Tag Archives: Architecture

March 14, 2023

The Golden Ball Tavern

By daseger

It’s spring break week and I’m slowly making my way down to “New Sweden” but as I write this I’m stuck in a snowstorm at my brother’s house in New York! I should be able to get out tomorrow and want to spend three or four days looking at old houses in Delaware, south Jersey, and Pennsylvania. This was supposed to be a Revolutionary tavern tour, but I think it’s going to be a bit more general: we’ll see! But because it was supposed to be a tavern tour, I did visit a tavern back in Massachusetts on Sunday: a sunny day which seems like it was weeks away rather than days away. I’ve driven by the Golden Ball Tavern Museum on the old Boston Post Road in Weston for years but never ventured inside before, and decided to take advanage of its monthly second Sunday open houses to take a tour. It was very interesting: a spacious eighteenth-century building left quite deliberately in a lived-in, layered condition. Weston is a very wealthy town, and I expected the house to be in mint restored condition but that is not the approach here: the ceilings were sloping in places, patchy plaster was everywhere, and I read a cautionary note on the central stairway: “original avocado paint—do not paint.” This house museum is an independent, self-sustaining operation which is staffed by enthusiastic docents who appeared to be discovering the house right alongside its visitors: it all felt very personal, like we were all just dropping in, or into a house built by tavern-keeper Isaac Jones in 1768 which sheltered six successive generations of his family. In the heated environment of the early 1770s, Jones gave shelter and sustenance (in the form of tea!) to British soldiers, prompting his neighbors to attack the tavern on March 28, 1774 in what later became known as the “Weston Tea Party.” He later came around to the right side, but the interpretive identity of the Tavern as museum seems to be focused on family history and Loyalist history. And layers, literally. If you’re into material textures, this tavern is the place for you: the historic paint, paper, and hardware was on full revelatory display.

The first floor of the Golden Ball Tavern: proceeding from the rear old kitchen, with many layers exposed, towards the tavern room in the front. LOVED this little Sheraton settee! Original paint and plaster in the central hallway and the right-side parlor and bedroom have been refinished.

Upstairs there are bedrooms, of course, but also a room which was used for more public purposes: and consequently it has one of the most interesting and practical architectural details I have ever seen. Doors that open up to the ceiling and are affixed to hooks! Hooks which are still there! And right across from this room is that in which poor Mrs. Jones was lying in bed with her newborn infant when her neighbors broke in in search of her Tory husband (these little notes are everwhere in the tavern, another aspect of its very personal presentation). I really loved all the colors and textures in this room, including the adjacent “office” and stairways upstairs and downstairs. So many details in this one space, just a corner of this one house.

Details, details, details! The door on the ceiling, hooks, paint, stairs, and a colonial filing system.

3 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Architecture, History

March 8, 2023

March Memorials in Boston

By daseger

This past Sunday, the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, I went into Boston to take the “Massacre and Memory” tour offered by Revolutionary Spaces, the newish organization that maintains and interprets both the Old State House and Old South Meeting House. I always enjoyed going to Massacre reenactments at the former on March 5, but this tour was a whole other dimension of historic interpretation. I was rather amazed at the guide’s ability to present: a) the events of that day in 1770; b) deep background and wide context for the events of the day; c) the divergent sources which presented the events of the day afterwards; d) the day’s immediate and long-term “remembrance”; e) the use of the remembrance of the day by abolition activists in the mid-19th century and anti-busing activists in the twentieth century; f) a very strong sense of both the geography of Revolutionary-era Boston as well as the purposes and perceptions of the revolutionary spaces which we visited; and g) a consideration of how we might tell interpret historic events in the future as we proceed through our digital age. All that in about 2 hours! This was the first tour of the season for our young guide, and she was on fire. No Salem simplistic storyteller was she (what I hear out my front windows when it’s warm: and then Giles Corey was pressed to death (MORE WEIGHT), and then this happened, and then this happened): instead she offered us layers and layers of history: its creation, dissemination, legacy and utility.

