Tag Archives: Architecture

July 27, 2015

The Razing of the Ruck House

By daseger

Years ago central Salem was oriented both towards its harbor as well as around an adjacent pond formed by the South River: Mill Pond, which was filled in to accommodate the growing city in the later nineteenth century. The beautiful map of Salem in 1851 by Henry MacIntyre shows the centrality of Mill Pond, and a neighborhood between Margin Street, the Broad Street Cemetery, and the Pond which is dotted with homes–some large and some small. In the midst of this neighborhood was Mill Street, where a very old and storied house was situated: the Thomas Ruck House, built around 1650 and razed, by my best estimation, around 1902. The Ruck House was not a victim of the larger forces that decimated this neighborhood—the Great Salem Fire of 1914 which singed its western boundary, and the construction of the U.S. Post Office which leveled its eastern part in the 1930s. It was (apparently) gone before both of these events. Given its notability–Salem guidebooks were directing visitors to it because of its importance just before it was destroyed (and in some cases, after)– why was it razed?

Detail of Henry MacIntyre map of Salem, 1851, Salem Athenaeum; Salem Atlas, 1871 by Walling & Gray; Frank Cousins photograph of the Ruck House from his Colonial Architecture of Salem, 1919; Illustration of the House in Sidney Perley’s Essex Antiquarian, Volume IV (1900); map of central Salem with the Ruck House marked, from Edwin M. Bacon’s Boston: a Guide Book (1903).

At this point, I really can’t answer that question, as discreet factors (condition, the will of the property owner) are more difficult to discern than global forces. However, I can offer some historical facts and opinions about the importance of the Ruck House. Edwin Bacon informs his readers that “South of the railroad station is a nest of old buildings in old streets, among them the Ruck house, 8 Mill Street, dating from before 1651, interesting as the sometime hope of Richard Cranch, where John Adams frequently visited (Adams and Cranch married sisters), and at a later time occupied by John Singleton Copley, the Boston painter, when here painting the portraits of Salem worthies”. Adams and Copley, quite a pedigree right there, and the house was also owned by Samuel McIntire’s father. Adams writes about the house in a journal entry from 1766: “Cranch is now in a good situation for business, near the Court House….his house, fronting on the wharves, the harbor, and the shipping, has a fine prospect before it.” Obviously that prospect changed dramatically with the filling in of Mill Pond, but the house retained its stature. The influential Salem architectural historian, photographer, and entrepreneur Frank Cousins asserts that: “In its U-shaped arrangement with wings of unequal length and virtually three gambrel-roof dwellings in one the Ruck House, number 8 Mill Street, has few if any parallels in American architecture”. Now here is where I am confused: Cousins is writing (in 1919) as if the house was still standing, but an article in the Boston Evening Transcript dated October 30, 1902 clearly states that it had been demolished, along with another notable Salem landmark, the Shattuck House on Essex Street. In addition to the great reference about baked beans, this article is just what I’m looking for–early expressions of a preservationist consciousness in Salem–but obviously I still need more information about the razing of the Ruck House.

Boston Evening Transcript, October 20, 1902. What came after: the construction of the Salem Post Office, c. 1933, Dionne Collection at Salem State University Archives and Special Collections.

4 Comments | tags: Architecture, First Period Houses, Frank Cousins, Historic Preservation, maps, Photography, Seventeenth Century | posted in History, Houses, Salem

July 24, 2015

Greek Revival Salem

By daseger

I think I’ve covered just about every architectural style represented in Salem over the past few years: lots of variant Colonial houses, the very dominant Federal style, and many of the nineteenth-century styles, including Gothic Revival, Italianate, Queen Anne and Second Empire. But I haven’t featured many houses built in the so-called “National Style”: Greek Revival, which dominated public and domestic architecture across the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. The very first house I lived in in Salem was assertively Greek Revival (built in the 1840s, the peak of the style) and my present house (built in 1827) should probably be classified as such too but it’s such a miss-mash it doesn’t really feel classical. That’s a bit early for the Greek Revival in Salem, which held onto its Colonial and Federal styles longer, I think. For that reason, as well as the Great Salem Fire of 1914, it always seems like Salem has fewer Greek Revival structures than it should have: many of the public buildings, including the “new” City Hall, are Greek Revival, but you don’t find too many domestic structures as they would have been built in the “newer” neighborhoods along Lafayette Street, the center of the conflagration. Some of the most poignant “postcards from the Fire” show Greek Revival houses being devoured. Yet there are Greek Revival houses on nearly every street in the older sections of Salem too, signs of success in the mid-19th century city, no long a center of a global commerce, but still bustling. Two such houses, located on Winter Street, are now for sale, which prompted my long-overdue Greek Revival post.

Walker Evans’ photograph of Salem City Hall, taken in the early 1930s when he visited Salem and shot only Greek and Gothic Revival structures–no Federal! (Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, more here) These were clearly his architectural preferences, and he captured similar structures wherever he went. Quite contrarily, Salem’s own Frank Cousins was quite condescending about the Greek Revival, probably because such structures replaced his beloved Colonial houses in downtown Salem. The now-mothballed Greek Revival courthouse on Federal Street.

