As La Plage reopens this week — and the adjacent Inn at Longshore gets ready for its renovation, and the entire park gears up for summer — let’s look back to an earlier incarnation.
Long before the town of Westport bought a failing private country club in 1960, all 180 acres were owned by Frederick E. Lewis.
He was a multimillionaire, back when the term meant something.
The Texas oilman had quite an estate. Here’s a view — taken, presumably, by a still-new-fangled aeroplane — in the 1920s.
(Photo courtesy of Christopher Maroc)
There was no golf course or pool. There was, however, a (decorative) lighthouse — the conical structure near the top of the photo, next to what appears to be a boathouse for Lewis’ yacht.
The lighthouse survived through the 1960s.
(Photo courtesy of Peter Barlow)
What is now the Inn is shown at the lower right.
It was something to see. Here’s a close-up:
(Photo/courtesy of Alden Bryan)
What went on at that property, we can only guess.
We do know one thing, though: Harry Houdini performed an escape trick in the water by the dock.
The date was June 30, 1917. The event was a Red Cross And Allied War charities drive. Click here for that very cool story, from the “06880” archives. It includes details of a rare video taken then (below).
It purports to show his escape. According to a YouTube commenter though, that footage was spliced in from Houdini’s film “The Master Mystery.”
After today’s Friday Flashback, you’ll never look at Longshore the same way again. (Hat tip: Scott Smith)
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On the “Westport, Connecticut: Old Photos from the Westport of Our Youth” page, Colabella — the young Representative Town Meeting member who was not even alive when the Longshore bathhouses were torn down — posted what is said to be the only surviving film of Houdini doing his “overboard box escape.”