Revolutionary spaces indeed: The Old State House, Faneuil Hall (where the first post-massacre meetings were held), and the Old South Meeting House, with George Washington and Andrew Oliver standing by. So many markers in Boston! All in copper and bronze: in the street, on buildings, everywhere. 

The Tour began at the Old State House, before which the Massacre took place, and ended at the Old South Meeting House, where the first memorial massacre orations were held. I had a lot to think about after this layered presentation, so I wanted to go back to Old State House and consider the exhibitions there: the tour ticket included admission to both Revolutionary Spaces buildings. But when I got back to the Old State House, there wasn’t really open admission: there were other scheduled tours which I didn’t want to take so I stomped off in my fashion. I was in a very bitchy mood for about ten minutes as I strode down Tremont Street, because I wanted to process the Boston Massacre on my own terms, this very day, and somehow I felt I was prevented from doing that. But then I came to the Old Granary Burying Ground, and the marker to the five victims of the Massacre therein, which led me to their monument on the Boston Common, and as I was gazing at Crispus Attucks’ prone figure on its plaque, I saw the new memorial to Martin Luther King, The Embrace, in the corner of my eye. So off I went to the presence of The Embrace, which has received rather mixed reviews in our area since its debut in January. I wasn’t sure how I would respond to it—it looks rather intimidating in media images—but I really liked it: it’s smaller in scale and more detailed in reality. And it was fun to see people reacting to it: touching it, walking under it, taking selfies all around it. The engagement with and around this installation reminded me of the very active engagement of Bostonians with the living memory of the Massacre: weeks later and centuries later. And then I walked up the hill to another engaging memorial: Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ masterful monument to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th right across from the Massachusetts State House. What a memorial trifecta! The thread between these three memorials was African-American history of course, but I didn’t really think about it that was as I was making connections in my mind on my walk. I just felt grounded in Boston history, Massachusetts history, American history.

Memorials: a circle of remembrance from Old Granary to the (new) State House.

[N.B. When I was all worked up I noted my frustration with my exclusion from the Old State House on Facebook: Revolution Spaces staff almost immediately reached out and offered me free admission at my convenience. So now I’m a bit embarassed but impressed with their professionalism!]

8 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Tourism

February 22, 2023

When Salem had Castles

By daseger

I’ve got castles on my mind: all my courses this semester have an architectural theme and I’m in the midst of long survey of encastellation in my medieval course, using castle-building to explain virtually everything and anything. I often strive to connect teaching and living, to look around my own environment for connections to the past. For my Americanist colleagues, Salem and its region can serve as a classroom, but I’ve got to be a bit more creative. Sometimes it is easy: just last week we were discussing the Roman Republic in my world history class and we arrived at the Cleopatra representation issue, and there was Salem sculptor William Wetmore Story’s very influential statue/case in point. When I’m teaching the Reformation and the early modern era, it’s easy to bring in Salem from time to time, but this semester I have only world and medieval/Renaissance courses so there are not many opportunities for place-based history. But castles can be American in their decorative reincarnations, and we have several examples in our own region: Hammond Castle in Gloucester, Herreshoff Castle in Marblehead, and Winnekenni Castle up in Haverhill. The busy city of Salem was never a summer residential destination for Gilded Age millionaires, so no large castle-esque “cottages” were ever built along its shores, but there was a strong Gothic Revival influence at work in the mid-nineteenth century, very evident primarily in civic and ecclesiastical architecture from that era. These buildings are as close as Salem gets to castles and while some survive, most do not. My list starts with the most castle-like structures, long gone, proceeds through the nearly Norman, and ends with the “castle” with the most potential.

