After ten weeks of the Newton Photo Scavenger Hunt, we have a winner! Seventeen people identified one or more of the 50 objects that are odd or charming — and rather unique, rather permanent, and visible from publicly accessible property. Among these folks, the winner @Michael stands out, with 14 points, for his clever sleuthing and amazing walking energy (12-15 miles a day). @DaveBrigham came in second with 8 points, powered by his long-time research in this field for his blog, The Backside of America. @LisaP and @JohnQPublic tied for third place with 5 points each.
Only 3 of the photos remain unidentified: 22. Phone Booth, 37 Ceramic with Message, and 48 USA Map. @Michael will be awarded his First Place Mug and restaurant gift certificate at the site of the Phone Booth once the mug is ready, in a couple of weeks. The locations of the other two photos will be revealed in the comments below over the next week, in case anyone still wants to pursue them in the next few days.
51. Street Art
Big news! The successor to 16 Graffiti Face has been found. Unfortunately, that first object had been painted over, perhaps because it had been misnamed. Its successor, 51 Street Art, is more aptly named, is thus more likely to endure, and has yet to be found. Perhaps only a @Michael-class sleuth can find it, since it was @Michael who brought it to my attention. Thank you all for your interest in the Newton Photo Scavenger Hunt!
Congratulations Michael. Not only did you identify the most images, but you showed a tremendous knowledge of this City. Well done, you.
Lisa
Thanks Lisa, this was so much fun!
Bruce, the scavenger hunt really made my family’s summer and we’re grateful for all of the effort you put into its creation! It was extremely well-done in terms of the quality of the items and the respect for the scavenger hunters’ intelligence – the items were never easy but also never impossible (except for maybe one!), the field of view was always perfectly measured so as to not give anything away, there were very few if any items that were actually google-able, and it depicted a beautiful cross-section of the city’s villages (with the possible exception of the fictional village of Thompsonville, which we all know to be about as real as the red phone booth).
And it was both timeless and perfectly timed – for us it cured the geographical claustrophobia of 2020 that we’d gotten from foreign travel being cancelled, the Canadian border being closed, the Maine quarantine restrictions, Massachusetts essentially making day trips to Rhode Island illegal, even travel on the MBTA remaining too risky, etc. This was the perfect year for getting (re)acquainted with our own backyard. I’m an on-and-off lifetime Needhamite (and even a one-time Newtonian for a few years), but over the course of the scavenger hunt I came to realize that my true familiarity with Newton had been pretty much confined to the corridors from Needham through the Highlands and the Centre into Boston. Now I can appreciate what a genuinely beautiful and culturally rich city the entirety of Newton is – beautiful and well-maintained parks in all corners of the city, outstanding architecture, rich history, tons of natural beauty, and (by American standards) comfortable walking and biking infrastructure. I’m not sure if most of you Newtonians appreciate how lucky you are.
I love the looks of the mug but the greatest reward was discovering parts of the city I genuinely had no idea about, and particularly taking our three-year-old to the general vicinity of the hunt items and letting her joyfully “discover” them while we pretended to be looking in the other direction – “I found it! I found it! It’s over there!” We’re carefully managing our upcoming visits to the 20 or so scavenger hunt sites that we haven’t yet visited in order to maximize those moments. Once we’ve exhausted them, we’re hoping for either a) another scavenger hunt next year or b) one or more grandchildren to do this with in another few decades. I’m glad that Jerry created the “Timeless Village 14 Posts” category for easy reference. Well done, Bruce!
I definitely value Village14 as a forum for discussing the issues of the day in Newton. During this summer though, in between taking my turn at endlessly moaning or opining about candidates, or schools, or zoning – along would come one of Bruce’s Scavenger Hunt posts to brighten my day.
Thanks for all the time and work that went into this project.
p.s. So sorry for accidentally stepping on one of your treasures before the hunt began.
Congrats @Michael! Thanks for running this scavenger hunt, @Bruce! And thanks for linking to my blog…I hope to get out in coming weeks to shoot photos for the blog around Newton, especially villages I have yet to cover in my series, “I Seek Newton”: Nonantum (I’m almost done with this), Newton Centre, Newtonville, Newton Corner and West Newton.
For those of us who are intrigued but have not done much walking this summer (since the tennis courts were open, my #1 exercise of choice) can you give us clues for the unfound pictures; maybe the village name or even better the neighborhood: Auburndale, by the river; NH north west section etc…
Thank you again, Bruce!!
@isabelle: Sure.
For #48 USA Map, @Lisap has suggested two elementary schools as possible locations (Mason-Rice and Underwood). Those were reasonable guesses but not where this map is. I’d suggest walking around other elementary schools or places that look like elementary schools.
