Yet another charming and venerable homestead at Old Buttonwoods is about to bite the dust. Built in 1896 by the family of Hope Austin, our one-time neighbor, the Elsbree-Austin Cottage is not long for this world. Bay breezes and views of Greenwich Bay, Brushneck Cove and Buttonwoods Point, along with playscapes of virtually every kind, magnified the magic of Hope's growing years.

The new owners of this handsome Victorian cottage, from Burlington, Massachusetts, will be tearing it down, according to an advertisement in the Beacon.

When Hope was a child, she would regularly see residents of Oakland Beach walking along Buttonwoods Avenue, the street in front of her porch, enroute to the Buttonwoods Beach Post Office to mail letters. There was no other post office nearby in those days. On their return trip, they would walk to Buttonwoods Point and climb up on the Suburban Railroad trolley bridge back to Oakland Beach.

In her elder years, Hope was our next-door neighbor. We'd sit with her on her front porch as she reminisced fondly (and interestingly) about the olden days, including May Day events with girls weaving ribbons around a May pole, and plays that she starred in at the Buttonwoods Casino. Her love and knowledge of classical music was another conversational highlight, as well as stories of the Brown students with whom she shared her parents' large house on the East Side. 

Her classic brown Volvo, which she cared for meticulously, was the envy of many students.

Hope would chuckle and shrug at the signs and assumptions made about “Private Buttonwoods!” From her position as treasurer of the Buttonwood Beach Association (the BBA), she regarded those aspirations to exclusivity as "jokes."

Her family and friends included cousins on Twelfth Avenue, the widow Mary Sweet, an aunt, a grandnephew, Michael (who played with our daughter), and the perennially young and much sought-after widower, Sam Otis Sr.

Our daughter babysat for Charlie Rice’s kids, who came along afterward, the grandchildren of Hope’s associate, Wayland Rice, a "Father of Buttonwoods" and BBA president.

Hope knew intuitively, and perhaps even legally, the truth about “Private Buttonwoods.” In her youth, Old Buttonwoods was a very public place. The people from Oakland Beach, and others who walked from the Budlong Farm Campground, knew to get their mail at the Buttonwoods Post Office. Standalone post offices are public places.

Charlie Cutter, who lived by the Carpenter Cemetery next to the old Oxnard Pharmacy / CVS, was another steady presence, digging clams at Old Buttonwoods and selling them off his cart. Harnessing his willing wife to his cart, Charlie rolled regularly through "Buttonwoods Proper" laden with his harvest. Henry Budlong, founder of the Apponaug Library, sold, or perhaps gave, Charlie a lot by the creek to build his hut.

Hope experienced the end of the horse-and-buggy age, saw the BBA horse stable revenues dry up, witnessed the end of the 40-acre Buttonwoods Dairy Farm in the 1942 fire, ending a significant revenue stream to the BBA, and watched her father’s involvement in the formation of the Buttonwoods Fire District, the governmental entity that took over the maintenance of the Buttonwoods streets using public tax revenues when private funds dried up 100 years ago.

Then as now, the Fire District has been directed by the General Assembly to maintain the Buttonwoods streets for the public and report its tax revenues and public appropriations back to the auditor general on an annual basis. Hope scoffed at the idea that these were special private taxes set up to make Buttonwoods private.

The trolleys were never far from Hope’s life. Her father, Eugene Elsbree, was paralyzed in a tragic College Hill runaway trolley accident in June 1942. It lost its brakes in the tunnel and crashed into Canal Street, killing a pedestrian.

She took care of her father, the owner of the Valleau Elsbree store in Providence, until he died in 1952. Soon after that, Hope's husband, a jewelry manufacturer, suffered a stroke. She took care of him until he died in 1979, keeping him in shape to run his plant.

Hope died at age 95 in 1996, having cared for many needy people for 54 years.

The Buttonwoods Suburban Trolley tracks washed away during the Hurricane of 1938. Now, Hope's home too will be crushed to dust – not a problem for this progressive and high-minded denizen of Heaven.

However, Hope’s laughter about old and new residents of Old Buttonwoods who put up and then passionately defend “No Trespassing” signs, will live on.

The Coastal Resources Management Council’s Rights-of-Way Subcommittee will consider my motion for summary judgment on May 27 to revisit a simpler time at Old Buttonwoods when the streets were dedicated to the public. They still are.

Through this motion, the CRMC may soon recognize Buttonwoods as the public place that it always has been since Colonial times. If CRMC says yes, and calls for a public hearing this summer, and then recognizes Buttonwoods Avenue as a right-of-way to the shore, all of us will be, as were our forebears, happy and relaxed as we walk or drive down Buttonwoods Avenue to the sea. We may even find ourselves admiring the McMansion that will have replaced the Elsbree-Austin cottage.

 (Go to the Saving R.I. Coastal Access / Rights of Way Facebook Page for more information on preserving the more than 100 rights-of-way to the shore in Warwick, founded by the grandson of the manager of the old Rocky Point Amusement Park, Conrad Ferla III.)