Tag Archives: Architecture

October 13, 2025

So much WOOD!

By daseger

The Historic New England season is closing this Columbus/Indigenous People’s Day weekend and as I am up in York Harbor, I went to visit one of HNE’s oldest houses (both in terms of sheer vintage and time under its stewardship): the Jackson House in Portsmouth, built circa 1664. This is an extraordinary house: I’m sorry to be posting at this time when you won’t be able to visit it until next June, because I’d really like to urge everyone reading to go. I had been in it before, but when I was much younger and couldn’t appreciate it properly. But now, wow. I always thought it was a saltbox: it is not. It’s a seventeenth-century two-story small square house which had an elaborate lean-to added a bit later, along with two additions on each side. It is also a lavish display of wood: certainly not from an American perspective, but from an English one, which would have been its builder, Richard Jackson’s perspective. When I was writing my first book, The Practical Renaissance, I was reading treatises written for carpenters and shipbuilders, as well as some more general agricultural pamphlets, all of which made me aware of the increasing concern about the shortage of wood in seventeenth-century England. All the first-growth forests had long been chopped down, so to come to North America and see all this wood must have been something. So for me, the Jackson House was just a great illustration of that abundance. Our guide emphasized this theme adroitly as she described the house’s framing, exterior and interior, and she also illustrated the construction impact of less-abundant woodland in New Hampshire by showing us the attic over the eighteenth-century addition, with its decidedly less-robust timbers. The Jackson House is one of Historic New England’s unfurnished study houses (like the Gedney House in Salem), so the emphasis is decidedly on construction, but we got to learn a fair amount about the family as well, who possessed the house until 1924, when William Sumner Appleton, the founder of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England) purchased it.

Perfect 17th century parlor and east and west wings, with a patch of preserved wallpaper.

Appleton had apparently been obsessed with the Jackson House since his freshman year at Harvard, when he came up from Cambridge and knocked on the door. A pioneering preservationist and critic of “one property museums,” he began acquiring choice properties after the founding of SPNEA/HNE in 1910. Rather than stripping off the east and west additions of the house, he removed stucco and plaster to reveal its construction. The original property was extensive, fifty acres or so just across the North Mill Pond from downtown Portsmouth, in a neighborhood named Christian Shore. When I was growing up across the Piscataqua River in southern Maine in the 1970s and 1980s, Christian Shore seemed to me a drive-through area with delapidated old houses, but then suddenly appeared The Inn at Christian Shore and I started noticing all the beautiful old houses and now they really are all beautifully restored. Portsmouth is actually growing in this direction, with several hotels built in what were once vacant lots which divided Christian Shore from downtown. But when you look out the windows (replaced by Appleton, but in their original openings) of the house on its slightly elevated lot, you can imagine, and even sort of feel, the aura of its first century.

The replacement windows and upstairs, including some wood-carvings. I knew all about the counter-magical daisy wheel from the M.A. thesis on apotropaic marks by Alyssa Conary at Salem State, so it was fun to see it (a perfect example of how I didn’t “see” on my first visit as I have no memory of it). A watercolor and Detroit Publishing Co. (Library of Congress) photograph of the house before it became a museum.

5 Comments | tags: Architecture, Colonial Architecture, First Period, Historic Interiors, Historic New England, Historic Preservation, House Museums, Portsmouth | posted in Architecture, Culture, Houses, New England

September 15, 2025

A Colonial Revival Dining Room

By daseger

I wrote the chapter on Salem’s Colonial Revival movement in our forthcoming book Salem’s Centuries, an effort that I think was pretty ballsy given that I am neither an American historican or an art/architectural historian. You can be sure that I had both types of experts read it before submission and it has been peer-reviewed several times before publication! I felt confident because I took a biographical and cultural history approach, utilizing the work and lives of Salem exemplars Frank Cousins, Mary Harrod Northend, George Francis Dow, and Caroline Emmerton. They were all so respectful of Salem’s material heritage and more than a bit fearful of change. What we now label the Colonial Revival does seem to have been a movement in Salem, fueled as much (I think!) by nostalgia as by a desire to preserve, and its connections to the fledgling preservation movement in the early twentieth century are what interest me particularly. So while I have a sense of the Colonial Revival as a cultural movement, I am far from any aesthetic understanding, although I think I have made some strides in that direction by working at Historic New England’s Phillips House over these past two summers. The house’s dining room, in particular, a great example of the assertive effort of Salem and Boston architect William Rantoul to “marry” its later-19th century back to its Samuel McIntire front, has become my ideal Colonial Revival room. It all started with the alcove for me. I had seen Rantoul’s colleague and contemporary Arthur Little’s alcove in Caroline Emmerton’s house on Essex Street in person and in renderings (the cyanotype below is from a Little & Browne album in the collections of Historic New England), and it just seemed so Colonial-esque to me, so when I saw some semblance of an alcove in the Phillips’ dining room, it all made sense.

As you can see, Rantoul’s alcove is not nearly as enclosed as that of Little, but the former still carved out that space, removing a staircase for the symmetrical china cabinets and fireplace, delineated from the rest of the room by that strident ceiling moulding. He had modernized the systems for the Phillips after their purchase of the house in 1911: there was no need for that fireplace other than to enhance the “colonial” ambiance, which is also provided by the great Joseph Badger portrait of Phillips relative Thomas Mason (c. 1770-75) with his pet squirrel. I’m not even sure you would call this space an alcove, much less a nook, but it’s the semblence that creates the aura of the past in this large light-filled room.

