Category Archives: Houses

July 29, 2013

Georgian Houses in Salem

By daseger

“Georgian” can be a deceptive architectural designation, especially here in Salem: there are Georgian colonial houses built before the Revolution, and Georgian colonial revival houses which date from the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They might share the distinctive gambrel roof and other architectural details, but the proportions are often very different. Within the colonial category, it is readily apparent that “Georgian” is both a style and a period, and not all houses built in the period conform to the style. There is also the issue of construction conservatism: walking through my neighborhood I easily spotted many houses that looked “Georgian” to me, but they date from the 1780s and 1790s and even after 1800: now you can’t have a Georgian house after the end of King George’s rule, can you?

On this same walk, I did find several Georgian houses that conformed to both the style and the period, at a few more that left me confused (see below). This is just a sampling from the McIntire Historic District; I am omitting several of the iconic Georgian houses of Salem, including the Derby House, the Crowninshield–Bentley House, and the Miles Ward House. No one could mistake these houses for anything but Georgian, but I have written about them before in various posts and doubtless will again. The houses below are hardly off the beaten track, but I haven’t featured (most of) them before.

Georgian corner: at the intersection of Essex and Cambridge Streets, the Ropes Mansion (later 1720s) faces the Capt. Thomas Mason House (1750).

Walking down Essex Street, there are smaller Georgian houses on either side of the street, and the amazing Cabot-Endicott-Low House, built in the 1740s for Salem merchant Joseph Cabot. The house remained in the Cabot family for more than a century, and was then purchased by William Endicott, Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and Secretary of War under President Grover Cleveland. The house is spectacular in terms of both scale and detail, and it has great outbuildings too. Unfortunately the other really stately, and unabashedly Georgian, house on Essex Street, the Lindall-Barnard-Andrews House (c. 1740, below) is not as well-preserved as its neighbors: the present owner maintains it as a commercial establishment, complete with vinyl siding and hot top parking lot on what was once fenced-in garden. I’ve never been inside, but its interior has been preserved in photographs, at least, and wallpaper taken from its walls is now in the collection of Winterthur. The beautiful fence that you see in the c. 1910 Detroit Publishing Company photograph below (Library of Congress) is long gone.

Over on Federal Street, there are houses that are both Georgian in period and style, and a few that require a bit more interpretation and expertise–a bit more than I have! I’m curious about the three houses below: they have Georgian elements, but as you can see, alterations have been made over time.

A narrow–and charmingly crooked!–house with a modified gambrel roof and a gambrel-roofed addition: is it Georgian in style and period? I’m not sure. And look at the brown house below: it has two roof styles in one! I wonder which one came first? I assume the gambrel. Apart from the roof, it looks like a mirror image of its neighbor, and that house’s plaque indicates that it is solidly Georgian, at least in period.

Back to where I began, the Ropes Mansion on Essex Street, where the gardens are in perfect high summer bloom.

8 Comments | tags: Architecture, Crowninshield-Bentley House, Georgian, Historic Preservation, Library of Congress, Ropes Mansion | posted in History, Houses, Salem

July 9, 2013

Waiting & Walking in Old Boston

By daseger

I spent all of yesterday in Boston, in the realms of two of the city’s more venerable–and very different–institutions. At Massachusetts General Hospital, I kept my father company while we waited for news of my stepmother’s condition after surgery (she is fine, thank you). This particular institution has such a strong historic identity that you can’t escape it: sepia-toned photographs of firsts line the halls, a flyer for the “MGH History Trail” greets you in the waiting room, the original 1821 Bulfinch-designed building still sits in the center of its expansive campus, and a new Russell Museum of Medical History and Innovation opened its doors just last year. While waiting, I made my way to the Bulfinch Building, and ascended stone steps to the 4th floor surgical theater called the “Ether Dome”, the site of the first public surgery with anesthesia, performed in 1846 (there is a mummy up there too).

