Editing Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts (section)

==History==
The first inhabitants of Oak Bluffs were the [[Wampanoag]] people, who have lived on Martha's Vineyard (Wampanoag name: Noepe) for approximately 10,000 years.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.wampanoagtribe.net/Pages/Wampanoag_WebDocs/history_culture |title=Wampanoag Tribe - History & Culture |access-date=September 20, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060715073751/http://www.wampanoagtribe.net/Pages/Wampanoag_WebDocs/history_culture |archive-date=July 15, 2006 |url-status=dead }}</ref> The area that is now Oak Bluffs was called "Ogkeshkuppe," which means "damp/wet thicket or woods."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://history.vineyard.net/dukes/bnk2ob_3.htm|title = Annals of Oak Bluffs by Dr. Charles e. Banks}}</ref>

The area was later settled by Europeans in 1642 and was part of [[Edgartown, Massachusetts|Edgartown]] until 1880, when it was officially incorporated as Cottage City. The town re-incorporated in 1907 as Oak Bluffs, named because the town was the site of an [[oak]] grove along the bluffs overlooking [[Nantucket Sound]]. Oak Bluffs was the only one of the six towns on the island to be consciously planned, and the only one developed specifically with tourism in mind.

People of African descent first arrived at Martha's Vineyard in the 1600s as enslaved West Africans who worked on the farms of European settlers. The Oak Bluffs harbor drew freed slaves, laborers and sailors in the 18th century, and white locals sold them land.<ref name="nyt-Calmes">{{cite web|last=Calmes|first=Jackie|title=Revisiting Black History on Martha's Vineyard|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/us/30vineyard.html|website=[[The New York Times]]|access-date=September 11, 2017|date=August 29, 2010}}</ref> After slavery was [[Slavery in the United States#The end of slavery|abolished]], the freed blacks came to work in the fishing industries, in turn drawing black residents from the Massachusetts mainland, who came and started businesses to serve the Vineyard's growing population.<ref name="placeOfOurOwn-place" /> In the 1800s some black laborers also worked as servants to wealthy white families and in the hotels.<ref name="wp-Brown"/> In the late 19th and 20th centuries, middle-class blacks bought or rented summer homes, and many of their descendants returned annually.<ref name="nyt-Calmes" /> Formerly enslaved people, or their descendants, bought property around Baptist Temple Park in the early 20th century, drawn by the religious services held there. Teachers, politicians, lawyers, doctors, artists, musicians and entrepreneurs resided there for decades afterward.<ref name="nyt-Taylor">{{cite web|last=Taylor|first=Nicole|title=Martha's Vineyard Has a Nourishing Magic for Black Americans|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/dining/marthas-vineyard-african-american-community.html|website=[[The New York Times]]|access-date=September 11, 2017|date=August 22, 2017}}</ref>

Affluent African Americans from New York, Boston, and Washington came to Oak Bluffs, the only Martha's Vineyard town that welcomed black tourists as other towns on the island did not allow black guests to stay in inns and hotels until the 1960s.<ref name="placeOfOurOwn-place" /><ref name="wp-Brown">{{cite news|last=Brown|first=DeNeen L.|title=Oak Bluffs, Mass.: A Place in the Sun|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/19/AR2009081904045_pf.html|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|access-date=September 11, 2017|date=August 19, 2009}}</ref>  Many bought houses in an area they called the Oval or the Highlands, which [[Harlem Renaissance]] writer [[Dorothy West]] wrote about in her 1995 novel, ''The Wedding'' (edited by Doubleday editor [[Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis]], a Vineyard resident who visited West for two summers).<ref name="nyt-Calmes" /><ref name="wp-Brown" /> By the 1930s, local black landowners were transforming the town into the country's best-known and most exclusive African American vacation spot.<ref name="placeOfOurOwn-place" /> Down the road from West, [[Adam Clayton Powell Jr.]] owned a cottage in the Oval where Arctic explorer [[Matthew Henson]] was a guest.<ref name="wp-Brown" /> Further down the road is ''Shearer Cottage'', the first inn for African Americans vacationers. It was built by a Charles Shearer, the son of a slave and a slave owner, when Shearer saw that black visitors were not able to stay at the homes due to [[Racial segregation in the United States|segregation]]. Guests at the inn included the first self-made American millionairess [[Madame CJ Walker]], singers [[Paul Robeson]], [[Ethel Waters]] and [[Lillian Evanti]]; and composer [[Harry T. Burleigh]].<ref name="wp-Brown"/><ref name="cbs-smithsonian">{{cite web|title=How a small town on Martha's Vineyard became a getaway for African-American elite|url=http://www.cbsnews.com/news/marthas-vineyard-oak-bluffs-smithsonian-national-museum-of-african-american-history-and-culture/|website=[[CBS News]]|access-date=September 11, 2017|date=September 8, 2016}}</ref>