Frankly this chair annoys me but I understand why it’s there.

Of course, the furnishings set the scene as well, and authors of decorating books from the teens and twenties always advised their readers that they should avoid placing items “of a set” if they were to attain that authentic Colonial look. It was relatively easy for the Phillips’, with their multi-generational wealth and trove of possessions from different places and times, to achieve the desired layered look. Their dining room seems to have attained the general “Colonial feeling” recommended by Helen Koues in her popular manual On Decorating the House (1928), in which the walls and woodwork are light in value, the furniture is mahogany or brown mahogany, silver is shown, and side lights or chandeliers may be in silver with glass prisms, or some fixture Colonial in feeling. Andirons and fireirons are of brass or brass and iron, and the china displayed is of Wedgwood in patterns of the eighteenth century. Of course, Stephen and Anna Phillips were both from old Salem maritime families, so their Wedgwood (and Limoges) is supplemented by a dazzling display of East Asian ceramics.

2 Comments | tags: Architecture, Art, Ceramics, Colonial Revival, Decorative Arts, Historic Interiors, Historic New England, House Museums, Salem Style | posted in Architecture, Culture, Houses, Salem

September 8, 2025

Houses are History

By daseger

Last week I was thinking about all the things that annoy or concern me about Salem now, and the list seemed endless, which depressed me, and then I suddenly thought, why don’t I focus on the things that I love about Salem so I won’t be so depressed? This seemed like a good idea, and an easy realignment. Why did I move to Salem? Architecture. What do I love about Salem? Architecture. So I’m going to go back to the foundations of my own Salem story and getting back to architecture with an occasional series here and on social media (#salemhistoryhouses) looking at individual houses in the present and past as a means of telling more Salem stories. Just one house can open a wide window into the city’s history, American history, even world history, as Salem has always had a global orientation. This is not a novel observation, but somehow as I pursued a range of Salem topics here and in our forthcoming book Salem’s Centuries I lost sight of one of the most basic expressions of cultural achievement: houses. Besides the inspiration of merely pursuing my own happiness, I am also motivated by the efforts of two people who I’ve written about a lot here and also in Salem’s Centuries: Frank Cousins and Mary Harrod Northend. These two contemporaries dedicated a good part of their lives to highlighting Salem architecture in print and image. Both wrote books and magazine articles and established photographic publishing companies which distributed images of Salem houses nationwide. They were both particularly keen to emphasize that all not was lost with the Great Salem Fire of 1914, and that much of Salem’s architectural heritage remained; a decade later both were intent on celebrating that heritage during Salem’s Tercentenary in 1926. Cousins died the year before; Northend in that very year. I’ll feature a lot of their work in my series, as preserved and digitized by the Phillips Library (via Digital Commonwealth), the Winterthur Library, and Historic New England, as well as the large collection of images available at the Salem State University Archives and Special Collections. So there you are, or there I am: one of the things that annoys me about Salem is its lack of a professional historical museum, but all these institutions, and more, are in fact collecting, preserving, and sharing Salem history.

My first social media post is a great example of how just one house can lead you in all sorts of directions. The Eden-Browne has was built in 1762 by Captain Thomas Eden as a warehouse, and then converted into a (very elegant) residence by Benjamin Cox in 1834. Captain Eden was a trader in the codfish rectangular trade between Salem, southern Europe, and the West Indies, and the very first member of the Salem Marine Society: his grandaughter, the artist Sarah Eden Smith, lived and died in the house. Her other grandfather, Jesse Smith, was an officer in General Washington’s First Horse Guards, and she herself was a professional artist and instructor who spent several years at the Hampton Institute (now University) teaching Native American students. Miss Smith, “the last of her family,” was also the author of a lovely little pamphlet on the history of the Second Church of Salem, visible below in the top photograph, which obviously dates from before it was demolished by fire in 1903. So that’s a lot of history tied to just one Salem house!

A house that both Cousins and Northend adored (both really seem to have preferred Salem’s 18th-century houses) is the Dean-Sprague-Stearns House on the corner of Essex and Flint Streets. It was built in 1706 and acquired a portico by Samuel McIntire a century later. It has a connection to Salem’s most notable Revolutionary event, Leslie’s Retreat, through the residence of distiller Joseph Sprague, a major participant in that resistance, and it was operated as an inn named the East India House in the middle decades of the twentieth century. I love the description of this house in Samuel Chamberlain’s Open House in New England: “the EAST INDIA HOUSE contains a wig room, two powder rooms and a Tory hide-out in one of the chimneys. A quadrille was given here for General Lafayette in 1824.” TORY HIDE-OUT.

Top photograph from the Frank Cousins Collection of Glass Plate Negatives at the Phillips Library, via Digital Commonwealth.

Talk about going back to Salem houses: One Forrester Street was one of the first house reports I researched and wrote for Historic Salem, Inc., way back in the 1990s! I was in graduate school, and this was my way of “learning” Salem. These are another great resource (and mine are far from the best!), as members of the Salem Historical Society digitized them several years ago. These house histories, in addition to the Massachusetts Historical Commission’s MACRIS database, represent accessible information about hundreds of Salem houses. I remember being very excited about researching One Forrester as it’s such a great house, with a distinctive profile right on Salem Common. Though built by a tanner named John Ives, the house was kept in the Webb family for quite some time, I think, almost two centuries. In the northwest corner of the house is a “cent shop” straight out of the House of the Seven Gables; it might even have been Hawthorne’s inspiration.