The Salem Armory and the Eastern Railroad Depot WERE castles right in the midst of downtown Salem, and their loss is still being felt, I think: you can see how integral they were to Salem’s evolving streetscape in every photograph. The Armory was nearly restored by fire in 1982, its surviving drill shed was converted into the Salem Armory Visitor Center in1994, and its Head House facade demolished by the Peabody Essex Museum in 2000. The Depot was built in 1847 and demolished in 1954. Certain views of the pre-fire Naumkeag Steam Cotton Company mills, otherwise known as Pequot Mills, make the buildings look castle-eque, especially the view from Derby Wharf below, which shows the facility’s crenellated towers. No castle features were incorporated in the post-fire buildings.

Kernwood, the North Salem estate of Francis Peabody, was Salem’s only palatial summer residence and so I am including it here: it is less fortified Normanesque and more Gothic Revival confection, though it does have a stone “rustic arch” surviving as the entrance to Kernwood Country Club. Kernwood was built in 1840, after Peabody had advocated for a number of Gothic constructions throughout Salem, including the First Church on Essex Street and Harmony Grove Cemetery. The photos below are from a series of Essex County views published in 1884 and Frank Cousins in the 1890s: I’m not sure exactly when the mansion came down, but the Country Club was established in 1914 and Walker Evans captured the converted clubhouse still looking very Gothic in the early 1930s.

The other castle-esque constructions in Salem were churches, all of which survive: St. Peter’s Episcopal, the First Church on Essex, and the East Church on the Common. St. Peter’s was designed by Boston architect Isaiah Rogers and constructed in 1833; the First Church was built three years later with Francis Peabody overseeing the construction. I’m curious if Salem residents in that decade noted the similarity and wondered: wow, is our city going to be taken over with these medieval structures the same way we wonder about the plastic boxes which define our era? I want to believe that the integrity of craftsmanship and materials would have reassured them, but who knows? In the next decade, the most castle-like church was constructed: the East Church on Salem Common. Designed by New York City architect Minard Lefever, the East Church had soaring towers that were truncated later, just as its function was reduced to the present-day Witch “Museum”.

The First Church, St. Peter’s (2) and the First Church today; Frank Cousins photograph of the East Church, Phillips Library via Digital Commonwealth.

Last, but certainly not least, the “castle” with potential: the old superior court building on Federal Street. Behind it (to the north) will rise a dreadful new building shoe-horned into a sliver-shaped lot, but that will be the price we pay for restoration of this amazing courthouse. Its turret and tower (best viewed from the rear) are so soaring and its interiors so baronial: I’m really glad that this building (which has been empty for decades now) is going to be preserved with a new purpose. I have no idea what that purpose will be, but I vote for a new Salem museum/visitor center with authentic exhibits and professional interpretation of all of Salem’s history: an installation which will defend our city from encroaching tourist trapdom.

Front of the former Superior Court at Salem, 1954, Brearley Collection, Boston Public Library via Digital Commonwealth; back–a bit foggy view taken yesterday at twilight: it’s difficult to capture the entirety of this building!

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Architecture, Salem

February 8, 2023

Paint it Black

By daseger

There are more and more and more witch shops in Salem, or perhaps I better loosen up that description to goth shops or macabre markets? In any case, our local chronicler had to reassure his readers that there were, in fact, places downtown where socks could be purchased. But sneakers? I think not. It is concerning as many of these shops are only open “in season,” producing a deadening effect downtown in the “off-season.” [Somewhat off-topic tangent: I often think that Salem’s planners are going for a “15–minute city” but I don’t understand how that goal is compatible with Witch City—I’ll follow up in a later post] In the downtown, there is oversight for these shops’ signs and exteriors, and Salem is a constantly-evolving city, so I’m not inclined to get too perturbed about this darkening trend, unless said shops alter an historic interior radically, perhaps permanently: and that’s the case with the former Merchants National Bank, a much-heralded 1908 Little & Browne Colonial Revival structure on Essex Street now transformed into a local outlet of Blackcraft Cult, a Goth fast-fashion retailer based in California. The creative vision of this store is simple: paint it black, all black, walls and trim, ceiling and much of the floor. All is black except for a red witch descending from the center dome, replacing the gilded eagle that overlooked everything previously. Witch kitsch displaces classicism: I don’t think you can find a better visual metaphor for what’s happened to Salem over the last decade or so.