In 1866, [[Robert Morris Copeland]] was hired by a group of New England developers to design a planned residential community in Martha's Vineyard. The site, a large, rolling, treeless pasture overlooking Nantucket Sound, was adjacent to the immensely popular [[Wesleyan Grove|Methodist camp meeting]], Wesleyan Grove, a curving network of narrow streets lined with quaint "Carpenter's Gothic" cottages, picket fences, and pocket parks. Seeking to take advantage of the camp's seasonal popularity (and overflowing population), the developers established Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company, gaining immediate success: Five hundred lots were sold between 1868 and 1871.  Copeland would end up creating three plans for the community to accommodate its constant expansion. Oak Bluffs is one of the earliest planned residential communities and largely informed later suburban development in the United States.<ref>Ellen Weiss, "Robert Morris Copeland's Plans for Oak Bluffs." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 34, No. 1 (March 1975) pp. 60-66.</ref>

Some of the earliest visitors to the area that became Cottage City and later Oak Bluffs were [[Methodists]], who gathered in the oak grove known as [[Wesleyan Grove]] each summer for multi-day religious "camp meetings" held under large tents and in the open air.

[[File:Marthasvineyard-OakBluffs-Cottages.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Gingerbread Cottages at Wesleyan Grove]]

As families returned to the grove year after year, tents pitched on the ground gave way to tents pitched on wooden platforms and eventually to small wooden cottages.  Small in scale and closely packed, the cottages grew more elaborate over time.  Porches, balconies, elaborate door and window frames became common, as did complex wooden scrollwork affixed to the roof edges as decorative trim.  The unique "gingerbread" or "Carpenter's Gothic" architectural style of the cottages was often accented by the owner's use of bright, multi-hue paint schemes, and gave the summer cottages a quaint, almost storybook look. Dubbed "gingerbread cottages," they became a tourist attraction in their own right in the late nineteenth century.  So, too, did the Tabernacle: a circular, open-sided pavilion covered by a metal roof supported by tall wrought iron columns, erected in the late 1880s, which became a venue for services and community events.  The campground's gingerbread cottages are cherished historic landmarks as well as very expensive real estate. Many are still family owned and passed on generation to generation.<ref>[https://architecturaltrust.org/architectural-ambler-wesleyan-grove-historic-district/ Architectural Ambler: Wesleyan Grove Historic District]</ref> The cottages and the Tabernacle were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, recognized in 2000 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and
declared a [[National Historic Landmark]] by the US Department of the Interior in 2005.<ref>[http://www.mvcma.org/tabernacle.html Support a Martha's Vineyard Icon]</ref>

Nineteenth-century tourists, arriving by steamer from the mainland, could also choose from a wide range of secular attractions: shops, restaurants, ice cream parlors, dance halls, band concerts, walks along seaside promenades, or swims in the waters of Nantucket Sound.  Resort hotels, of which the Wesley House is the sole surviving example, lined the waterfront and the bluffs. For a time, a narrow-gauge railway carried curious travelers from the steamship wharf in Oak Bluffs to Edgartown, running along tracks laid on what is now Joseph Sylvia State Beach.  In 1884, the [[Flying Horses Carousel]] was brought to Oak Bluffs from [[Coney Island]] and installed a few blocks inland from the ocean, where it remains in operation today. Built in 1876, it is the oldest platform carousel still in operation.  Like the grounds and buildings of the Campground (so designated in April 2005), the Flying Horses were designated a [[National Historic Landmark]] by the Secretary of the Interior.

The [[Martha's Vineyard Summer Institute]] was established in 1878, being the first summer school for teachers in the U.S.<ref name="Mowry-1905">{{cite journal |last1=Mowry |first1=William A. |title=The Marthas Vineyard Summer Institute. A brief sketch of its establishment, its progress, its scope, and its conditions. |journal=The School Journal |date=April 15, 1905 |volume=70 |pages=409–11 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kf9KAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA409 |access-date=May 11, 2022 |publisher=E.L. Kellogg & Company |language=en}} {{Source-attribution}}</ref>

In 1873, the neighboring community of [[Harthaven]] was established by [[William H. Hart]] when he purchased a lot from the Oak Bluffs Land and Wharf Company. The community later moved in 1911 to its present location between Oak Bluffs town and Edgartown.