In one of his comments, @Michael has surmised that the vegetation around #37 Ceramic With a Message seems to indicate it’s near a river. It’s near water, for sure, but that water might or might not be flowing. Also, this object is one of two photos for which I had to modify one of the rules. I used to say, “visible from public property,” but this and one other are actually only “visible from publicly accessible property.” (The other is on the grounds of the Durant-Kenrick House, which I thought was on city property, but it’s owned by a nonprofit.) Same situation with this one.
This might not help so much, but if you’re talking in 22 Phone Booth, you might want to pause your conversation when a Green Line train goes by. I say “might” because I haven’t set foot in that phone booth, as it’s not on public property…but you can see it from public property, although it’s easy to overlook. I stopped by yesterday to make sure it’s there, and I almost missed it!
I thought I had spotted #51 today but alas it is a different one, apparently by the same artist, on the mailbox on Allerton road in front of Weeks house…
Thanks for the hints Bruce, I was beginning to think that phone booth had left our temporal plane carrying Bill and Ted…
Over the course of the scavenger hunt, Chestnut St. emerged as a key corridor, and I appreciate that little Russian market over in Waban Village, so I walked that street many times with my wide eyes open for the red phone booth around the Green Line underpass, especially around the pink flamingo property on the corner of Collins Road, but I wasn’t able to find it.
Now I’m thinking that maybe Bruce’s Green Line reference could be a red herring pointing to the D-branch, which is what you would think of when you think of the Green Line in Newton, when in fact the city line runs through the B-branch’s Boston College station, and someplace like say, the White Mountain Creamery would be within Green Line earshot. This strip of land alongside the BC station fence is even owned by the city of Newton, via the gold course. I can’t think of where a red phone booth would hide around there, though.
There’s not a lot of standing water in Newton – if #37 Ceramic with a Message is indeed next to a pond or lake then the candidates would be Bullough’s Pond or Crystal Lake – both locations where it would have been long ago discovered – or else Hammond Pond, or the pond at UMass/Mt. Ida (across from which there’s a cool but unfortunately neglected sculpture by Susumu Shingu). There’s also Waban Hill Reservoir (it’s not there), the pond in Edmands Park (I never saw it there), some tiny ponds in the Newton Cemetery, some even tinier ponds along the river in Nahanton Park and Oak Hill Park, and the lake at the Brae Burn Country Club that’s the source of Cheesecake Brook (but it probably wouldn’t be a wise idea to put a ceramic sculpture next to a golf course). Am I missing anything?
Last weekend we searched for #37 in Kennard Park (where they were setting up a new sculpture trail) and then hiked up to Houghton Garden where we found the #49 stone bench – along the way we poked around as much of the Hammond Pond shoreline as was accessible, and we hiked back past Lost Pond with its quaking bog. Our logic was that there appears to be some sort of black tubular railing on a staircase in the background of the picture in #37 which we thought might be either “The Street” (Hammond Pond) or the buildings of the Brookline dump (Lost Pond). We couldn’t match it to either, but we did made a couple of interesting discoveries: 1) Lost Pond is entirely in Brookline and thus outside of the scavenger hunt’s jurisdiction, and 2) The Container Store has evidently executed a successful business model of selling 50 cent hunks of plastic (e.g. “freezer bins”) for $30 a pop. Good for them!
@Michael, it’s way too late in the game to introduce any red herrings! Those flamingos, if real and flying at top speed, could reach the Phone Booth in 12 seconds (not counting take-off time).
And your list of bodies of water in Newton is missing the one by which #37 stands. Someone took an award-winning photo of a heron there in 2016, and there was no red herring in sight.
@Bruce, I get a top speed for plastic flamingos of 35mph * 1/300th of an hour = 616 feet, give or take a feather?
I just realized that I missed Dolan Pond, which I’ve never visited but would like to do in the next couple of days if I can make it there before sundown.
Other than that, the part of the river that abuts Auburndale Park is technically a cove so not really flowing, and to the north Purgatory Cove is definitely stagnant, with blue-green algae to boot – but that’s in Waltham. We walked the path at nearby Flowed Meadow on Sunday and showed the photo to a couple of the neighbors who hadn’t ever seen it, but that might be worth revisiting.
The “only visible from publicly accessible property” caveat is certainly a complicating factor.
Wait a second…”might or might not be flowing…” I see what you did there. Back to Auburndale for us.
@Michael: Your estimate of the speed of flamingos matches mine.
It’s way too late for red herrings, so I’ll just say that this body of water is NOT flowing. And it was once owned by Eddie Haskell(!). Yep, back in 1895, when he lived in The Castle nearby (which was in his wife’s name). The next person to own The Castle scraped up the money for it by selling newspapers. A big part of The Castle is on the market now for $2.8M.
I love these hints coming fast and furious
A hint for the third remaining photo: #48 USA Map is near a building that used to be a Newton elementary school. I think that narrows it down to buildings used for Claflin, Davis, Emerson, Hamilton, Horace Mann, Hyde, Memorial, Oak Hill, and Peirce.