Once an Eagle……now the former Merchants National Bank building on Essex Street is home to Salem’s largest witch! In the vicinity are more seasonal shops, closed on this beautiful & sunny February afternoon.

This building was the fourth headquarters of the Merchants National Bank in Salem, founded in 1811. It received quite a bit of attention after it opened for business in 1908: in national architectural publications and local periodicals, as well as the Bank’s own centennial anniversary publication which tied its history and success to Salem’s history and success. There’s so much craftsmanship and detail and sheer abundance in Salem’s traditional architecture that we take it for granted: I wish I had spent more time in this building considering its now-darkened detail, and I wonder if Salem’s preservationist organization, Historic Salem, Inc., is considering a more agressive policy of seeking interior preservation restrictions and covenants. Perhaps it is time, before everything goes black.

Images of the Bank from 1911: in the Brickbuilder, its centennial anniversary booklet “In the Year 1811,” and an unsigned watercolor, Bull Run Auctions.

13 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Architecture, Salem

January 24, 2023

Some Great Early Gloucester Houses

By daseger

I feel like I should know more about Gloucester, the port city about a half hour to the north of Salem. I have quite a few Salem friends who have summer homes in Gloucester, or have moved to Gloucester, or just go to Gloucester often: it’s like an escape hatch of sorts. 2023 marks Gloucester’s 400th Anniversary, and I have been super impressed with the city’s commemoration efforts: they are creative, comprehensive, and most importantly, expressions of the community rather than of a limited pool of “stakeholders,” as seems to be the case with Salem as it gears up to its 400th in 1626. I’ve been to Gloucester often, but I can’t even begin to characterize it as a place: it doesn’t seem like one city to me, but rather several. It’s certainly big: I decided to drive around in search of some of its earliest houses the other day and it took me all afternoon and I feel like I barely scratched the surface! I’m not even sure that I have the neighborhoods straight, to be honest: I started out in West Gloucester, then drove downtown, then to East Gloucester and Rocky Neck, then through Rockport to the northern side of Gloucester, stopping in Lanesville and Annisquam. Depending on where you are, you can find any style of house you want in Gloucester: big old shingled “cottages,” smaller cottages in a variety of styles, Greek Revivals, vast Victorians, stucco Craftsmans and even a Tudor or two. Not too many three-story Federals so prevalent in Salem, Newburyport, and Portsmouth: Gloucester was/is a fishing port so not as many wealthy merchants. I was looking for Colonials on this little expedition, the older the better, so that determined my route. Unfortunately, I forgot my sources: Prudence Paine Fish’s excellent books on Gloucester’s old houses (Ms. Fish died recently; a great loss for Gloucester) and Edwin Whitefield’s Homes of our Forefathers. On my own I missed quite a bit of this sprawling old city with its innumerable inlets so expect return trips over the next year or so!

I started out in West Gloucester where I drove way out along Concord Street: in my experience streets named for other Massachusetts towns have the oldest houses. At least part of the first house below, the Ella Proctor Herrick House, was built in the seventeenth century and the last one proudly bears a first-period plaque as well.

Along Concord Street, West Gloucester.

Then I drove miles to downtown Gloucester, overlooking its expansive harbor. This is the most densely-settled area of the city, obviously, and also where you can find the most architectural variety. It’s also where the Cape Ann Museum (CAM) is, a museum of art and history which also owns and operates several house museums. Of course I’m jealous that Gloucester has a professional local museum, but CAM’s existence is just one of several indicators that Gloucester is serious about preserving and interpreting its heritage, material and textual: I also like the way older houses are interwoven with newer, professional and institutional structures in the city center. The first house below, on Middle Street, is wedged between a bank and some other professional office building, and has lots of Georgian neighbors.