Stereoview (top) from the 1860s, and the Nelson Dionne Salem History Collection at Salem State University.

There were many Webbs in Salem and it is quite a challenge to keep them straight! Sea captains in the 18th century, entrepreneurs in the nineteenth. Another Webb house is one of my favorite brick-sided houses in Salem, adjacent to what was long a Webb apothecary shop on Essex Street. These buildings are 52 (house) and 54 (shop) Essex Street, and they represent what were probably hundreds of attached or adjacent residences and shops which once existed in Salem.

Stereoview from the Dionne Salem History Collection, Salem State University Archives and Special Collections.

I’ve decided that I’m not going to feature lost houses in my little series, as I am engaged in the pursuit of happiness. But I’m definitely going to feature houses that were moved, because there are so many, and also because I love these examples of nineteenth-century (and a bit of twentieth-century) sustainability. One house that was moved from Salem’s main street, Essex, to a nearby side street is Five Curtis Street, which is featured prominently in one of my favorite architecture books, John Mead Howells’ Lost Examples of Colonial Architecture: Buildings That Have Disappeared of Been so Altered as to be Denatured: Public Buildings,Semi-Public Churches, Cottages, Country Houses, Town Houses, Interiors, Details (1931). It is indeed one of my favorite books, but I also realize that Howells makes a lot of mistakes, so I always check him. He indicates that the house was moved in 1895, which does check out, and refers to the house as the Joseph J. Knapp House. More recent researchers refer to the house as the the John White House, and I think this is correct: White, a mariner, built the house around 1802 and sold it to Knapp, another mariner (a loose term which generally means merchant and maybe captain but more likely owner of shares in a ship at that time) six years later. The house remained in the Knapp family until 1848, which means that this house has a connection to the most notorious murder in nineteenth- century Salem. Joseph J. Knapp’s two sons, John Francis (Frank) and Joseph Jenkins Jr., hired Richard Crowninshield to murder their wealthy uncle Captain Joseph White in 1830 and all three met their deaths before the end of that year. Mr. Knapp Sr. had already decamped for Wenham before these events, and he remained there until his death in 1847.

Frank Cousins photograph of the Knapp House in its original location on Essex Street (on the corner of Orange), John Mead Howells, Lost Examples of Colonial Architecture (1931).

2 Comments | tags: #salemhistoryhouses, Architecture, Colonial Houses, Frank Cousins, Mary Harrod Northend, Salem 400, Salem Houses, Salem Stories | posted in History, Houses, Salem

July 28, 2025

I’m Confused by Pineapples

By daseger

This is one of those “writing it out” posts. It starts out with confusion in the hope that I can work it out, but I may not so it might end in confusion as well. I’m confused about the symbolism of pineapples. Of course everyone knows that pineapples represent “hospitality,” but do they really? What else might they represent? I started out with the question as to whether pineapples are Colonial or Colonial Revival, and it seems that that they are both. I’m also wondering if there are differences in what they represent in the northern US as opposed to the south, and between the US and the UK. My wonder is prompted by recent road trips down south, where I saw a lot of pineapples, as well as an interest in symbolism in general prompted by the recent discussions here in Salem over our official city seal, which some see as stereotypical and rascist and others see as evocative of a proud global maritime heritage. I always find that a historical perspective helps with understanding both images and events; apparently the members of the Task Force charged with examing the seal do not. In any case, there’s always a personal and arbitrary angle: it’s so interesting that different people see very different things in the same image. And that is true of pineapples too: while for the most part they seem to convey a sense of decorative hospitality, they also have associations with exoticism and exclusivity and excess, colonization, plantations (both in the West Indies and Hawaii), coerced labor and ultimately slavery. I am always interested in Salem’s famed “Pineapple House,” a Georgian structure first located on Brown Street and then removed to Brown Street Court which was demolished by 1911 with only its pineapple-pedimented door preserved, first in the Essex Institute and now in the American galleries at the Peabody Essex Museum. I’ve written about it before, but I know more now: its pineapple was not a local creation but rather a British import and its importer, Captain Thomas Poynton, became one of Salem first Loyalistist refugees, leaving his house (and his wife!) for England in 1775. That conspicuous (always gilded by all accounts) pineapple might have had Tory associations in Revolutionary Salem, but nevertheless it became the inspiration for one of Salem’s most important Tercentenary expressions, the band stand on Salem Common erected in 1926.

There are pineapple motifs on New England furniture and wallpapers from the 18th century through the mid-twentieth, but in terms of conspicuous architectural detail I think the best examples are the Hunter House in Newport, RI and the Wentworth-Gardner House in Portsmouth, NH (after Salem’s Pineapple House, of course). The Hunter House was also owned by a prominent Loyalist, and a recent article on its new Orientation Gallery describes its current interpretation as a “paradigm shift”: Here visitors can examine a historic photograph of the house’s pineapple pediment alongside a silver coffee pot and a pair of covered baskets adorned with pineapple finials. The display discusses the tropical fruit as a product of colonization and slavery as well as a symbol of wealth and hospitality in colonial Newport. For the Preservation Society, which long ago adopted the pineapple as part of its logo, this analysis represents a paradigm shift. It’s been a few years since I’ve been on a tour, but I don’t think this kind of deep dive is offered up at the Wentworth Gardner House in Portsmouth, which was restored by none other than Colonial Revival evangelist and entrepreneur Wallace Nutting in 1916-18. And there’s no need, as Nutting added the pedimented pineapple, and the entire entrance surround to the house. This very Colonial Revival pineapple anticipated the ever-present fruit emblems at another prominent Colonial-esque institution: Colonial Williamsburg.

