Monthly Archives: August 2014

Sunshine and Shadow

It seems appropriate to focus on sundials in these waning days of Summer. I know, I know–there are technically several more weeks–but I am a college professor, so for me Fall definitely begins on Tuesday. There is just no question; it’s the least transitional of the seasons. Sundials have a long history and are aesthetically pleasing, but the main reason I like them is for their representation of another transition:  from the technological and practical to the simply decorative. A sundial sits right in the middle of my Colonial Revival garden but there is also one (in more portable form) front and center in one of my favorite Renaissance paintings, The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger.

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Sundial Holbein

Hans Holbein the Younger, Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve (‘The Ambassadors’), 1533, The National Gallery, London | Photograph ©The National Gallery, London

There’s a lot going on in The Ambassadors, but if you can get past the anamorphic skull and focus on the instruments on the table, your eye (at least my eye) focuses on the sundial, right in the middle of these two handsome Renaissance men. In their time, the sundial was already almost anachronistic with the coming of the mechanical clock, but still, there it is. Obviously, like the other instruments on the table, it had come to symbolize more abstract things: the ability to harness time and (conversely) the limited amount of time that is available to man, any man (or woman), even men as magnificent as these. This sentiment is very evident in a print from about a century later, Stefano della Bella’s cartouche for the funeral of Francesco de Medici, with the central image of a sundial and the emblem Umbrae Transitus Tempus Nostrum: “Our Time is the Passing Away of a Shadow”.

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Stefano della Bella, A cartouche with a sundial, a skull with feathers on its head at top, from ‘Eight Emblems for the Funeral of Francesco de Medici’ (Huit emblèmes pour les funérailles du prince François de Médicis), c. 1640-1660, Metropolitan Museum of Art

These words, this sentiment, are expressed in multiple variations on sundials over the next centuries: shadows we are, like shadows depart, as a shadow, so is life, man fleeth as a shadow. When they were not strictly utilitarian, sundial inscriptions expressing morose mortality seem to peak in the Victorian era and then shift to the light, rather than the shadow: Robert Browning’s popular plea to Grow Old along with Me; the Best is yet to Be is certainly a more hopeful (and trite) inscription. Visually, sundials cease to be macabre and become romantic, associated not with death but with the pleasures of life and with a world that was slower-paced and less technological: the perfect symbol for taking time away from that busy world, in the garden.

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Sundials Crane

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Back cover of Walter Crane’s A Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden (1899), available here; Front cover of Alice Morse Earle’s Sun-Dials and Roses of Yesterday (1902), available here. One of my favorite sundials, in the sunken garden of the Jeremiah Lee Mansion in Marblehead, Massachusetts.


Return to Carlton Street

I am returning to the ruin on Carlton Street, what remains of a circa 1803 structure decapitated by a “developer” a few weeks ago, even though I don’t have much of an update. Work was stopped on the day after, and the shell of no. 25 is still standing—in a very vulnerable state that must be incredibly distressing for its neighbors to gaze upon. We are waiting for either the judgement of the city engineer or the city solicitor, maybe both, and then the developer will be brought before the ZBA (Zoning Board of Appeals). There are two preservation agencies in Salem: the Historic Commission (which has jurisdiction over the city’s four local historic districts–see below) and Historic Salem, Incorporated (HSI), a nonprofit preservation advocacy organization. Both have been rendered relatively powerless by the demolition of 25 Carlton: the Historic Commission because the house is not located within its jurisdiction, and HSI because it has chosen not to even issue a statement to the effect of: We are sorry to see such an insensitive renovation of a historic structure. I have received hundreds of emails from all around the country in the past few weeks, expressing rage and disgust, but also amazement that this could happen in Salem. So that’s why I wanted to return to this house, to show that this could easily happen in Salem.

Historic Districts Salem

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The three local historic districts in downtown Salem (there is a fourth on Lafayette Street)–just click to enlarge; 25 Carlton Street this past weekend; the plans posted in the window (which were produced by a structural engineer rather than an architect) show a gabled roof quite similar to that which was lopped off, but completely different fenestration in the front of the house, and and whole new rear addition.