Along Middle Street, Gloucester.

On the way to the Green, where CAM owns and operates two historic houses, I passed by this first cute and very characteristic of Gloucester house and one of the city’s oldest houses, the Whittemore House (1700), now a frame shop. The Green, situated right on Gloucester’s traffic rotary on Route 128, features three historic structures (the White Ellery House, 1710 and the Babson-Alling House, 1740 are below) and CAM’s newest exhibition space, the Janet & William Ellery James Center (2020), which has expanded the museum’s exhibition and archival space signficantly.

I hopped right on the rotary and drove to East Gloucester, which was a pass-through for me as I didn’t have my sources! So I did the Cape Ann loop, enjoying the views and driving through Rockport, and ended up in Lanesville and Annisquam on Gloucester’s northern shore. As you can tell from these photographs, it was a cloudy, dreary day (as has been the case for most of January in our parts) and so I had to snap this bright orange cottage in Lanesville and then it was on to Annisquam, which is really almost too precious and perfect (and with too many “private drives”!) but I had to see the Edward Harraden House (c. 1660)—one of several structures built by this family in Gloucester. It’s a storied name in Salem too as Jonathan Harraden was one of our most famous revolutionary privateers. It did not disappoint.

Eighteenth-century houses in the Lanesville (ORANGE!) and Annisquam villages of Gloucester, and the Edward Harraden House, c. 1660.

9 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Architecture, Culture

January 18, 2023

Beverly Jogs

By daseger

I was following the discussion on a facebook group dedicated to the restoration of Colonial homes the other day, very deliberately avoiding preparing my syllabi for the new semester, when the term “Beverly jog” came up, and it was clear that a lot of people on the thread did not recognize it. That surprised me, but it might just be an eastern Massachusetts phrase. There might be other terms: I was reading Frank Cousins’ Colonial Architecture of Salem last week and he used the phrase “jut-by” to refer to such additions, as in: occasionally the rear half of a gambrel-roof house was extended several feet beyond the front half, as had often been the earlier lean-to, forming a “jut-by” to provide a side door facing front. All old houses have all sorts of additions and protuberances of course, and I think “lean-to” and simply “addition” can cover all the bases, but I learned the phrase “Beverly jog” when I was taking a tour of the Peabody Essex Museum’s Crowninshield-Bentley House long ago. It remains a perfect example of a very specific type of addition.

So here’s a good definition, from the Dictionary of Building Preservation:  a narrow addition on the end of a house with the back slope of its roof in the same plane as the back slope of the main roof; originally found on late 18c houses in the Boston, Massachusetts, area; now found in other areas. I had thought it was an Essex County building practice—hence the reference to Beverly, Salem’s neighboring city to the north—but over the past few years I’ve seen such additions in southern New Hampshire and on the Cape. The addition of a staircase was likely the primary reason for a Beverly jog: I remember from my historic plaque researching days how many people lived in these old houses: you don’t want them all coming in the front door, especially in the middle of the winter! And then you get the added benefit of the mudroom: another New England necessity. I don’t think a Beverly jog can be on any house other than a Georgian, or at least that’s where you’ll see them in Salem. Some of my favorites are below (these photos were taken two days ago, when the sky was white with our first snow, as opposed to the Crowninshield-Bentley photos from yesterday when the sun finally came out after several dreary weeks!)

The first house above is on Federal Street and its Beverly jog is perfect! My neighbor’s house on Broad Street; the green house on Andover Street, which belonged to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s aunt, has TWO Beverly jogs—one on each side. Does the orange house on River Street have a jog or merely an addition? I’m not sure about the plane……and the last house is no longer with us, a victim of urban renewal.