And down south, it’s the same thing: there are eighteenth-century pineapples and then there is a twentieth-century pineapple revival. Virginia’s oldest plantation, Shirley, has a very prominent three-foot-tall pineapple right at the apex of the roof of its main house, which was built around the same time as the Poynton House in Salem and the Hunter House in Newport. Installing a pineapple on the pinnacle of one’s roof must have been a James River Plantation thing, as Brandon Plantation has one as well. Another interesting transatlantic pineapple connection relates to the last Colonial Governor of Virginia, John Murray, the fourth Earl of Dunmore, who commissioned a stone-carved pineapple summerhouse for his Scottish estate in 1761, likely the most famous pineapple construction in the world. The pineapple is very prominent in Charleston, of course, with the pineapple gateposts (which I think were supposed to be pinecones?) of the Simmons-Edwards House dating from around 1816 and the famous pineapple fountain dating from 1990.

Shirley and Brandon Plantations in Virginia; The Dunmore Pineapple, Stirlingshire, Scotland via the National Trust for Scotland; Gate at the Simmons-Edwards House at 14 Legare Street, Charleston, built 1816, from the lovely site Glimpses of Charleston; some pineapple images from one of my favorite books, Charleston Style, by Susan Sully with photographs by John Blais.

Pineapples on the gatepost (and I suppose by extension the very popular pineapple doorknocker) are said to be visual “traditions” based on the practice of ship captains returning from exotic realms displaying pineapples on their properties to indicate that they were home, and ready to receive visitors. This story is repeated again and again and again, but I don’t seem to find any references to it before the early twentieth century. I think it’s more Colonial Revival romance. Pineapple stories just keep getting repeated with very little insight, analysis or research, at least over here. With the exception of the Newport Preservation and a Smithsonian blog post about the “prickly” history of the pineapple, these storied fruits (and their visualizations) don’t have much cultural depth over here in the US: and if they are in fact emblems I think they should have more. But in the UK, wow! Here’s a great History Workshop piece with all sorts of associations, and very recently, a “sinister history of the pineapple” student project at the University of Southampton in collaboration with Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew was featured in Dezeen. My research for this post exposed me to yet another pineapple association: apparently an upside-down pineapple sign on a door means means there are swingers within! That’s a long way from friendly sea captains, and obviously there’s much more to pineapples than meets the eye (but I’m still confused).

Dezeen Magazine, July 26, 2025: A “Sign of Status” by Jas Jones, who concludes “the pineapple is no innocent fruit.”

5 Comments | tags: Architecture, Charleston, Decorative Arts, Decorative motifs, Emblems, Newport, Pineapples, Portsmouth, Public Art, public history, Salem Houses, Salem Tercentenary, Scotland, Virginia | posted in Architecture, Art, Culture

July 21, 2025

Happy Birthday Hawthorne Hotel

By daseger

This week marks the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Hawthorne Hotel, which has been at the center of so much of Salem’s social and civic life for a century. One thinks of a hotel as a place for visitors, and I suppose that has been the Hawthorne’s primary function, but its hospitality has long been extended to Salem residents as well through its many public spaces and busy calendar. I really can’t think of any other space/place in Salem where residents and tourists intersect so often and so naturally, except for perhaps the adjoining Salem Common. I was thinking about my own personal connection to the Hawthorne and I came up with an impressive list: in addition to attending many events there (including weddings, political debates, annual meetings, lectures, department retreats), I met my husband there! And more recently, I attended a memorable meeting over which then Attorney General (now Governor) Maura Healey presided, with then Mayor (now Lieutenant Governor) Kim Driscoll seated on her left, in which the fateful location of Salem’s archives was discussed. I could go on and on: I’m sure every Salem resident has their own Hawthorne Hotel list. The connection between Salem people and the Hawthorne has been strong from the beginning, as the Hotel was a Chamber of Commerce initiative with subscribed funding by more than 1000 residents, who turned out in force for its opening on July 23, 1925. For the 100th anniversary on this coming Wednesday, the Hotel is asking for public participation yet again: to recreate this first photo for 2025. I’m so happy about this idea, a rare example of Salem’s history actually being made public.

First photograph: Henry Theriault Collection, Salem State University Archives and Special Collections, Salem, Massachusetts; 2nd and 3rd, Nelson Dionne Salem History Collection, SSU Archives and Special Collections. SSU Archives and Special Collections maintains a Flickr album of Hawthorne Hotel images.

The Hotel got a HUGE response upon its opening. Headlines in all the local papers, including the society rag The North Shore Breeze which praised its Colonial decor and its multitudes of bathrooms and public spaces. The Breeze had a very elite “Gold Coast” perspective, so Salem only pops up in advertising for its many shops generally, but in the late July 1925 issue there was even a poem (or “picture-dream”) inspired by the Hawthorne! A few years later, Architectural Forum published a portfolio on the hotel, formally credited to the architectural firm of “Smith & Walker and H.L. Stevens and Co., Associates” but widely acknowledged to be the work of Philip Horton Smith, who was putting his Colonial Revival stamp all over Salem in the 1920s. Of course the Salem Marine Society “club cabin” installed on the hotel’s top floor received rave reviews everywhere. The historical context is important for both the creation and reception of the new hotel: this was a decade after the Great Salem Fire, and the year before Salem’s much-anticipated tercentenary: the new hotel seemed to signal the message we’re back and we want you to come celebrate with us.