In the afternoon, I found myself in another venerable Boston institution: an “Old Boy’s Club”, except it wasn’t! Surviving bastions of the Brahmin past, Boston’s social clubs–most of which are located in the Back Bay–continue to function as social centers for their members but also offer rooms for short-term stays “in town”. My father’s club was closed for renovations, so they had placed him at the nearby Chilton Club, the only women’s club (clearly I cannot say “Old Women’s Club) among its brethren. Named for Mary Chilton, the first Mayflower passenger to leave Plymouth for Boston, the club occupies two adjacent brownstones on Commonwealth Avenue. Compared to the other Boston clubs I have seen, the decor of Chilton was indeed decidedly feminine, with needlepoint, lots of toile, a damask fabric-lined dining room, delicate fancy chairs scattered about, a pale yellow ballroom with mirrored “windows”, and a beautiful front-facing parlor called the “Dexter Room”. I asked the man at the reception desk if it was safe for my father to stay there, and he said they had admitted men a while ago (but they asked him to use the side entrance when he returned later that night).

Appendix: in the Public Garden, a swan laid on her newly-lain eggs, in the biggest nest I have ever seen!

8 Comments | tags: Architecture, Boston, Flora and Fauna, Gardens, great houses, Interiors | posted in Houses, Nature, Travel

June 16, 2013

Storybook Structures 3.0

By daseger

My preference for classical American architecture does not stop me from seeking out more whimsical structures: the “storybook” style of the interwar years is a particular obsession, though there are not many examples in our region. One of my very favorite Salem houses, which I wrote about here and check in on often, is classic storybook, as is Santarella in western Massachusetts. Most of the houses below would probably be classified more as Arts and Crafts or “eclectic” houses by architectural historians, but it’s all in the details for me: a few fanciful touches makes the grade. The first house, which is situated on a street that runs parallel to ours here in Salem, has long fascinated me. It was built on a swath of land that was devastated by the great Salem fire of 1914, I think shortly afterwards, both because it was the city’s policy to rebuild as soon as possible, and the appearance of similar (but not identical) structures in building periodicals from the World War One era.

A Salem cottage, and its inspiration? Rendering from Richardson Little Wright’s Low Cost Suburban Homes; a Book of Suggestions for the Man with the Moderate Purse (1916).

This next house is right around the corner in the same Salem neighborhood, but it fortunately survived the fire. The main structure dates from the 1840s, but a very fanciful wing was added at some point after the turn of the century. The entire composition is really charming, as you can see: even the fence.

The towns that line the coast just south of Salem, heading towards Boston, have rich inventories of older houses, many with whimsical details. These next two houses definitely date from before the storybook era (if indeed there is one): they are essentially and eclectically Victorian. But how can I resist including Moorish and Norman “castles” in this company?

Storybook Victorians in Swampscott (top) and Lynn (bottom), Massachusetts.

Storybook intersects with all of the other architectural styles of the first decades of the twentieth century: Arts and Crafts, Cottage, Tudor Revival, among others. These last two houses, in Swampscott and Nahant respectively, illustrate this assimilation. The first house, with its spectacular slate-tiled roof, looks like an embellished bungalow, while the second is (unmistakably) an all-American Tudor. But both have that fairy-tale feel, accentuated by their settings.

Swampscott and Nahant cottages, and a photograph from Wright’s Low Cost Suburban Homes (1916).

1 Comment | tags: Architecture, books, design, great houses, Massachusetts | posted in Culture, Design, Houses, Salem

June 7, 2013

Purple Reigns

By daseger

I was looking at pictures of the recent commemoration of the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, and even the Anglophile in me thought: aren’t they done? Haven’t the British been celebrating anything and everything for the past several years? Enough. But I did like this one photograph of royal purple banners, and it inspired me to find some purple in my own city. I’ve been working my way through the palette of paint colors here in Salem for several years, beginning with Old Orange Houses, so it’s all about purple today.

Purple banners in London last week and Salem (and one Marblehead) houses below:

One of my favorite houses in (south) Salem, a mid-nineteenth-century extended “cottage” that extends for quite a bit and is set on a very nice property. Love these long windows on the side and the purple-with-green paint scheme.

A purple Salem triple-decker, and a c. 1710 house in nearby Old Town Marblehead.

Side by side in North Salem, an 1830 house and one from the turn-of-the-century or after (not quite sure about this style; it almost looks storybook to me. This house is a very, very, very pale greyish purple with purple trim and it is for sale now–no, under agreement; I just checked).

Two High Victorian houses in purple on Federal Street.