7 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Architecture, Salem

January 10, 2023

Secret Staircases

By daseger

Every old house has secrets, but every old house does not have deliberately-constructed secretive places for hiding or hidden means of conveyence: such spaces are special. Novelists love secret staircases, and historians do too: they are evidence of intent. Well, I think everyone is fascinated by secret spaces in general: I have been since I was a child and my mother told me all about priest holes in England and that was that. When I was older and in England I was determined to find as many as I could, armed with the books below. When I was older still, and looking at the house I now live in, its owners (who were also realtors) showed me its two secret spaces: a door hidden in the master bedroom closet that opens up into the in-law apartment next door and a tunnel in the basement that opens up under the street. There’s a big door, with a big lock, leading to some underground space! I always call it a tunnel but I’m not sure how far it goes under Chestnut Street: as soon as the previous owners opened up the door and I saw black I ran upstairs! Twenty years later, I still haven’t been in that space: it’s too scary. I can assure you, however, that my husband and every single contractor who has worked in this house has been in there—they all seem to think it’s some sort of large coal bin but of course the previous owners told me it was a stop on the Underground Railroad. I have a theory that it might have been a space to store rum, as the man who built my house was Salem’s biggest distiller and he lived right across the street, but I’ve yet to find proof. So all of this is just an introduction to say: I’m interested in secret spaces! (And I was a Nancy Drew fan too and the Hidden Staircase is my favorite.)

I think that the American equivalent of priest holes are secret staircases and one of the most important secret staircases in America is right here in Salem, at the House of the Seven Gables. For generations of children in our region and beyond, myself included, the first impression or memory of the Gables is undoubtedly of the secret staircase: every child (and many adults) that I have taken to the Gables has been struck by both the idea and the experience of the secret staircase. Its aura is very interesting because it is a twentieth-century installation rather than an original feature of this seventeenth-century house. The House of Gables Settlement Association’s founder, Caroline Osgood Emmerton, and her architect James Everett Chandler, were “inspired” by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel in their restoration of the house: and so it acquired four more gables, a rebuilt central chimney, a second-story overhang, and a cent shop as well as additional room for the companion settlement mission. I love the headline for this Boston Sunday Globe article from January 1910:  all is revealed!

The house also acquired a secret staircase, right alongside the new chimney, even though there is no secret staircase in The House of the Seven Gables. So why? There are several reasons. The house’s previous owner, Henry Upton, maintained that there had been a secret staircase and so Emmerton believed that she was putting something back that had been there before. She also believed, apparently, that the novel needed a secret staircase and so she was giving the house one: “For it seems to be that we feel the absence of the secret staircase in the story just as we feel the absence of a bit of a picture-puzzle that has been lost and has left an unfiled place in the picture.” [The Chronicles of Three Old Houses,1935]. This seems like a bit of a rationalization to me, so I’m wondering if she merely wanted a secret staircase in the house to increase its allure: such discoveries made headlines in those days and they still do.

Boston Evening Transcript 8.5.1911 (not the word “museumized”!); the era of secret staircases: that found in Governor Tilden’s Gramercy Park mansion made national headlines in 1905.

And once the secret staircase was there, it took on a life of its own. I’m working on an article on the Colonial Revival in Salem, and just read a wonderful study on interpretation at the House of the Seven Gables over the last century, based on a succession of scripts [Tami Christopher, “The House of the Seven Gables. A House Museum’s Adaptation to Changing Societal Expectations since 1910,” in Amy K. Levin, ed., Defining Memory: Local Museums and the Construction of History in America’s Changing Communities (2007); the chapter on the Gables in Colin Dickey’s Ghostland is great too.]. In the beginning, the staircase was explained in terms of smuggling/tax evasion or “a means of escape in witchcraft times.” Then there was a shift to the Underground Railroad, and finally an admission of its 20th century origins. The staircase has reflected historical interests, and historical inquiry over time, but it has also been a means to express simple (childhood) curiosity, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Early twentieth-century postcard and the secret staircase in 1950 (National Geographic) and today (or recently).

