infamous home by myself, Lee Ann offered to stay upstairs in Bridget's room after she ran a few errands. As the sun set I was just reading through a copy of the police's witness statements from the Borden murders, when an inhuman shriek emanated from behind the house. My rational mind identified it as some kind of exotic bird, but I could see how easy it would be to get spooked. When she got home Lee Ann spent an hour on "the sofa of death," telling me about moving furniture, incorporeal footsteps and lots of lost jewelry. It seems the late Mr. Borden has a penchant for baubles. I slept under the gaze of Lizzie herself--with the light on. Fortunately, no spirits interrupted my sleep.
The following morning, Dave Quigley, a storyteller and fount of information about Fall River and the Lizzie Borden House, came by to cook a breakfast modeled on the one the Bordens ate on that fateful day: johnnycakes and Irish soda bread, hold the three-day-old mutton stew. Quigley, the night manager of the bed-and-breakfast before Wilber and Woods took it over, says, "[In] 11 years, I never saw or heard anything strange."
After breakfast I set out to explore Fall River by land. Most attractions are within walking distance, especially those in the tony Highlands section of the city that sits high on a hill overlooking the Taunton River, where Victorian mansions are now being restored to their former glory. Two places that merit a visit but require a short drive are the graveyard where the Borden family is buried and the Fall River Bioreserve, which has miles of trails around the city's reservoir.
Seeking a location for his International Institute of Culinary Arts (IICA), restaurateur Georg Karousos chose to renovate a beautiful limestone church that was once the centerpiece of the Highlands but had fallen into decay. Karousos, a native of Greece (who came to the U.S., he says, "with Christopher Columbus") and his wife Anna preside over this cooking school and its training restaurant, the Abbey Grill, in the church that is known to have been Lizzie's house of worship, which they literally saved from the wrecking ball. The Abbey Grill's interior took my breath away. A sparkling chandelier hung from a three-story vaulted ceiling, young chefs bustled about in an open stainless-steel kitchen and light streamed through stained-glass windows.
The IICA offers both a two-year culinary arts and a one-year culinary certification program. "I'm very proud of the one-year students--many would otherwise be out on the streets," Karousos said. "One who was in and out of the courts just got a $45,000 job doing what he loves to do: cook." If these newly graduated chefs regularly turn out the caliber of fare I had for lunch--delectable fried portabella mushroom fries with garlic mayo and a shrimp risotto with sweet orange sauce--I can see how they'd be in high demand.
From the Abbey Grill it's a short walk to the Fall River Historical Society, located in former mill magnate David Brayton's home, a beautifully preserved granite Greek revival mansion. Its stenciled 14-foot ceilings, dramatic interior colors, oval dining room with unusual curved cabinet doors and indoor plumbing were features of "a typical house on the hill" in the 1800s. The Historical Society also maintains a comprehensive archive of the Borden case, including the handleless hatchet purportedly used to do the whacking.
Artifacts and models of the Fall River steamships, which ran from 1847 until 1937, can be found in the quirky Maritime Museum adjacent to Battleship Cove. It's worth a visit, if only to learn the story of a one-industry town at its height told via its maritime history and to see the massive model of the Titanic used in the 1958 movie A Night to Remember.
I spent a good part of the day at Battleship Cove with CEO Jack Casey and still saw just a fraction of the seemingly endless exhibits. I discovered that the USS Massachusetts ("Big Mamie") is 108 feet wide (two feet narrower than the Panama Canal) and was victorious in the Battle of Casablanca and that the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. stopped freighters thought to be carrying nuclear-tipped missiles during the Cuban missile crisis. On the day I visited, over a dozen former sailors who had shipped out of Newport in 1951 (during the Korean War) on the USS Ware were reminiscing and showing their wives what life was like on board. I saw enough torpedoes, rifles, mess halls, officers' quarters, vintage urinals, diesel-smelling engine rooms, watertight doors, sick bays and other floating implements of destruction (including the shells from 16-inch guns that weigh as much as a Volkswagen Beetle) to gain a far greater appreciation of that life. And a photo of the USS Cole, attacked by terrorists in 2000, brought home the courage of those who continue to serve.
Just up the hill, a couple of blocks from the marina, Christopher Street is best known for its authentic Portuguese restaurants and bakeries. Fall River, always an ethnically diverse city due to the mills, is now 65 percent Portuguese-American. I indulged in an extraordinary meal at Sagres, owned and operated by Victor Silva. Silva's father commands the kitchen while Victor works the inviting, lemon-yellow dining room. I was envious of the regulars, for whom sinfully fresh and creamy goat cheese, tantalizing shrimp scampi, scallops Mozambique and a perfect flan are within nightly reach. I understood why boaters and other visitors from out of town make a beeline to this place.
Textile mills and murders, battleships and epicurean delights--because this destination has been so regularly avoided by boaters in the past, I was surprised at the depth of my experience here. In Fall River I learned a lot, ate irresistible and inventive food, met progressive locals and--thankfully--was left alone by the diamond-and-gold-pinching ghost of Andrew Borden.
Frequent Northeast Boating contributor Malerie Yolen-Cohen visits Northeast destinations from her homeport of Stamford, Connecticut.
For the angler The season starts with tasty tautog and wraps up with a smorgasbord of gamesters in late fall.
by Tom Schlichter The waters around Fall River offer lots of fishing opportunities, most within the protected confines of the Sakonnet River, Mount Hope Bay and Narragansett Bay.
