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.