13 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Architecture, Culture, Salem

December 4, 2022

Christmas Trim

By daseger

It’s going to be a super busy December, so I got a jump start on decorating my own house: we have eight fireplaces with mantles plus several other surfaces which “require” adornment so there’s a lot of sorting out and arranging to do. I have two rules, or should I say practices, which I observe for holiday decorating: I don’t bring greenery in until just before Christmas and I always choose a creature theme. Down in my basement, there’s a little room with shelves full of creatures of Christmases past: swans from last year, and then bears, foxes, sheep, hedgehogs, rabbits, mice, cats and lots of deer, of course. This year is all about pheasants, as I found some Royal Copley ones that I really liked this fall and wanted to keep them out: I’ve glitzed them up a bit and added some gilded companions. I love natural greenery but I can’t stand to see it fade, so usually I wait until the last possible moment to mix it in with my other decorations. This year I hedged on the rule, and added a few greens because I wanted some warmth and contrast, but more is coming! Someday I might go for simpler decorations but my holiday aesthetic is still pretty much all about abundance. The exception to the greenery rule has always been the Christmas Tree, but over the last few years we’ve had trees die on us before Christmas, so now we’re going to wait for that too. There’s nothing more depressing than a crispy Christmas tree, in my opinion.

Downstairs mantles, the “mantle” in the kitchen, measuring-cup creatures from Anthropologie and my pantry. The glittery squirrels always come out: they’re in the library. By the time I got to the second floor, I was running out of pheasants, so substituted a lowly duck. (There’s a few peacocks mixed in with the pheasants downstairs too, because peacocks). Last year’s swans on the shelf in the basement.

This past weekend was the Christmas in Salem tour, the major fundraiser for Salem’s historic preservation organization, Historic Salem Inc. It’s in a different neighborhood every year, and this year was all about North Salem, encompassing Buffum and Dearborn Streets, on either side of North Street, and a few homes off Dearborn. It was not at all a “colonial” tour, rather it had a bit of a retro feel to me despite the presence of many later nineteenth-century homes, including the gorgeous Queen Anne Ropes House. There was also a stunning 1915 bungalow on the tour, an unusual style for Salem. Gratitude and congratulations to all the homeowners: it’s quite an effort to open your home to 1000 people (believe me, I’ve done it twice). Christmas in Salem always puts me in the holiday mood: it’s such a lavish display of generosity and creativity and cheer: hopefully I’ve captures some semblance of these things in the pictures!

At the Ropes House: love, love, love the button garlands!!! Below: my friend Bradley guiding us through the kitchen in his Princess Diana black sheep sweater and everyone’s favorite “simple” decoration: red branches and floating candles.

Below: lots of textures and nooks and crannies on this tour! These are the details that gave me the retro feel.

What we want to see: table settings, a wreath, and a Christmas tree.

I hope all these homeowners are having a drink just about now (Sunday @5pm)!

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Architecture, Salem

November 26, 2022

Deerfield Thanksgiving

By daseger

I know that it was a back-to-big-family-Thanksgiving for many people, but because of health and almost-conflicting family events my husband and I found ourselves alone this year. We made a last-minute decision to head to Historic Deerfield, where we stayed at the Inn for two nights and had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner at the Inn at Boltwood (previously the Lord Jeffrey Inn) in Amherst. We ran into old Salem friends and made new Pennsylvania friends at the Deerfield bar, walked around and in as many of those magnificent houses as we could, and “played” in the attic of the Flynt Center for Early American Life. I have under-appreciated this experience on past visits: there was something about this particular visit that made the “visible storage” of all sorts of items from Historic Deerfield’s collections—everything from ceramics to muskets to wrought iron, in multiples—so very engaging. Maybe it’s because we had this “attic” to ourselves. My husband and I have very different tastes, but he could be over there in the realm of metal-working tools while I was lingering in mocha ware, both of us content. We left the attic only because the weather was so beautiful: clear and sunny and bright, casting all those Connecticut River Valley doorways in stark relief.