Salem needs a (real) Tavern

There are three bar-restaurants in Salem with the name “Tavern”: the Tavern at the Hawthorne Hotel, the Village Tavern, and the Tavern in the Square. None of these places are really taverns. The Hawthorne Hotel’s Tavern probably comes closest, but it is a tavern-esque room in a 1920s hotel, the Village Tavern and the Tavern in the Square are charmless modern sports bars which are located in neither village or square: they are certainly not taverns (see Matt’s comment below–it’s not in the square, it’s on the square, surely?). We have other places that come close to being taverns in some ways (In a Pig’s Eye, Naumkeag Ordinary) but I want the real thing. What I want is the long-lost Black Horse Tavern, or something very much like it.

The Black Horse Tavern/ Trask Homestead, built c. 1680

The Black Horse Tavern/ Trask Homestead, built c. 1680

I think every town in the greater Boston area had a Black House Tavern in the eighteenth century: Salem’s was located on Boston Street, a main entrance corridor then and now, and operated from about 1680 to 1740 by all accounts. The house survived until the later nineteenth century, I believe–certainly long enough to be photographed—but by that time it was primarily known as the old Trask house, after one of the seventeenth-century “Old Planter” settlers of Salem. I walked over to Boston Street to photograph its location and became quite excited when I found a near lookalike (disguised by 1970s siding and replacement windows)–but alas, its surviving neighbor is indeed the Samuel Bell House, built in 1721.

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The Black Horse was hardly Salem’s only colonial tavern: these essential institutions are inextricably interwoven with the Witch Trials and every other public event in the past. Those two grande dames of Colonial Revivalism, Alice Morse Earle (1851-1911) and Salem-born Mary Harrod Northend (1850-1926) both loved taverns and revealed the names of Salem’s finest in Stage-coach and Tavern Days (1900), Memories of Old Salem (1917) and We Visit Old Inns (1925): the Ship Tavern, Thomas Beadle’s Tavern, the Kings Arms (which acquired the more politically correct name the Sun Tavern with the Revolution, and where John Adams frequented when he visited Salem), the Bunch of Grapes. In the words of Northend, in imagination you can enter one of these old Ordinaries, seat yourself by the side of the broad fireplace, warmed by the lively wood blaze that crackled in the hearth, and meet distinguished strangers. You can easily discern her fascination with taverns!

My tavern would look like an urban version of the Black Horse, because the post roads that Boston Street used to be ceased to exist in the age of the automobile. The hard and soft furnishings would be relatively easy to assemble, I think, so I’m fixated on the all important sign. If I were going to stick with the name Black Horse, a slightly more colorful version of the sign below (from a 2010 Skinner auction) would do nicely–but I think I might go for something more eccentric. I love the twentieth-century “Raven & Ring” sign, but this seems more appropriate for Baltimore than Salem. Whenever I do come up with a name (and a tavern) I have my signmaker all picked out:  Heidi Howard, Maker & Painter, who produced the White’s Tavern (with black horse) sign below.

Black Horse Tavern Sign Skinner

Tavern Sign Raven and Ring

Tavern Sign White


Weekend Watercraft

The weather continues to be amazing here in New England: clear, sunny, breezy and never (knock wood) too hot: this might be the first summer without a heat wave in a decade. I spent the weekend on or near the water, and much of yesterday afternoon admiring the old wooden boats of the (32nd) annual Antique & Classic Boat Festival at Hawthorne Cove Marina near the House of the Seven Gables. As was the case with the classic cars a few weeks ago, I wasn’t intending to post on this event because I’ve done so before, but many of the boats were new to the festival, or at least new to me, including a beautiful 1932 Chris Craft runabout named Nancy which stole my heart–much like the little BMW limo from the car meet. So here’s the Nancy and some of her fellow party boats, all gleaming in the late summer sun. How can plastic possibly compete?