July 21-24, 1925 headlines in the Boston Glove and Lynn Daily Item; Flag-raising photo from the Hawthorne Hotel Collection at the SSU Archives and Special Collections & poem from North Shore Breeze, July 1925; Architectural Forum, December 1929.

In terms of marketing, the Hawthorne emphasized COLONIAL above all until the late twentieth century, but it’s interesting to survey other advertising adjectives. There was definitely an early emphasis on fire safety, given the experience and impact of the Fire. To be fireproof, a structure had to be modern, so the Hawthorne was deemed modern and colonial at the same time: one advertisement labeled it “the most modern hotel between Boston and Portland.” Even in its opening decade, the Hotel was appealing to motorists more so than train passengers, and it emphasized its “ample parking.” It was comfortable, convenient, and a the “centre of historic interest and famous traditions.” While there was a general colonial aura to its exteriors and interiors for decades after its opening, the Hawthorne clearly associated that word with Salem’s golden era of overseas trade, and it emphasized that connection in multiple ways, from the names of its public spaces (the “Main Brace” bar, the “Calico Tea House” restaurant, and the Zanzibar grillroom) to the “historicards” it sold in its lobby, created by Johnny Tremain author Viginia Grilley. I love these old menus—they are almost like reference works!

There is a marked subtlety in references to the Witch Trials in contrast to other Salem institutions, but that changes a bit after Bewitched came to town in 1970, which you can easily understand, as Samantha and Darren Stephens stayed at the Hawthorne, or the Hawthorne Motor Hotel, as it was called at the time. There are periodic name changes: I think the progression is Hotel Hawthorne, the Hawthorne, Hawthorne Motor Inn, Hawthorne Inn, Hawthorne Hotel, but I could be wrong. Like any professional and profitable hostelry, the Hawthorne has to welcome everyone, and so it seems that witches have overtaken mariners over these past few decades. The weddings, annual meetings, and convention continue, however, as does the hotel’s seemingly timeless appeal, enhanced by advantageous associations (particularly the Historic Hotels of America registry), interior updates, clever marketing, and that still-strong public connection. I dipped into one of the hospitality and tourism databases available to me at Salem State and found Hawthorne references to its impressive visitor stats, its haunted character (I’m not going there), its generous pet policy, and its rooftop ship’s cabin. The more things change the more things remain the same, and Salem’s now-venerable hotel seems poised for another busy century.

The Hawthorne from the 1920s through the 1990s: all images from the Hawthorne Hotel Collection at SSU Archives except for the 1930s (Visitor’s Guide to Salem, 1937) and 1950s (Phillips Library); a feature on the Salem Marine Society’s recreated ship’s cabin on the top floor of the Hawthorne in Yankee Magazine, 2015 (photo by Carl Tremblay); the Hotel’s 60th Anniversary celebration in 1985.

Hawthorne Hotel Birthday Block Party on July 23, 5:30-7:30: https://www.hawthornehotel.com/event/hawthorne-hotels-100th-anniversary-celebration/

4 Comments | tags: Anniversary History, Architecture, Colonial Revival, Hawthorne Hotel, Local Events, Newspapers, Salem State University Archives & Special Collections, Salem Tourism | posted in History, Salem, Tourism

July 14, 2025

Stone Enders

By daseger

I met several work deadlines last week so now it’s officially summer road trip season: about time! So yesterday I drove south to Rhode Island to see a very distinct form of its early architecture: stone enders. This is a very descriptive term: stone enders are late 17th century houses which feature one exterior and interior wall consisting entirely of an expansive side chimney. They are rare because they are so old, but also because in several documented cases the chimney walls were assimilated into an expanded house, rendering them central: stone enders were and could be hiding in plain sight! Often there are interesting house detective stories associated with stone enders, and for those that do survive, there is always a restoration story. Both cases were true with the two stone enders that I visited, the Clemence Irons house (1691) in Johnston and the Eleazer Arnold house (1693) in Lincoln, both owned by Historic New England.

Clemence-Irons (top) in Johnston and the Arnold house in Lincoln.

The Arnold House, one of Historic New England’s (then the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities) earliest acquisitions in 1918, survived through adaptation and expansion in the back with its chimney wall always exposed but still there were mysteries to solve about its original appearance. It went through several restorations, which are discussed in a great little article that Abbot Lowell Cummings wrote for the magazine Antiques in 1960:

The Eleazer Arnold is one which students have loved for its persistent puzzles, not all of which were entirely solved by laying bare nearly every scrap of structural evidence the house had to offer. As early as 1895 Norman M. Isham (in his Early Rhode Island Houses) was concerned about both the original plan and the window arrangement. From what he could then see of the structure he assumed that the house had originally been built, as the rear slope of the stone chimney indicates, as a two-story house with lean-to and with its present full length, providing for two rooms at the front on the ground floor and two rooms behind them in the lean-to. The roof had been finished with an impressive facade gable, the valley rafters of which remain in the attic (though not restored). Without having full knowledge of evidence concealed in the frame of the house, Mr. Isham suggested the possibility of single casement openings in the front or south wall. By the time his Early American Houses was published in 1928 he had had a chance to explore enough of the hidden frame to know that the pattern of original wall studs there confirmed his supposition about these windows.