5 Comments | tags: Architecture, design, England, great houses | posted in Current Events, Houses, Salem

May 23, 2013

Wayward Wisteria

By daseger

I walk to work along a street named Wisteria, where there is no wisteria to be found, and planted wisteria in my backyard 12 years ago, but it has yet to bloom; nevertheless, it is wisteria-blooming time nearly everywhere else in Salem. Maybe even just past-time, so I took a walk and tried to capture some good shots of the exuberant purple and white blooms, which was not too difficult. The great thing about wisteria it that it needs support, so you get architecture and flowers at the same time. Even when the wisteria was not in bloom–as in my backyard, or on my next-door neighbors’ beautiful fence, or the arbor at the Ropes Mansion, it was still quite abundant in its more restrained way. Given the east Asian source of wisteria, I can imagine Salem’s merchants and adventurers bringing it back from China and Japan in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, carefully packed in their ships’ holds, to adorn their houses, fences and outbuildings–and so it does.

Wisteria at my next-door neighbors’ (side and back) and across Chestnut Street:

On a Tudor “automobile house” on Botts Court:

The Ropes Garden and Federal Court:

And the surreal wisteria tunnel at the Kawachi Fuji Gardens in Kitakyushu, Japan, via Slate.com.

4 Comments | tags: Architecture, Flora and Fauna, Gardens, Home, Japan | posted in Houses, Nature, Salem

May 19, 2013

Two Churches and a Park

By daseger

Apologies for posting multiple pictures of the park across from my house in the space of a few weeks, but the flowering trees have been particularly beautiful this year. Since this space is constantly within my view, I am always trying to picture what it looked like in the past, when not just one but two churches successively occupied the space. Even though I’m a great admirer of the built landscape (when it is well-built), I think I prefer the empty space, especially in the midst of densely-settled Salem. Although if Samuel McIntire’s majestic first South Congregational Church was still standing, I might change my mind—but its 166-foot-high steeple would certainly dwarf my house! That’s the main effect that I’m constantly trying to conjure up–I may ask my husband to make a rendering one day.

The park today and the two churches: Samuel McIntire’s Church was built in 1804-5 and destroyed by fire in 1903, and quickly replaced by the Gothic Revival structure that you see below, which itself burned down in 1950. Quite the contrast! The word on the street is that there were hopes of erecting a third church on the site (this time by a Greek Orthodox congregation), but one prominent resident foiled those plans by purchasing it himself and donating it to the neighborhood association. All the householders on Chestnut Street now pay dues to maintain the park, which is open to everyone.

I think I’ve shown these images of the churches as well (The amazing Frank Cousins photograph is from 1891; the postcard of the “new” church is from 1910) before as well (I’m nearly reblogging here!), but I do have some interior shots of both churches which I just found, and a salvaged capital from McIntire’s church: can you imagine the struggle to salvage precious pieces of wood while the fire raged? It might have been someone from my house that ran over there and grabbed this! That’s a moment (not so pleasant) that I try to imagine: what it must have been like to wake up in the middle of the night and see this blazing inferno just outside my bedroom window; no doubt there was real fear that the fire would spread and the famous spire would collapse onto the house–my house. What a scary, horrible night that must have been. 110 years later, all is calm over there this morning.

All historic photographs from the New York Public Library Digital Gallery, with the exception of the last one, which is from the Estey Organ Company in Vermont, which maintains a virtual museum and an archive of all of its organs.

10 Comments | tags: Architecture, Chestnut Street, Frank Cousins, landscape, Photography, Samuel McIntire | posted in History, Houses, Nature, Salem

April 25, 2013

Flemish Renaissance Revival

By daseger

I thought I had my architectural revival styles straight–Greek, Gothic, Colonial–but somehow I never accounted for the different varieties of Renaissance revival styles until yesterday, when, in my continuous search for double-parlor inspiration, I came across a beautiful photograph of the interior of a Flemish Renaissance Revival house in a New York Times article about upcoming house and garden tours across the country. This parlor took my breath away, and also took me back, to the Flemish (Northern) Renaissance, of course.

The parlor of a 1903 Flemish Renaissance Revival House in Park Slope, Brooklyn, one of several houses open to the public during the upcoming Park Slope Civic Council Tour, and Rogier van der Weyden’s triptych, the Seven Sacraments Altarpiece, c. 1445-50, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.

I don’t know why this style is such a surprise to me: there were several Renaissances, so it only makes sense that there would be several Renaissance Revival styles. The Renaissance itself was a revival of sorts; revivals are eternal. I immediately set off on a walk around Salem to see if I could find buildings of similar inspiration here, but to no avail: this is not a Salem style, perhaps not even a New England one–though I do think there are brownstones in the Back Bay of Boston that feature the distinct roofline. A digital search will have to do for now, but I look forward to future forays. I would expect that this style would flourish in New York, but my preliminary search for more examples of the Flemish Renaissance Revival seems to indicate its particular popularity in the Midwest: surely the Pabst Mansion in Milwaukee, built in 1892 is an exemplar.

