By GAYLA CAWLEY
SWAMPSCOTT — Before the beach names were literally etched in stone, members of the Municipal Design Committee had to make a few grammatical and technical tweaks.
Jer Jurma, a member of the Municipal Design Committee, said the committee has been working on getting granite markers for the town’s various beach entrances. He said a Swampscott resident, Mark Gelfand, came forward and wanted to fund getting signage on the beaches. He said Gelfand put together some funding to have signs put on the beaches.
However, Jurma said the committee discovered if there were to be signs made, natural elements would make them have a shorter lifespan. So, he said the committee decided that granite markers would have a longer lifespan. Jurma said when Gelfand was informed of the proposal to go with granite markers, which would be 20 inches by five feet tall, instead, “he was thrilled.”
“In placing these, we also needed to do preliminary design work on what the entrances would look like,” Jurma said.
Jurma said when the preliminary design was being done for one of the beaches, there were some discrepancies discovered in the names. He said the committee was about to price out and have the granite markers made, but there were some discrepancies in the beach names. He said the Board of Selectmen has jurisdiction over names, so members of the Municipal Design Committee brought their concerns before that board at their meeting Wednesday night.
Discussion centered around where the apostrophe would go in beach names. Jurma said the discussion also centered around the inclusion of a marker for New Ocean House Beach, which older residents recognize as the beach in front of a former hotel. He said New Ocean House Beach is located in Johnson Park.
“Older residents knew this beach by one name,” Jurma said. “For the last 50 years, people have stopped calling it that.”
Now, Jurma said there are three entrances to a single beach, with New Ocean House Beach included. He said the three entrances are called three different things. He said the beach is split into two quarters and then a half. The first two quarters would be Whales Beach and New Ocean House Beach respectively and the half, or west end of that beach would be Eisman’s Beach.
“The beach is a continuous beach and there’s outcropping,” Jurma said. “Whales Beach goes from the beginning of the beach to an outcropping. New Ocean [goes] to the next outcropping and the rest is considered Eisman’s Beach.”
Jurma said each entrance would have its own marker, with the separate name on each marker. He said with the three, there are seven beaches that would have official granite markers. It gets a little technical at this point though as Jurma said the location of the apostrophe was inconsistent on those beach names.
According to a presentation by the committee, before the board voted to change the grammar of the beach names, Whales Beach was spelled as Whale’s Beach. The possessive form suggests that the beach belongs or belonged to a whale. The beach is named for the stranding of a whale in the 1800s but a whale cannot possess the beach, according to the presentation. The committee recommended the spelling be changed to Whales Beach.
With the vote by the Board of Selectmen Wednesday night, Phillips’ Beach is now the correct spelling and was changed from Phillips Beach. King’s Beach and Eisman’s Beach remain the same as the committee recommended that the beaches use the singular possessive form.
“All of them are singular possessive,” Jurma said. “Because Phillips’ ends in an ‘s’, the apostrophe comes after it. The decision was made to keep them all singular possessive instead of plural.”
Although Phillips’ Beach is named after the entire family, rather than King’s and Eisman’s being named after a single family member, Jurma said the committee felt that the plural possessive is too much and “unsayable.”
Granite markers will be made for seven beaches and placed at the entrances to those beaches — King’s, Fisherman’s, Whales, New Ocean House, Eisman’s, Phillips’ and Preston Beach, Jurma said. He said Gelfand is funding the project and will be donating the markers to the town.
“The names came up when it came time for us to send the markers out to bid to be carved,” Jurma said. “We realized these were literally being carved in stone and decided we needed the official names decided upon. There’s no fixing grammar.”
Jurma said the committee is going out to bid right now for the granite markers and the goal is to get them placed at the entrances by the summer. He said the marker for New Ocean House Beach would be placed in storage and not placed because there are people interested in redesigning Johnson Park, where that beach is located.
“We wanted that marker to be integrated into the design,” Jurma said.
Also discussed was a consolidated poster on Phillips’ and New Ocean House beaches, to clean up the large amount of sign boards throughout those two beaches. Jurma said the poster would be replaced every year and be a consolidated list of the official rules and history of those particular beaches.
Gayla Cawley can be reached at [email protected].