The Isham restoration is characterized as one of “exploration and stabilization” while the later restoration was far more ambitious, focused on returning the house to its seventeenth-century appearance, however, apparently “inauthentic fenestration” was introduced at this time. As Isham was also involved with the Clemence-Irons house, I went off on a midnight deep dive into some of his books, and I have to say that Early Rhode Island Houses is absolutely charming with its wonderful architectural drawings by Albert Frederic Brown. The later book, Early American Houses, is less charming as no Brown but it does have several photographs and some discussion of Salem houses.

I had a very detailed tour which focused on the Arnold family and the evolving roles of the house before taking us inside to examine its interiors from ground floor great room to the garret, where a succession of contractors signed their names on its beams. Obviously, one (or two or three) conspicuous interior detail of a stone ender are its expansive hearths. The Arnold house is pretty large for a stone ender, and became larger still over time, and its scale and convenient location along the Great Road in Lincoln made it a logical choice for a tavern and it still felt very taverny to me.

The Clemence-Irons house is about a twenty-minute drive south from Lincoln, but I realized that there was actually another stone-ender in town, the Valentine Whitman house (1696), which was not only currently for sale but had a scheduled open house in my window of opportunity between Historic New England tours! So I popped right over there, of course. This house was restored under the auspices of Preserve Rhode Island several years ago, and I was quite impressed by its combination of modern livability and traditional details. It’s even bigger than the Arnold house—at one point it was actually a four-family house. Beautiful lot too, further along the Great Road. I admitted that I wasn’t going to buy it to the listing agent, and she was really nice and said that I could take as many pictures of the interior as I liked but she wanted to request permission from the owners before I posted them. I promptly lost her business card, so I couldn’t ask permission, but the listing is here if you want to peek inside.

So then I was off to Clemence Irons in Johnston, where I had a very informative tour (along with two ladies from the Arnold tour—it’s a great idea to do these together, and not just because of their proximity) from a guide who was a historic preservationist. Clemence Irons is interpreted a bit differently than the Arnold house, more as a 1930s restoration of a seventeenth-century house than a seventeenth-century house. After the last owner/occupant of the house, Nellie Irons, died in 1938, it was sold to a trio of wealth Rhode Island siblings who wished to restore it to its original appearance and operate it as a museum. They hired Norman Isham to supervise the restoration, and he oversaw a great stripping of the structure down to its studs, following by a rebuilding with original materials as well as newly-sourced ones. The result is a bit of reverential and romanticized Colonialism, in keeping with the Colonial Revival era: Isham also fashioned seventeenth-century furniture for the museum, a practice that began by George Francis Dow right here in Salem when he created the first “Period Rooms” for the Essex Institute. I love the photograph of the house circa 1910 below: I think it’s the first “adulterated” house which I find aesthetically pleasing but it became even cuter after its restoration/recreation. The house was gifted to Historic New England in 1947, and it represents an important acquisition not only because it is a stone-ender, but also a well-documented example of mid-twentieth century restoration theory and practice.

There are more stone enders to see in Rhode Island: Preserve Rhode Island estimates fourteen in all though more may be hiding in plain sight. But I was focusing so hard on all of the architectural details of these two houses that I was exhausted by the middle of the afternoon so I headed north towards home. But I’m going back!

5 Comments | tags: Architecture, Colonial Architecture, First Period Houses, Historic Interiors, Historic New England, Houses for Sale, Rhode Island, road trips, Stone Enders | posted in Culture, Houses, New England

May 27, 2025

White Houses of Thomaston

By daseger

We’re up in midcoast Maine for a long Memorial Day weekend and I spent an afternoon walking around Thomaston, which was the site of a very early English arrival in 1605: I’m not sure why this is not more heralded, or at least discussed. It became a very important shipbuilding town over the nineteenth century but for me, growing up in southern Maine, Thomaston had two associations: the prison and large white houses. The Maine State Prison at Thomaston was in operation from 1824 to 2002, and because of my adolescent preoccupation with the Isles of Shoals and the 1873 Smuttynose Murders I knew that the murderer, Louis Wagner, was held and executed at there. My other Thomaston association is far more pleasant: an impression of a succession of large white houses as we drove through on Route One. So I went back to look for the great white houses: there are indeed so many, and not just on the highway.

The most majestic white house of Thomaston (likely very prominent among my childhood impressions) is actually a recreation: of General Henry Knox’s Montpelier. The Revolutionary War hero was married to an heir of the Waldo Patent, which had allocated a large chunk of midcoast Maine to Boston merchant Samuel Waldo in the early 18th century. Waldo’s grandaughter Lucy Knox became his sole heir as her family, the Fluckers, were notable Loyalists who left the country at the onset of the Revolution. After Knox had finished his military and government service, he and Lucy retired to Thomaston and built Montpelier in 1794. They lived there until his death in 1806, after which the house was occupied by members of the Knox family until 1854, when it was sold. Several decades later it was demolished to my way for the Knox and Lincoln Railroad, and recreated in 1930 as a perfect Colonial Revival monument: now it houses the Henry Knox Museum. Was Montpelier the inspiration for all the stately white houses of Thomaston or was it James Overlock (1813-1906), who designed and built scores of solid structures in vernacular and revival styles with all the new building technologies of his day? Likely both, with a healthy measure of New England traditionalism, but all these white houses are certainly a testament to Thomaston’s shipbuilding wealth in the nineteenth century, and to the preservation efforts of their successive owners.