Flemish Renaissance Revival houses in America: the Pabst Mansion in Milwaukee, Vanderslice Hall in Kansas City (1895-96), built for the Meyer family and now the Kansas City Art Institute, rowhouses in the Parkside neighborhood, West Philadelphia, and at 13-15 South William Street, Manhattan.

The inspiration: the beautiful, storybook city of Bruges (Getty Images), and I’m throwing in the great 2008 film here too, just because I also think it’s converging on CLASSIC, the basis for any revival.

7 Comments | tags: Architecture, design, films, Interiors, Renaissance | posted in Culture, Design, Houses

February 22, 2013

Double Houses

By daseger

Our house is part of a double house, in which a central party wall divides two autonomous units, a not-uncommon configuration in historic urban areas, large and small. Though, as you will see in my pictures below, double houses are not exclusively urban constructions. I love living in our half of the double house, primarily because we have great neighbors, but also because there are no restrictions on privacy and lots of economic benefits which derive from the common wall: I am certain that the heating bills for my very large house would be a lot higher without it! Our particular property has very private spaces out back as well, as the previous owners of my house (several previous owners ago) extended an addition to my neighbors’ barn, creating separate courtyard gardens on each side. While our houses started out as mirror images of each other, many changes have been made over the nearly 2 centuries of the building’s existence, mostly to my side. Even though they are semi-detached (to use the British term), we could even paint our houses different colors if we wanted to (but we don’t).

It seems that every double house has its own story: many were built by and for family members, but not all. Here in Salem, there are several instances of fathers constructing double houses for their marrying daughters (in one case, daughters who are marrying brothers!). There are also business partnerships behind the construction of double houses. Here on Chestnut Street and in the surrounding McIntire Historic District, I think builders were running out of land on which to build, and double-house construction offered an economic way to build two houses in a fashionable neighborhood. I know that’s the story with our house, which was built by the distiller-developer Deacon John Stone who lived across the street: he bought the lot as an investment, and constructed our house as an investment property, to be let out on both sides. Quite soon after its erection, both sides of the house were sold to different families, and then its separate-but-connected history began. Some double houses were converted from single houses; some single houses were extended to become double houses.

My favorite double house (besides my own, of course) is not in an urban setting or even in Salem: it is in Byfield, Massachusetts, on a rural country road. I don’t know anything about its construction, but the fact it is built in the midst of isolated farm/marshland leads me to believe there was a family connection; I can’t imagine strangers living side by side but maybe its dwellers were looking for close comfort. On the day before the big snowstorm a couple of weeks ago, I was up in that part of Essex County, so I took some pictures of the Byfield house and some other double houses in nearby Newburyport, Newbury and Essex.

Double House on the Marsh, Byfield, Massachusetts, the former Newburyport Academy on High Street in Newburyport, converted into a double house in 1842; the Swett-Ilsley House (Historic New England), which began its life as a single house in 1670 and then was extended (HABS photograph from 1940, Library of Congress); a double house in Ipswich.

Double houses in Salem are for the most part more straightforward constructions, but as is the case with our house, changes to the exterior on one side or another over time distort the mirror image, but usually in a relatively graceful way. There are lots of added bay windows and rear and side additions. I’ve don’t have any interior images today, but the comparative interiors of a double house often provide an interesting lesson in architectural history; generally one side is a bit more pristine and the other a bit more “modern”. There are lots of double houses in Salem, in every area of the downtown, so I chose a chronological sampling of those in my immediate neighborhood, and I’m picturing them in chronological order, starting with the Pickering-Mack-Stone double house on Chestnut Street, which was built in 1814-15 for two Pickering brothers. The western (right-hand) half of this house is currently for sale: it has absolutely beautiful “bones”, a Federal carriage house out back, and, according to Bryant Tolles’ Architecture in Salem, Andrew Jackson was entertained there in 1833 on a presidential visit to Salem.

Frank Cousins photograph of Chestnut Street in the 1890s, New York Public Library.

