There are several houses in Salem which have brick sides or ends, even though the majority of the house is constructed of wooden clapboards. Sometimes there is brick on each end of the house, sometimes on the front facade, sometimes along a rear wall. I’ve always found the aesthetics of the brick and clapboard combination very pleasing, but never took the time to wonder about the utilitarian reasons behind the design. The buildings below were all built between 1805 and 1820, in the central residential and commercial districts of an increasingly congested town. The first two are located on lower Essex Street, Salem’s main street then and now, and the latter two are situated off Derby Street in the (then busy) Wharf area and on more residential Federal Street, respectively.
As these houses were built concurrently with and just after Chestnut Street, with its grand display of brick merchants’ mansions, I thought perhaps there might be a socio-economic explanation for these single brick walls: showing a bit of brick to keep up with the China Trade Joneses. However, the architects and preservationists whom I’ve consulted say it’s all about fire prevention. And as you can see from the pictures above, the brick side is generally built around the chimney and proximate to another building. It’s hard to imagine the constant danger of fire in these mostly wooden, clustered towns; in the same decade that these buildings were built, there were devastating fires just up the coast in Newburyport, Massachusetts, (1811) and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, seaport cities very similar to Salem. Portsmouth actually experienced three terrible fires in the first decades of the nineteenth century: in 1802 (see below), 1806, and 1813–this last fire destroyed over 270 buildings. With only a bucket brigade and a rudimentary hand-pumped water pump to protect them, it is easy to see why Salem’s householders might have put up a brick wall or two.
Wharves destroyed in the 1811 Newburyport Fire, Custom House Maritime Museum
April 9th, 2011 at 9:26 am
How cool. I particularly like the law office building.
April 9th, 2011 at 11:18 am
In the UK we have fire walls of brick, built into the loft area of terraced houses to prevent fire spreading. I’ll look and see whether timber clad houses here in Hastings Old Town have the same feature. I know nothing about Salem but am enjoying learning!
April 9th, 2011 at 10:26 pm
Something I’ve pondered often (in fact, for months have had a bunch of photos of buildings in our town in a file, waiting for me to be inspired to turn them into a post whose working title is–you guessed it—‘Brick Ended Houses’). Fire prevention makes perfect sense, but up here, we have several examples sitting in open fields, clapboard front, brick end (often, but not always, the chimney ends. Fascinating as always. Thanks.
October 20th, 2013 at 5:39 am
Love the law offices with the red brick and black window grilles. Mamaya http://sweetest-home.com/