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I think I will insert a little plastic in here–our kind of watercraft, near the Parker River in Newbury this weekend:

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Big Dogs on Bartlett Mall

I am not really a dog person, but as I was driving into Newburyport the other day I spotted some BIG dogs that stopped me in my tracks. They were “gathered” on the Bartlett Mall, Newburyport’s Common, overlooking the Frog Pond and Essex County Superior Courthouse (the country’s longest-serving, I believe), as one recognition of the city’s 250th anniversary. [Newburyport is so young–compared to its sister port cities to the north (Portsmouth, est. 1653) and south (Salem, which is over 380 years old)– because it split off from the greater Newbury in 1764]. They are traveling dogs, the work of Haverhill artist Dale Rogers, who is a big believer in public art and strives to craft works that become “mental postcards”. These dogs will only be on the Mall until the 24th, so if you’re in the area stop by and see them; if not, here are some real postcards to remember them by.

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Sanctuary from Salem,1693

On Monday, yet another sparkling summer day, I drove over to Framingham to look at an old house which has a direct connection to Salem, having been built by refugees from the Witch Trials of 1692. The Peter and Sarah Clayes House, appropriately situated on Salem End Road, has been in a state of decline for quite some time, and there is an ongoing and apparently intensifying effort to save it and attain placement on the National Register of Historic Places. Both of my parents grew up in Framingham, my father very close to the Clayes house, but I don’t remember ever visiting it or even hearing about it when I went to visit my grandparents: it was only later–after I moved to Salem and became curious about all things Salem–that I first became aware of it. And when I first saw it a few decades ago it looked a lot better than it does now.

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Even in its present dilapidated state, the house doesn’t look very First Period: it has been extensively remodeled in several phases over its 300 year history (oddly there is no HABS report at the Library of Congress, but there is an inventory at MACRIS). As originally built by the Clayes after they fled Salem, it was a much smaller saltbox–and the center of a community of Salem exiles that came to include some 15 families in what was first known as “Salem Plain” and later as “Salem End”. For reasons that are a bit murky, Sarah Towne Bridges Clayes (or Cloyce, as she was known in Salem) managed to escape the fates of her sisters Rebecca Nurse and Mary Easty, who were among the 19 “witches” hanged on Gallows Hill in 1692. She too was arrested and imprisoned (in Ipswich, rather than Salem) but ultimately liberated through the combined efforts of her husband Peter and Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth, who had served as a magistrate in the early phase of the trials but apparently had serious regrets afterwards. Danforth had acquired large grants of land in the region west of Boston over the years, comprising what came to be known first as “Danforth’s  Farm” and later as Framingham, and presumably he offered the Clayes and their fellow refugees sanctuary from Salem. So even before the official pardons, public apologies, and the legislative restitution that were decreed in the aftermath of 1692, the Clayes House stands as physical symbol of all of the above–and hopefully will for quite some time.

The Sarah and Peter Clayes House Preservation Project

 


Georgians for Sale

I suppose it is time to stop obsessing about a now-roofless historic Salem house and redirect my attention to those with lovingly preserved roofs, in these cases, gambrel: all around me it seems as if Georgians are for sale. Here are three, two just around the corner from our house and one two streets over. The Salem real estate market seems very hot; I don’t expect them to last long. 40 Summer Street, which abuts our property in the back, was built in 1762 for one proverbial Salem ship captain, Thomas Eden. There are lots of great photographs of its interior in the listing, but if you want to see more, it is very prominently featured in one of my very favorite books, Samuel Chamberlain’s Salem Interiors (1950). When searching for photographs of the long-lost McIntire South Church which was situated across the street from my house, I found one which also included the Captain Eden House (then owned and occupied by the Browne family) in the Schlesinger Library at Harvard: this black and white photograph of Summer Street dates from the 1890s.

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Just a few doors down is 12 Broad Street, one of my very favorite houses in Salem. If I didn’t have a husband who wanted to go newer rather than older (why do architects always like boring bungalows?) then I would snap this house up myself. Its official plaque date is 1767 but I think that reflects a significant addition built on to a much older 17th century structure. The Neal House has seen a lot: World Wars, Civil War, Revolutionary War, French and Indian War, maybe even Witch Trials.