Next are two great Greek Revival double houses, the Thompson-West double house, built in 1845-46 on Chestnut Street (note the entrance bay window added to the left-hand side later in the nineteenth century), and the Nancy Courtis double house, built in the following year on Federal Street. Miss Courtis was a “singlewoman” who built the house and lived on one side her entire life while leasing out the other, no doubt a convenient arrangement for her. It’s a striking house, made all the more so because of its paint scheme.

And last but certainly not least, two Victorian double houses in the same general area. I’m really not sure about the date of this first house, which is further along Federal Street from the Courtis house: it looks like it was built in the 1850s or 1860s to me, but I could be wrong. I wanted to include it because of its doorways, which are not located adjacent to each other but at opposite ends of the building. This seems a bit unusual to me, especially for a town house. Both sides of the house have their addition wings off the side,and matching dormer windows as well. The paint color (a very dark purple with salmon-orange doors) makes this house really stand out on the street. The last house, on Hamilton Street, was built in 1890 for the Reverend James Potter Franks, long-time rector at Grace Episcopal Church around the corner, and his daughters. The gabled entrance really stands out on this house; it is clearly the result of deliberate design rather than organic evolution.

14 Comments | tags: Architecture, Chestnut Street, Historic Preservation, Massachusetts, urban planning | posted in History, Home, Houses, Paper

January 14, 2013

Carriage Houses

By daseger

I was getting a bit depressed with all the devastation and demolition of the last few posts, so I went searching for structures that have survived: not too difficult a task in my neighborhood. The weather is odd here (for January): quite warm, foggy, air filled with moisture but no rain or snow. Rather dreary, really, as you can tell from the photographs. On dark days like these in the midwinter the built landscape really stands out, with no natural landscape to frame or cloak it. For some reason, on my walk yesterday I was particularly noticing the outbuildings rather than the facades: Salem has many great carriage houses, most in pretty good condition. This is impressive to me: it’s hard enough to preserve a big old house, but keeping an ancient ancillary building in good shape is a true commitment. We lost our carriage house long ago: it is evident on the late nineteenth-century street atlases of Salem, but after the turn of the century, it’s gone.

I don’t have anything similar for Salem, so I want to start with an image of the Valentine-Fuller house in Cambridge, Massachusetts: Mr. and Mrs. Fuller are on horseback in their carriage-house courtyard, circa 1890: this seems like the peak time for carriage houses to me. After that, they would either come down or be preserved as storage structures or garages. This house, which was built in 1848 on Prospect Street, was demolished in 1937, along with its outbuildings (oh no, more demolition).

HABS, Library of Congress

Back in Salem, carriage houses can be found in several neighborhoods, so this is just a sampler, or part one. On the street where I live, Chestnut Street, there are some amazing carriage houses, several of which are laid out a considerable distance from their main houses so you really don’t get the courtyard effect that you see above. On one side of the street, a completely new parallel street, Warren Street, was laid out as an access route to these buildings. The photographs below are all of Warren Street carriage houses that belong to mansions on Chestnut, but two of them appear quite capable of fulfilling an independent existence.

Essex Street, which was the colonial (and remains the present) main street of Salem, runs parallel to Chestnut on the other side: because of its early settlement, it features many beautiful carriage houses–primarily wooden rather than brick. In the general vicinity of the Salem Public Library, stalwart structures peak out from behind the streetscape, particularly visible at this time of year. Behind this trio of houses–Georgian, Colonial Revival built on the site of a pulled-down Federal at the turn of the century, and Federal–are some of my favorite carriage houses on the street and in Salem.

And then just across the street from the library, there’s this wonderfully restored Greek Revival, with its NEW carriage house aligned perfectly with what I assume are later nineteenth-century additions, creating a nice sense of enclosure for its yard. Just a little down the street, is a (nearly) matched pair of Federal houses dating from about 1800, both of which have great carriage houses. As you can see, carriage-house cupolas abound on Essex Street!

Essex Street, circa 1910. Detroit Publishing Company/ Library of Congress

On my way across town to the Common, I stopped to take a photograph of a very controversial Federal Street carriage house. It appears to belong to the very stately Victorian that was converted into condominiums a few decades ago, but actually is part of an adjacent property whose owner tried to do the very same thing with his carriage house at the same time (this was all before I came to Salem, so I’m not that clear on the details). When he did not get approval, he moved out of his Federal Court house and let it and the carriage house rot. So this is the result, 20+ years later.