Just one sample of Thomaston’s white houses.

2 Comments | tags: Architecture, Henry Knox, Historic Houses, Historic Preservation, Maine, Memorial Day Weekend, road trips | posted in Architecture, Travel

May 19, 2025

Norman Street Will Break Your Heart

By daseger

Norman Street has been an important street in Salem for centuries, serving as an east-west way first to the harbor, then to the train station, and linking downtown and the city’s west-lying residential neighborhoods. It was once tree-lined, along with Georgian colonial houses interspersed with shops. It had a bit of a reputation as an American “Harley Street,” with several prominent physicians in residence, and it even has an eerie element, referenced by an entry in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s notebook for 1839 in which he recounts a story told to him by Custom House inspector William Pike, who “Another time — or, as I think, two or three other times — saw the figure of a man standing motionless for half an hour in Norman street, where the headless ghost is said to walk.” Norman street was also Samuel McIntire-central: Fiske Kimball asserted that the great architect and woodcarver was born at #21, and both his father and brother lived (and worked) on the street. Despite its heritage, and because of its continuous role as a central corridor, Norman Street was very vulnerable to one of the most dominant forces of the twentieth century: the car. From about 1930, it was transformed from a human-scaled city street into a wide suburban “connector,” a process that was intensified with the construction of two large buildings at its eastern and western ends, a new U.S. Post Office building and the headquarters for the Holyoke Mutual Fire Insurance Company. These buildings wiped out more than 50 residences on their side of the street and adjacent streets, even more after the Holyoke building’s expansion in the 1970s. On the north side of Norman, the New England Telephone Company initiated a similar cascade of demolition commencing several decades earlier. Business and residency had co-existed on Norman Street since Salem’s founding, but these larger businesses brought more workers and more traffic. The street was widened considerably, causing it to lose much of its residential charm, and one by one the remaining colonial houses fell, along with all of its trees. There is no question that the car was the major culprit in this unfortunate transformation, but Norman Street is also a study in how little control a municipality has over urban development if it does not have robust planning tools in place, or if it chooses not to utilize those tools. When I look at Norman Street today it appears that the City of Salem seems to have essentially written it off, leaving it to landlords and speeding cars. If you’re a preservationist or a pedestrian, Norman Street will break your heart, especially if you know what was there before.

Norman Street past.

Looking down (east) Norman Street in the 1880s and 1910s, Lee MSS & Frank Cousins slide, Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum; the Cox House, 1890s, Dionne Collection, Salem State University Archives & Special Collections. EIGHT LARGE BRICK OVEN FIREPLACES in the Felt House, an “antiquarian’s delight.” Looking west towards Chestnut Street, Lee MSS, Phillips Library and “Newsboys” at the corner of Washington and Norman Streets, c. 1910, Salem State University Archives & Special Collections. The very famous Mansfield House with its carved stair and mantel, Cousins photos and Boston Architectural College Yearbook for 1925; wallpaper from Dr. Cook’s famous house on Norman Street, the Magazine Antiques, June 1925; Postcard of the new Holyoke Mutual Fire Insurance Company headquarters at the corner of Summer and Norman Streets, 1936, SSU Archives & Special Collections; the Texaco station across the street, 1979, MACRIS; New condos at the northeastern end of Norman Street, 1982, Boston Globe and SSU Archives & Special Collections.

The last two photos of condo conversion and construction in the 1980s represent a positive change for Norman Street: the return of residents! The business blocks and setbacks, along with the widening of the street, have certainly left their mark, however, as you can see from the photographs below which I took this weekend. It’s hard to recognize this once charming street. A couple of years ago, I kind of got my hopes up for Norman, and that’s why heartbreak is in my title (and also the description of the Felt House above). Responding to the crush of traffic at the terrible intersection of Norman and Summer, the City installed a mini roundabout, and I thought this might be the start of a concerted effort to recognize the street as a proper entrance corridor, but no, it’s just a circle of fake brick in the middle of the road. Drivers still get so frustrated by this intersection that they tend to speed up before and after, which is why I’m always anxious about crossing Norman Street. Bordering this circle are beautiful Chestnut Street houses on the west side and the hulking former Holyoke building and an 18th century house with a strident 21st century addition on the east: this space sends a mixed message! Last summer, the weeds surrounding the Holyoke building reached up to its lower windows, and signs and litter are always strewn about. Its owner has had difficulty finding commercial tenants, and so part of the building (I think the original 1930s building) will now be consigned to a homeless center for families operated by Centerboard, the largest housing provider in Massachusetts. A proposed new housing development for the Texaco site across the street has just been granted significant tax credits by the Commonwealth, and so will now go forward. At the very least, this project (you can see a rendering here, but it’s from a couple of years ago) should eliminate that hole along the streetscape, but I hope the design does more than that. In fact, I think that this new building is Norman Street’s only hope.

Norman Street present.

It would be nice if that “Caution X-Walk Ahead” sign was positioned towards drivers in the street rather than pedestrians on the sidewalk.

