The Last Photograph of the Pink House: A Star Trails Farewell to a Newbury, Massachusetts Icon

This is the last professional photo taken of the Pink House in Newbury, Massachusetts, captured just three hours before the demolition crew arrived to tear it down. If you’ve driven the Plum Island Turnpike toward Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, you know this house. For a century it stood alone on the marsh, weathered and pink and impossible to ignore, a favorite subject for photographers, painters, and anyone who ever slowed their car to look at it twice.

Racing the Weather for One Last Shot

I arrived at the Pink House at 10:45 PM on March 10th after driving non-stop from Burlington, Vermont, to get there. News of the planned demolition had been announced two weeks earlier, but no specific date was ever confirmed. For those two weeks I was determined to capture star trails over the house before it was gone for good but the sky had other plans. Cloud cover rolled in every single night, night after night, and the shot I wanted stayed just out of reach.

Then, as I left Burlington, I saw the forecast finally clearing. I knew immediately I had to drive straight to Newbury, no stops, no second-guessing. Long exposure astrophotography is unforgiving that way. You get one clear night, or you don’t get the shot at all.

161 Exposures, One Historic Image

My camera sat on a tripod on the edge of the salt marsh, taking pictures from 10:45 PM until 3:03 AM, before I finally packed up and drove home. In total, this star trails photograph is made up of 161 individual 30-second exposures, stacked and blended together in Photoshop to create the long, sweeping arcs of light across the sky above the house. It’s a technique night photographers use to turn hours of the Earth’s rotation into a single, quiet image and it felt like the right way to say goodbye to a landmark that had watched the sky turn for a hundred years.

The Morning Everything Changed

After a two-hour nap, I got up to take my son to school. That’s when I saw it on social media…the demolition crew was already on site at the Pink House. My heart sank. I turned around and drove straight back out to Plum Island.

When I arrived, thick fog had rolled in off the marsh, so heavy you could barely make out the shape of the house through it. I will never forget the sound of cracking wood as the excavator’s claws dug into the structure, tearing apart a building that had stood on that marsh since 1925. Many of us who came out that morning cried. Some harder than others. It wasn’t just a house coming down, it was a piece of Newbury and Newburyport history, a landmark that had drawn photographers, artists, and curious drivers to the Plum Island causeway for generations.

Why the Pink House Mattered

For anyone unfamiliar with the story, the Pink House had been the subject of a long preservation fight. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which owned the property as part of the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge, cited safety and environmental concerns including asbestos and rising sea levels on the surrounding marsh as reasons the structure needed to come down. Local advocates spent nearly a decade trying to save it, and even a last-minute push involving a seven-figure donation and a pause ordered by the governor’s office couldn’t change the outcome. On March 11, 2025, the Pink House was demolished, ending one of the North Shore’s most talked-about preservation battles.

I feel so lucky to have created this historic image one clear night, 161 exposures, and a house that will now only exist in photographs like this one.

Shot on location in Newbury, Massachusetts, along the Plum Island Turnpike. 161 x 30-second exposures blended in Photoshop for a full night-sky star trails effect.