Early-season anglers can kick things off with tautog at the Stone Bridge, Railroad Bridge and Common Fence Point in April, but the best action starts in May with the arrival of striped bass. Local sharpies take plenty of schoolies on white or bunker-pattern Tsunami Shads, Storm Wildeye Shads and pearl Slug-Gos. The smaller bass tend to patrol bridges, rivers, docks and other shoreline structure, while keepers up to 30 pounds prefer channel edges and prominent points as they pursue schools of herring. The big bass can be targeted with chunks of mackerel or bunker, but note that it's illegal to use river herring for bait. Last year saw tremendous striper action on the huge schools of bunker that gathered in upper Narragansett Bay through mid-July.
As striper action hits its peak in early June, scup begin to gather around high points in 12 to 25 feet of water. Tasty and aggressive, these saltwater "panfish" run one to three pounds and will eagerly attack bits of sea clam or sandworm throughout the Sakonnet River. You can usually find them over structure in 12 to 20 feet of water off Taylors Lane, Island Park, the Hummocks or Fog Landing.
July, August and September mark the annual invasion of bluefish. "The cocktails and snappers rush in here at the end of July and everyone has a ball catching them on small KastMasters, Snapper Stoppers and--the secret weapon--Mustad FRW4 flash foil herring rigs," reveals John Viveiros at Main Bait and Tackle in Fall River (508-679-3853). "In August, monster blues to 15 pounds enter the river, smashing two-ounce silver Creek Chub poppers and Hopkins Shorty tins like they are going out of style."
When anglers are able to get their baits through the blues, fluke can provide plenty of fun off Sakonnet Point. Keepers are most plentiful in 40 to 60 feet of water during the summer. Flatfish fans often tip their green Chincoteague rigs with squid strips to routinely nail fish in the three- to five-pound class, but much larger fish are available. "Many large fluke fall to Pacific herring, Peruvian smelt and dead bunker with a sinker stuffed in their mouths and 'yo-yoed' off the bottom," adds Viveiros.
Run "outside" during September and October, when false albacore, bonito and sometimes school bluefin blitz the waters between Sakonnet Point and the Buzzards Bay tower. "To find the tuna, work within a four- to five-mile radius of Sakonnet Point and watch for diving birds," advises Viveiros. "Deadly Dicks, Hopkins spoons and Grim Reapers catch all three species. Closer to shore the fall run of blues and stripers continues well into November."
Fall River at a glance Getting There Enter Narragansett Bay and pass under the Newport Bridge heading north. Follow the East Passage channel. At the flashing red bell "SP" head northeast, leaving Hog Island Lighthouse to port, and pass under the Mount Hope Bridge. Follow the well-marked channel north into Mount Hope Bay to the Borden Flats Lighthouse. Borden Light Marina is east of the lighthouse. Battleship Cove is a half mile farther up the coast. Use NOAA chart 13227.
Marinas and Anchorages Fall River's only full-service marina, Borden Light Marina (508-678-7547; www.bordenlight.com) has room for transients at $2 per foot per night when seasonal renters are away. Just steps from Battleship Cove and other Fall River attractions, the marina also offers WiFi, a pool and a floating tiki bar. The Community Boating Center (508-324-4345) rents moorings in Battleship Cove. There is no launch service, but you can tie a dinghy to the boating center dock and spend the day exploring.
Attractions With the world's largest collection of WWII Navy ships and designated a national historic landmark, Battleship Cove (508-678-1100; www.battleshipcove.org) is a huge draw for Boy and Girl Scouts, scholars of the Second World War, those who served on these powerful fighting vessels and anyone interested in getting up close and personal with acres of floating gray. For an unparalleled family experience, spend a night aboard the USS Massachusetts. Within the Heritage State Park, the Fall River Carousel is housed in a two-story Victorian pavilion. Next door the Marine Museum at Fall River (508-674-3533) displays artifacts and models from the glory days of the luxurious Fall River Steamboat Line and is home to a 28-foot mock-up of the Titanic used in the 1958 movie A Night to Remember. A visit to the Fall River Historical Society (508-679-1071; www.lizzieborden.org) provides a glimpse of the good life in the Highlands section of town, where most mill owners lived. The mansion contains period furnishings and a comprehensive exhibit on Lizzie Borden, who allegedly murdered her father and stepmother but was acquitted in 1892. You can visit the Lizzie Borden House (508-675-7333; www.lizzie-borden.com), where guided tours, offered every hour on the hour from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., take you through the scene of the murders. For more information on visiting Fall River, check out www.fallriverma.org.
Restaurants Fall River is home to the International Institute of Culinary Arts (IICA), located in a beautifully restored church. The Abbey Grill (508-679-9108; www.iicaculinary.com), the IICA training restaurant, also occupies the magnificent soaring space where Lizzie Borden used to worship. Chefs-in-training work the stoves in an open kitchen, and restaurant patrons are the beneficiaries. Charming and moderately priced Sagres (508-675-7018) consistently earns high ratings from locals and tourists. Fresh-from-the-creamery goat cheese, paella, ambrosial flan and other Portuguese delights are served on white linen tables in a lemon-yellow dining room. At the colorful and eclectic Waterstreet Café (508-672-8748; www.waterstreetcafe.com) across from Battleship Cove, you can order Mexican quesadillas with a side of Mediterranean falafel.
Nightlife The Narrows Center for the Arts (508-324-1926), located in the waterfront district in an old mill building, hosts national and local performing and visual artists in a 280-seat sunlit space. Waterstreet Café bebops from Thursday through Sunday nights, offering "Jamaroke" sessions that encourage both musicians and singers to get in the act.
Lodging At the Lizzie Borden Bed & Breakfast (508-675-7333; www.lizzie-borden.com), Lizzie's room and the rooms in which the murders took place have been meticulously restored. Rates include an extended tour of the house and a bountiful breakfast replicating the Bordens' last meal. If you can get past the crime-scene photos on the walls, the inn is charming and comfortable--and it's a short stroll from the Portuguese dining section of town.