Mr. Henderson’s hints and clues for #37 Ceramic with a Message suggest the body of water in background is the small pond at Lasell Village and #37 is visible either along the Seminary Ave walkway through campus or near junction of Hawthorne Ave & Aspen Ave. All sleuthing done virtually.
Hmmm… I wonder who will venture forth to see if @JohnQPublic’s sleuthing bears fruit in the non-virtual world, Whoever finds #37 Ceramic with a Message, wherever it may be, should tell us, in summary, what the message is about.
Overheard this evening 616 feet away from the intersection of Chestnut Street and Collins Road:
Man with Needham accent, showing his phone to passing couple: “Excuse me, have you ever seen this red phone booth in the neighborhood?”
Man with South Kensington accent: “We have not, but it’s not as if we would ever notice something like that.”
There are 2 ponds missing from Michael’s list: the one in front of City hall and the one at the corner of Quinobequin and Radcliffe Rd. One of them closer to the Green line than the other.
Ceramic Pot found at Lasell Village. Message about gun deaths in America.
@JohnQPublic: Correct! That pond is sometimes called Lasell Pond and sometimes Haskell Pond, for the Haskell family that owned the mansion on the nearby hill on Vista Ave. Near the pond there are several art works created by Lasell Village residents. This ceramic pot is one of them, and the sign by it says:
Ceramic Pot about Gun Deaths by Peter Stringham
In 2018, 39,773 Americans suffered gun deaths — about 100 people a day. …
In 2019, Lasell students and Village residents wrote on ribbons “what they would lose if they were killed by a gunshot…what their family would lose…and what society would lose.”
The ribbons were stuffed into the bullet holes that fill the vase.
On April 23, 2019 at the end of a forum discussing the causes of gun deaths the ribbons were doused with lighter fluid and set on fire. The ribbons are gone; the ceramic holes like the results of gun deaths may last for centuries.
Sensible gun laws can decrease these needless deaths.
@Michael: Your First Place Winner Mug is ready! You’ll be the honored guest at a rather informal award ceremony at 6:15PM tomorrow (9/23) …at the Phone Booth! I hope you can be there. ;-) Everyone’s invited! Masks required.
One more clue: The Phone Booth is located about half-way along the street that is NOT in this list but should be: Bigelow, Etsy Farm, Fairlee, Hancock, Hollis, Kennedy, Kingston, Levbert, Mary Ellen, Oakmont, Oldham, Parkway, Pickwick, Pond, Ridge, Rockledge, Ruane, Sheffield, Solon, Stanton, Village, Warren, and Wesley.
@Bruce thanks for running the Scavenger Hunt series this summer. But I just off the top of my head thought of three streets that would fit into that list. Maybe I correctly detected another pattern, or one of us is wrong? Montvale Crescent, Beecher Terrace, Farina Road
(No idea if the phone booth is on any of those streets)
Thanks. @Jeremy! Those are three excellent additions to the list of streets that have something in common but do NOT have the Phone Booth!
Bruce. Many thanks for this remarkable post. You have made all of us far more aware of hidden and obscure gems that have gone unnoticed for years, indeed centuries.
I tried: alphabetical order; but why would there be 3 Ps and 3S. I tried neighborhood.
What else can I try?
Thanks to you, Bruce (and Jerry), I discovered the Weeks Hill Stonehenge on Monday and was able to ‘see the light’. What fun!!!
@Isabelle: It may help to look at those streets on a map. Include Jeremy’s additions, too, if you wish. Maybe I’ll see you at 6:15PM today at the Phone Booth.
The Phone Booth has been found! Right on schedule, as documented in this photo, @JohnQPublic, @Michael, and I convened in the middle of Larchmont Rd (yes, a U-shaped street surrounding a single block, just like the other streets on that list) for @Michael to receive the First Place Winner Mug.
We were fortunate to meet the owner of the Phone Booth, who told us that he and his wife have thought for a while now that their British phone box would sooner or later be in a scavenger hunt.
Thanks again to all who participated!
Now where is that #49 USA Map? ;-)
USA map found. Hiding in plain sight behind hedge at corner Albemarle Rd & Watertown St. Photos upon request.
Nice job, John Q! My daughter’s been asking about that at least twice a day…I hope we can squeeze in a visit to Albemarle before sunset.
@JohnQPublic: Correct! The “old” Horace Mann School. My apologies for taking so long to reply. I thought this game was over. ;-)
‘What? Over? Did you say over?” I refer you to Bluto’s big speech in Animal House.
Time for Mr. Henderson to start a new, Fall 2020 Newton Scavenger Hunt!
@JohnQPublic: Well, you could start looking for #51 Street Art, which has been waiting a while to be found. And here’s a new one: #52. Tiger. Don’t get too close!
@Bruce Henderson – Yikes! I thought the coyotes were bad.
#52 Tiger was spotted in Upper Falls:
https://village14.com/2021/04/11/sign-up-for-newtonserves-this-week/#comment-126099
And his friend Leopard was striped:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObpcGNCU944