Harwich Got Its Town Hall From a West Harwich Coffee Man for $1

At Main Street and Route 124 in Harwich Center, there's a stone on a pedestal with a building carved into its face.

The building is gone. It came down in 1964. For nearly eighty years, though, it was where Harwich voted, graduated, skated, went to the theater and stored its cranberries. And the town got it from a West Harwich man for one dollar.

The Seventeenth Child Went to Boston

Caleb Chase was born on December 11, 1831, the youngest of seventeen children of Captain Job Chase. His father was a shipowner. In a West Harwich family like that, the sea was the expected career.

Caleb went to Boston instead.

He worked his way through the city's dry goods and grocery trade. In 1878 he and James Sanborn went into business as Chase & Sanborn. The company became known for packing roasted coffee in sealed cans, and it grew fast. The National Register nomination for his West Harwich library describes it as "the largest coffee company in America." Later writers took to calling him a coffee king.

He lived in Brookline. But he kept coming home, summering in West Harwich at the family place he called Good Cheer.

Roller Rink Upstairs, Cranberries in the Cellar

Harwich had already lost one Exchange. The first burned in 1876 and took many early town records with it.

In 1884 local businessman Chester Snow announced a $40,000 investment in a new one. It opened in 1885 at Harwich Center, 58 by 100 feet, and it held nearly everything.

Stores, the post office and town offices were on the ground floor. An 800-seat auditorium with a stage filled the second. The third had an octagonal roller-skating rink. A cupola sat on top. Down in the massive cellar went cranberries, and in later years the police used part of it as a shooting range.

Town elections were usually held there on a Monday in February. So were high school graduations and summer theater.

Snow sold the Exchange to Caleb Chase. Chase, in Cape Cod LIFE's words, "promptly sold the structure to the town for $1." The National Register nomination dates his gift to 1893. From then on it served the town as its town hall.

The Town Chose Bell's Neck

By the 1960s the Exchange was old and expensive, and Harwich had a decision to make.

Voters were asked to choose between keeping the historic building and buying the 259-acre Bell's Neck Conservation Lands around the Herring River. They chose Bell's Neck.

Demolition began in November 1964. It took nearly two months and $16,800. The cupola came down on November 17.

People who walk the Bell's Neck trails today are walking through the choice Harwich made instead of saving the Exchange.

A $2,100 Library on Route 28

Chase kept giving back to West Harwich. In 1905 a group called the Sunshine Club started a small library. Around 1906 Caleb and Salome Chase offered a house on Main Street for it, but a purpose-built library won out. Dr. John P. Nickerson gave the land, and Chase paid for the building, $2,100. The library's own history still lists the stove at $31.45 and the wall paint at $52.70.

Caleb Chase died at his Brookline home in November 1908. Harwich's town report records his $10,000 bequest for the care of the poor. He is buried in Pine Grove Cemetery in West Harwich.

The Exchange is a picture on a stone now. The library is still open on Route 28, and the marsh at Bell's Neck is still there.

Chase Library | 7 Route 28, West Harwich · Tue 10–4, Sat 10–2 (check the library site before you go)
Exchange Building marker | Main Street at Route 124, Harwich Center