Historic Deerfield has always been an exploration of maker/craft culture as much as architecture so a focus on objects on this particular visit seemed correct: I’ve always been too dazzled by the houses to take in the Deerfield-made baskets, famous blue-and-white embroidery pieces and pottery to take proper note of them in situ. Before there was Historic Deerfield, there was Arts and Crafts Deerfield, a haven and destination for traditional crafts and preservation at the turn of the last century, and before then there was of course colonial Deerfield: you can see and feel the layers as you walk down Old Main Street. We had the neighborhood to ourselves as we took a long walk on Thanksgiving morning, so we looked in a lot of windows and hung out in back amongst the barns.

A walk down Old Main Street from South to North and then back towards the Inn: village map with house names and dates.

A recent addition to Old Main Street are the Witness Stone markers laid before every house in which an enslaved person live and worked: these were installed just last month in partnership with the Connecticut-based Witness Stones Project. So there’s another layer uncovered and exposed. Museum neighborhoods can feel a bit static and fixed in time, but I’ve never felt that way about Historic Deerfield: rather it has always seems like an engaging mix of past and present or a cumulative work in progress to me. At the same time, time moves slower there: just turn off Route 5 for an hour or a day or two and catch your breath, take a walk, or rummage around in an attic.

Witness (to slavery) stones, a work in progress, and a signpost right in the midst of Deerfield Academy.

9 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Culture

November 14, 2022

A Cooper’s Shop for Sale

By daseger

Wow, I don’t think I’ve posted on Salem real estate for quite some time! I’ve just been so serious, but actually there’s not much point: generally as soon as something comes on the market it is snapped right up. I’m sure that will be the case with this little house too, but I’ve also admired it, so I ran over this weekend for the open house. It’s a little two-story shop on Kosciusko Street, overlooking Derby Wharf and the entire Salem Maritime National Historic Site. Two stories, open-floor plan on both floors with a little bedroom and bathroom carved out of the second floor (as well as a “galley” full bathroom on the first), no parking, not much yard: very simple and very atmospheric.

As you can see, there’s been quite a few twentieth-century alterations to this building, especially its fenestration. The plaque report by Historic Salem, Inc. asserts that it is an eighteenth-century structure moved to this site about 1870. The MACRIS inventory calls it “colonial inspired!” Both reports also suggest that it might be an ell that was previously attached to the adjacent building at 159 Derby Street. I’m not sure how this precise 1701 date, so proudly proclaimed, came about. A photograph from the 1930s features an exterior that looks quite different: this can be found at the amazing house history of 159 Derby, now the home of the Salem Arts Association, researched by art historian Franny Zawadski. I was thrilled to learn that both houses were owned by the Salem chapter of the Ukrainian Workingmen’s Association, an organization about which I intend to find out a lot more.

The Shop on the far right above, and on the 1874 Salem Atlas.

I think there’s a bit of Colonial Revivalish embellishment here but it’s fine with me: someone wanted this little old building to look like a ye old cooper shop and it does! It also looks like minimal maintenance to me: a condo alternative with a very tight basement (the advantage of being moved to this spot, I imagine). Since I haven’t written a real estate post in some time, I think I should address the location a bit more. Anyone moving to greater downtown Salem at this point has to consider the impact of tourism, as our City seems hell-bent on driving that engine as much and as far as possible. If you complain about tourism now, you’re going to get a “well, you moved to Salem so you knew what you were getting” sentiment, which I don’t think is fair if you located here twenty years or more ago when Haunted Happenings was much less intense in terms of length and traffic volume of both feet and vehicles. But if you move to Salem now, you better know what you will face (especially if you don’t have a parking place). I think this location has the benefit of being in the zone but protected by the expanse of the Salem Maritime park: I was in this vicinity during the most crowded weekends last month and there were far fewer people here than in the center of the city. I just don’t think the majority of Salem tourists are interested in “history” and this cooper’s shop is in the thick of it.

First and second floors looking out on the Custom House and Derby Wharf (it was kind of dreary outside yesterday but I think the weather just enhanced the coziness).

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