The Famous Red Shack in Rockport, Massachusetts

From Gloucester, we drove along the rock-strewn coastline dotted with pretty houses and estates enroute to Rockport.

Rockport is another English colony coastal town in Cape Ann, and like the former, it was oozing with New England charm.

This seaside town, an active fishing community in the 1700s, is now a mecca for artists, craftsmen, photographers, and art enthusiasts. And this was clearly evident as we strolled the Bear Skin Neck Street, Main Street, and Beach Street lined with unique boutiques for fine arts, handcrafted items, jewelry, and other interesting wares. These unique independent shops are housed in bright and colourful wooden buildings.

And because we were there during the fall, there were decorations in street corners consisting of haystacks and scarecrows in various shapes and sizes, including goth pirates and rocker pumpkin heads.

There were also musicians and street performers at every corner. We were surprised to see a Peruvian band in this New England town. The musicians were dressed in bright red, striped alpaca ponchos and played Indigenous Andean tunes with their bamboo flutes and small guitars. They were even selling their CDs.

After listening to a couple of songs, we walked on and headed to Front Beach, the town’s main beach directly behind the shops. It is mostly sandy but has a few rocky areas. We had a nice stroll and just watched the waves.

Rockport is directly east of Gloucester and is surrounded on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean. You could see water that stretches as far as the eyes can see and lots of boats everywhere!

The most iconic and most photographed area of Rockport is the Bradley Wharf with the red fishing shack known as Motif #1. The original was built in the 1840s to house fishing supplies, then turned into an artist’s studio in the 1930s, but destroyed in a blizzard sometime in the 1970s. The locals constructed a replica which now functions as a monument to the area’s veterans.

Now, why would a fishing shack be generically named “motif?” The story actually has its roots in art. A “motif” in art is a recurring element, theme, symbol, or pattern within a single artwork or across an artist's body of work.

As Rockport gained notoriety as an artists’ haven, painters flocked to the town to capture the true-blue New England scenes. One artist who taught painting classes there in the summer would send his students out to paint whatever scenes caught their eyes. He noticed that most of his students favoured this little red building over anything else on Rockport’s seaside landscape. I guess they considered it to be the best and prettiest representation of a New England fishing town.

The art teacher, upon receiving different renditions of the shack again and again, would blurt something like this out – “Motif #1 again?” And the name stuck.

Apparently, it is the most painted building in America with various artists featuring this in their canvasses. If you are into coastal paintings, you might have come across this red shack. And apparently, since the director of the animation film, Finding Nemo, is from Rockport, he featured a painting of this shack on the wall of the dental clinic's reception area. Remember Darla? I should re-watch the movie and look for that painting in this scene.

Since my husband and I are not artists, we just took pictures of Motif #1 then continued our exploration. We even ventured into the residential section to escape the crowds and to admire the quaint cottages with gardens abloom with seaside flowers.

We capped the afternoon off with a bowl of clam chowder for me and another lobster roll for him (we already had some at Gloucester that morning). He said this one was better.

Then we bade goodbye to this quintessential New England beach town as our bus took us back to our ship.

I certainly developed a deeper appreciation for the whimsical appeal and nautical charm of these Cape Ann towns. If I lived in East Coast America, I think New England would definitely be at the top of my list for a retirement place (but in the West Coast, it would have to be the Pacific Northwest region).