A local brewery, Slumbrew, has even put out a limited-edition beer called the Bathtub Mary. Cathy Piantigini, a lifetime resident and children’s librarian, has spent the past few years walking every street in the city in an attempt to map them. Pacini is far from the first Somervillian to be captivated by the statues. “People want to keep up with the neighbors.” This Mary is part of a patriotic tableau. “There’s a sort of folk art impetus here,” says Pacini. Other holiday seasons make for unlikely tableaus: Mary hanging out with Uncle Sam, Jesus sharing space with inflatable pumpkins. A Mary might be surrounded by an attentive pack of plastic dogs, or lit year-round by a single rigged-up Christmas bulb. With the character and basic setting taken care of, aesthetic innovation runs rampant. Less crafty types take advantage of store-bought concrete domes, many of which have scalloped edges-thus the statues’ other tongue-in-cheek nickname, “Mary on the Half Shell.” A Mary on the half shell, decked out with artificial flowers. Those who lack a bathtub at the crucial moment often provide other creative housing: Pacini has photos of the statues taking refuge under grape arbors and hand-built stone arches, and in miniature wooden cabins and wishing wells. This Jesus has its own wooden house, complete with a shingled roof. Families installed shower-bathtub combos, and their old claw-footed tubs, which were difficult to recycle, ended up out in the yard, repurposed as religiously inflected lawn art. Although domestic shrines and home altars are a long-lived Catholic tradition, it’s thought that this particular incarnation began just after World War II, when postwar economic recovery led to a rash of home remodeling. While some Marys are displayed prominently, others-like this one-are tucked away.īathtub Marys get their name from the structures they’re typically placed in: actual bathtubs, tipped up vertically and dug halfway into the ground to form graceful, arched shelters. “But it is unlikely that you will find so many in such a small concentrated area, and in such variety of forms, than in Somerville.” The city has, by some counts, at least 600 such shrines. “You can find Catholic statuary in the yards of other communities … where Catholic immigrants of Italian, Portuguese and Irish origin and their descendants have resided for decades,” writes Deborah Pacini, an anthropologist and Somerville resident who has been photographing the shrines for about 10 years. But eventually, undoubtedly, you’ll be blessed by the presence of a Bathtub Mary: a sculpture of the Madonna, generally about waist-high, carefully sheltered in its own protective nook.Īlthough these constructions aren’t unique to Somerville-there are plenty in the Midwest, as well as other Massachusetts towns-aficionados agree that they’ve colonized the city to an unusual degree. It may reveal itself proudly in a front yard, or sneak up on you in a side yard. Spend enough time walking its narrow streets, though, and you’re guaranteed a particular kind of religious experience. Somerville, Massachusetts doesn’t attract many pilgrims. Saint Therese of Lisieux in a bathtub, in front of a house in Somerville, MA.* All photos courtesy Deborah Pacini
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