As this is the birthday week of Salem’s famed architect Samuel McIntire, I’ve got to feature some McIntire carriage houses which, again, is not difficult to do. Everybody’s favorite McIntire house, the Gardner-Pingree house, has a charming carriage house in back which has a slightly smaller stature, in keeping with the general scale of the house. There’s a restoration project going on there now, so I’m sorry that the pictures give a work-site impression, but you can still see how great this outbuilding is.

Just next door, another house owned by the Peabody Essex Museum features one of the most prominent carriage houses in town: the Andrew Safford House was built after McIntire’s in 1811, but you can see his influence in both the main house and the carriage house, both of which overlook Salem Common. When it was built in 1819, this was one of the most expensive houses in America, and it remains very impressive, nearly two centuries later.

The Andrew Safford House and Carriage House, yesterday and in 1910 & 1939 photographs, Library of Congress.

Finally, my very favorite Salem carriage house. The Clifford Crowninshield House (1806) is a McIntire house located on another corner of the Salem Common, just across from the Safford house. Behind the main house, almost hidden really, is a wooden carriage house with an elegant stature and very intricate details: every time I pass by it makes me smile.

12 Comments | tags: Architecture, Chestnut Street, great houses, Historic Preservation, Massachusetts, Samuel McIntire | posted in Houses, Salem

January 10, 2013

Vanished Vantage Points

By daseger

There’s no better way to see how a landscape, or a streetscape, changes over time than to compare images of the past and the present. I am always on the hunt for nineteenth-century photographs and drawings of Salem, before urban renewal, before the great fire of 1914, before the CAR, so I can see how these forces altered the city, for better or for worse (mostly for worse).

I’m going to ease into what is often a shocking contrast of past and present with two photographs of a section of Federal Street, taken about a century apart. This is the street looking east from the vantage point of the Peirce-Nichols House, one of Samuel McIntire’s most important commissions, looking toward North Street and the courthouses on the other side. The new (hugely out-of-scale) courthouse (or “judicial center”), which opened up for business just last year, is mostly out of the frame of the modern picture, or the contrast would indeed be shocking. What you do see, or what I see, is the brick former Baptist church, now law library, which was moved to its present location and situated on an angle so to accommodate the curve in the road and effect a transition from residential to institutional buildings on the street. This was an absolutely brilliant idea, whoever thought of it (I know that Historic Salem, Inc. advocated for it) as the courthouse project mandated the demolition of the smaller wooden buildings you see in that location in the earlier picture: without the in-scale angled brick building, the judicial center would have even less connection to the street.

Now for a comparative vantage point that is a little more jarring: Church Street in the 1890s and today. This was an old residential street in Salem, which was also the site of the original Salem Lyceum building, which you see here (the image is from Winfield S. Nevins’ Witchcraft in Salem Village, 1892 & 1916) as well as St. Peter’s Church, the source of its name. In between the church, the Lyceum, and the great old firehouse (fortunately still there) were rows of primarily eighteenth-century houses, now all gone. The old wooden Lyceum was built about 1831 and burned down at the turn of the century, but it was replaced by a very elegant brick structure that was long the site of the Lyceum Restaurant, now 43 Church. Despite the unfortunate designs of both the District court on the right and the office building past the Lyceum on the left, the upper (foreground) part of Church Street is aesthetically pleasing and commercially successful (the site of an organic grocery store, a wine shop, and a coffee shop in addition to 43 Church), primarily because its buildings line up with the sidewalk, just like those in the older photograph. But in the background of the modern photographs, you see the ravages of urban renewal: a large parking lot on the right, and a faux-Federal condominium building and brutally ugly parking garage/mall on the right.

From the vantage point of St. Peter’s Church, looking west towards the Lyceum: all those house removed to accommodate cars.

My last group of images shows a completely obliterated street: Norman Street, a short street that has been transformed beyond all recognition in the twentieth century. Not a shred of its built historical fabric remains, including this wonderful house, the Benjamin Cox house at 21 Norman Street (with the man standing in front of it). It is gone, along with its garden, and all of its neighbors, replaced by office buildings and a wide, wide road so that commuters might easily speed through Salem on their way to the university, or Marblehead. The historic photographs below, which date from about 1875-85, are from the Brown Family Collection of the Schlesinger Library at Harvard, and the modern photograph was taken this morning. It’s difficult to reconcile these two settings: I think that the Cox House was located somewhere in the vicinity of the white car (the one driving, as opposed to the one parked) in the 2013 photograph.