Robert Douglas, who built the Black Dog Tavern on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and transformed its logo of his Labrador-boxer mix into an international emblem for summertime, died on Wednesday at his family’s home on the island. He was 93.
His son Jamie Douglas said the cause was prostate cancer.
Robert Douglas moved to Martha’s Vineyard in 1960 after growing up spending summers on the island with his family, falling in love with its maritime culture — and hoping he would eventually be the one waving goodbye to summer visitors from the shoreline as they took the ferry back to the mainland.
Mr. Douglas spent his first years on the island designing a topsail schooner, named the Shenandoah, which is still a fixture on the Vineyard Haven waterfront. But he later turned his attention to building a restaurant, something that would be good and reliable at the head of the harbor, a place people could gather throughout the year and get a cup of real New England chowder.
Black Dog, named after a pirate in the Robert Louis Stevenson novel “Treasure Island,” would be its mascot.
The Black Dog Tavern opened on New Year’s Eve in 1971, and the stately profile of Black Dog, drawn by Stephanie Phelan, would be incorporated into the business in 1976, according to The Vineyard Gazette.
By the early 1980s, Black Dog’s portrait was added to apparel — colorful T-shirts, thick sweatshirts, stonewashed hats, mugs and cookie tins, stamped with Black Dog’s outline on the front and the year of purchase on the back. The items became instant collectibles for visitors who wanted to take a piece of their summer vacation home with them.
“The tail started wagging the dog,” Mr. Douglas told The Vineyard Gazette in 1997. “It started as a restaurant and it turned into a dry goods business.”
Robert Stuart Douglas was born on March 18, 1932, in Chicago to Grace Farwell (McGann) Douglas and James H. Douglas Jr. The couple began renting a house in the West Chop section of the island in 1947.
Mr. Douglas’s father served as secretary of the Air Force and deputy secretary of defense under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Mr. Douglas graduated from Northwestern University and enlisted in the Air Force. He served from 1956 to 1958, stationed at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, Mass., which enabled him to reconnect with his love for New England.
In the summer of 1960, he signed on to sail as a mate aboard two 19th-century vessels and again as a seaman aboard a replica of…
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