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105 Federal Street, on the other side of the McIntire Historic District, was built a bit after the Georgian colonial era but it certainly looks the part with its gambrel roof. It’s a charming little house, situated with its side to the street and with a sheltered courtyard garden out back. This house is now painted a very nice gray-green color, but for much of the nineteenth century it was known as the “red house”.

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The Day After: Teardown?

As many of you predicted, the same “contractors” who tore the roof off a circa 1803 house on Carlton Street in Salem and exposed its interior to yesterday’s driving rains returned early this morning to complete their work. Their employer, the developer Jewel Saeed, is apparently out of the country. Much of two walls came down before several Salem building inspectors ordered them to focus solely on cleaning up the sodden boards that lay around the house rather than continuing to strip it bare. I really, really didn’t want to go see this crime scene again but I trudged over there: to document, I suppose. Once there, I started snapping away, and the contractor came over and asked me where I was from: to which I replied “Salem”. He then said they were not tearing the house down, but were preserving 50% of it, while his workers continued to throw its (former) frame into a huge dumpster. Plans for the new two-family house were posted in the front facade of the old. I find this deliberate destruction of a historic house so upsetting that it’s a bit difficult for me to focus, so I think I’ll just get a few facts out for now. While it was painful to look at 25 Carlton Street this morning, I am glad that I went over there, as there were several neighbors and city councilors on site and I was able to learn some interesting things, including the fact that Mr. Saeed has never even applied for a demolition permit. All of the neighbors seemed to agree that Mr. Saeed’s contractors were working very quickly to rid the house of its roof on the day before the storm, and that the house was in fairly good shape when he purchased it a year or so ago, from a woman who had lived there for fifty-eight years. That’s really all I can say/write right now; I think I’ll let the photographs speak say the rest.

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25 Carlton Street on August 14, 2014: front and side views and a close-up of its exposed center chimney.

 


A Drowned House in Salem

I seldom publish two posts in one dayand especially on such divergent topics–but a photograph of an old house on Carlton Street in Salem popped up on Facebook this morning, and I can think of little else. The simple colonial house had been shorn of its roof and top story, by all accounts in the past few days, and left completely open to the elements: just in time for the driving rainstorm we are experiencing today. I ran over to look at 25 Carlton Street in the early afternoon, and it was indeed drenched, inside and out, even more forlorn in appearance now that the floodgates have opened. This was deliberate and brutal decimation: the house looks like its top was sliced off with a chainsaw. The interior has been gutted as well, and what is referred to as a “massive center chimney” in its MACRIS inventory removed. No tarp in sight. I have never seen a worse case of demolition-by-developer, whose name was still conveniently legible on the building permit: Jewel Saeed, of Swampscott, Massachusetts, who appears to own several convenience and liquor stores in the Boston area. Let us hope and pray that he sticks to his day job and stops preying on historic houses in the future.

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25 Carlton Street on August 13, 2014. The house was built by or for Salem shipwright Thomas Magoun c. 1803. Below: contrasting views of the house on a better day and today.

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The Rampant Ropes

If you are in the vicinity of Salem or even eastern Massachusetts RUN, don’t walk, to the Ropes Mansion Garden off Essex Street for the most flagrant display of August abundance I have ever seen! (Perhaps you should wait until tomorrow though, as we have pouring rain today). I have posted many pictures of this beautiful formal garden over the years, in every season, but it is nothing short of stunning this particular summer. Everybody’s having a good garden year, myself included, but the Ropes Garden has outbloomed us all. It has several notable advantages: a circular plan devised by horticulturist John Robinson in 1912 which creates all sorts of colorful contrasts and perspectives, a perfect mix of annuals and perennials, natural and man-made enclosures, and a full-time professional gardener. I could go on and on with flowery praise but let’s get to the pictures, which of course will not do the garden justice: about half of these I took in the afternoon, the remainder at dusk–I was looking for contrast at both times because it’s difficult to capture the vividness of flowers (especially so many flowers) without.

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