3 Comments | tags: Architecture, Archives, Historic Preservation, Phillips Library, Photography, Salem Redevelopment Authority, Salem State University Archives & Special Collections, urban planning | posted in Culture

May 5, 2025

My Top Ten Books on Salem’s Architectural History

By daseger

I thought I would combine my traditional spring book list with the Preservation Month of May and put together a list of my top ten books on Salem architecture in historical context. I’m a rank amateur admirer of New England architecture up to about 1840 or 1850 but a bit more focused on the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when it comes to Salem structures. While I am offended by every new Salem building which is erected there’s enough inventory from this golden era to keep me enthralled—for now: I’m not at all convinced that our city’s self-professed preservation ethic still holds. These are the books about Salem houses from which I have learned the most and to which I return the most often: some are just picture books but I find myself going back to them again and again for some reason. But this first book, Fiske Kimball’s study of Samuel McIntire, defined architectural history for me. I love Dean Lahikainen’s more recent Samuel McIntire: Woodcarver of Salem too, but Kimball is always near. I’m a big fan of Frank Cousins, of course, but I share the view of his contemporaries at the Essex Institute that his McIntire book was a bit slight—and so they commissioned Kimball. I do rely on Cousins’ (and Phil M. Riley’s) Colonial Architecture in Salem quite a bit though, so it’s number two. I’ll read anything by Frank Chouteau Brown, and the compilation Colonial architecture in Massachusetts : from material originally published as the White pine series of architectural monographs, edited by Russell F. Whitehead and Frank Chouteau Brown (1977) includes one of his classic Salem articles. Likewise, I will read anything by his fellow architect Frank E. Wallis, who came up from Boston to measure and draw Salem exteriors and interiors often in his early career. Wallis was a big contributor to a succession of portfolios of measured drawings published as The Georgian Period and edited by William Rotch Ware which were first published in The American Architect and Building News. These portfolios are GORGEOUS—my former neighbors had one and let me peruse it for a bit: I have no idea why I don’t have at least one myself!

I carry Edwin Whitefield’s books with me in the car everywhere, just because they are so charming. You never know when I will find myself in a town with one of his houses! Albert MacDonald’s Old Colonial Brick Houses of New England, which has the long subtitle edited and published with the purpose of furthering a wider knowledge of the beautiful forms of domestic architecture developed during the time of the colonies and the early days of the republic is pretty much a picture book too, as is Halliday’s Collection of Photographs of Colonial and Provincial Houses 1628-1775. Early American Architecture by Hugh Morrison is rather old-fashioned but also very practical—it’s the only book on this list that has anything to say about construction. And finally, this is BORING I know, but if you’re interested in Salem architecture you must realize that it was written about quite a bit in early architectural periodicals, so I felt that I should include this classic bibliography.

2 Comments | tags: Architecture, books, Drawings, Historic Preservation, Old Salem Houses, Preservation Month, Samuel McIntire | posted in Architecture, Salem

March 26, 2025

Virginia Green

By daseger

Sorry for the delay in posting part II of my spring break road trip: I came back with a nasty flu so re-entry and re-engagement have been stalled. I’m feeling a bit better today and I thought it would make me feel better yet by looking at my photos. From the Eastern Shore, we traveled over the scary Chesapeake Bay bridge/tunnel up to Williamsburg for a few days, then we visited my sisters-in-law in Richmond. It was a real treat to stay in the Williamsburg Inn, and I do like Williamsburg in general even if it has its “history disneyland” qualities, but its highlights on this particular trip were definitely the George Wythe House and the museums. On the way up to Richmond, we stopped at the Berkeley Plantation on the James River, a beautiful and very history-rich site. I always love the capital, and we also visited Monticello up in Charlottesville, which I haven’t been to since I was in college. On the long drive back myself this past Saturday, I stopped on Virginia’s northern neck to visit Menokin, a plantation ruin in the midst of an interpretive restoration. As I drove north from there, I started feeling a bit gray but was thinking mostly of green: as we drove down we saw increasing green and on my ride home I was seeing less. That’s one of the things I like most about my March break trips down south: we won’t see that green in Salem for a while.

Four plantations: Eyre Hall on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, Berkeley and one of its “dependencies,”, Monticello & Menokin.

Eyre Hall, overlooking the Chesapeake on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, is a well-preserved, privately-owned 18th-century plantation whose owners open up its gardens to visitors, so we drove right in and I snuck a photograph of the house. The gardens are supposedly beautiful, but it was a a bit early for blooms. Berkeley has direct connections to the Harrison presidential family and to the Civil War, and is also a site rich in the history and documentation of slavery. There is also a claim to America’s “First Thanksgiving” in 1619, which I’m not going to explore because I’m from Massachusetts. Monticello was of course Thomas Jefferson’s beloved home, and he also has a tie to Berkeley and to the George Wythe house in Williamsburg. The Hemings family is also showcased at Monticello, which was the busiest site we visited by far: it was kind of difficult to take in the house on our packed tour. Menokin, as you can see, is currently a ruin, but its restorers have big plans. I took a lot of notes on interpretation over the week, but I haven’t really sorted them out and I’m not quite up to it, so I’m going to reserve my thoughts on inclusion/exclusion (and Thomas Jefferson!) for later.

Colonial Williamsburg: including the George Whythe (rhymes wth Smith) house, the Capitol and Governor’s Palace, and the museums.