Winter Street Greek Revivals presently for sale: The Captain John Bertram House at number 24, built in 1842-43 by Salem’s greatest philanthropist. The black & white MACRIS photo is from 1998 (An absolutely stunning house: check it out), and the Payson-Fettyplace House at number 16, built in 1845, which has been operating as an inn for some time. Below: more Salem Greek Revivals, by no means an exhaustive collection! A Greek Revival “cottage” on Northey Street, a recently-revived Greek Revival on Bridge, a row of Greek Revivals on Federal, a Greek Revival with many additions on Essex, and the stately Lee-Benson Mansion on Chestnut, all built in the 1840s.

3 Comments | tags: Architecture, Frank Cousins, Great Salem Fire of 1914, Greek Revival, Photography, Real Estate | posted in History, Houses, Salem

July 22, 2015

Flat Roofs

By daseger

There is obviously continuity in the physical landscape as you leave New England (in either Vermont, Massachusetts or Connecticut) and enter New York but almost immediate contrast in the built environment. The older houses look different, and this difference becomes more pronounced as soon as you get into some towns. There are some universal styles (Greek Revival, High Victorian, all those post 1945 “capes”), but the New England colonial and federal styles do not seem to have penetrated New York, where you see far more center gables, little second-floor windows, board and batten, and most especially flat roofs. New York State really embraced the Italianate in the mid-nineteenth century, in a variety of forms: from the whimsical gothic and picturesque to the more straightforward and streamlined flat-roofed buildings–built of both brick and wood–that have always represented “New York” to me, because you just don’t see them in New England. Inspired by the rural villas of Renaissance Italy, these houses represent a more democratic diffusion of a style that seems to have spread everywhere in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This past weekend in Saratoga, when I was walking up Broadway (renown for its High Victorian mansions but obviously experiencing some McMansionization) it was these houses that captured my attention, and then I ran around the city looking for more.

The Inspiration: View of the Villa La Petraia: From Vedute delle ville, e d’altri luoghi della Toscana (plate 33), 1744, Filippo Morghen (Italian, 1730–after 1807), after a drawing by Giuseppe Zocchi (Italian, 1711/17–1767), Metropolitan Museum of Art, and flat-roofed houses in Saratoga Springs.

6 Comments | tags: Architecture, Italianate, New York, travel | posted in Design, Houses, Travel

July 10, 2015

Lost Houses of Salem

By daseger

Part six or seven or eight or more: I’ve certainly featured a fair amount of Salem houses lost to the Great Fire of 1914, casual neglect, deliberate demolition, or structural “redevelopment”. But today’s houses have something in common: they are all featured in John Mead Howells’ Lost Examples of Colonial Architecture. Buildings that Have Disappeared or Been so Altered as to be Denatured (1931–love the word denatured!). For some reason, I have only recently discovered this book; in fact it was recommended to me by a reader of this blog to whom I will be forever grateful. I say for some reason because I was quite familiar with Howells’ other books: I remember leafing through his Architectural Heritage of the Piscataqua time and time again in my childhood home in York, Maine and I think he was probably my first guide to Portsmouth. But now I have this book, which includes all sorts of pictures of buildings and details of buildings from up and down the East Coast, and it has seldom left my side for the past month or so. Howells was an architect, an architect of skyscrapers, so it seems somewhat curious that he should be so focused on these much earlier, much lower structures, but he certainly was. As Fisk Kimball, the Director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and author of Mr. Samuel McIntire, Carver: The Architect of Salem (1940, among several other architectural histories), points out in his introduction: “the assembling of these views has been no light task nor one likely to be duplicated; some seven years of loving labor has been necessary to track down the buildings shown and the old photographs here brought together for the first time”. But Mr. Howells was determined to (again, in Kimball’s words) “preserve for architects and all lovers of early America the aspect of buildings which have disappeared or which have been so altered as to lose their character and quality.” “Preservation” through photography–this was an undertaking that had begun in earnest decades before by Frank Cousins and others, and Howells relies on Cousins’ photographs quite a bit, as well as the ongoing HABS surveys and other sources, but he also took his own photographs. His primary role in this sideline pursuit was that of an assembler, compiler, recorder, and visual historian: he wasn’t perfect (see Simon Forrester House below) but he was passionate.

Houses lost to the fire:

That Chipman House at 442 Essex is a revelation to me–what a contrast to today’s parking lot! How majestic Lafayette Street must have been before the fire…….I featured the West House in a previous post.

Houses just lost, or “taken down”:

The Hubon House on Charter Street is long gone, but at least its beautiful staircase is preserved in the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum (New York Public Library Digital Gallery); The Peabody House–wow! I’m going to explore that particular house a bit more in a future post. I’ve featured the Benjamin Pickman House on Essex many times in this blog, but never fully appreciated this door.

Houses “denatured”, moved, saved:

Howells doesn’t show us too many “denatured” buildings: this is a category I intend to explore much further in future posts. He doesn’t show us the full extent of the “denaturement” of the Gideon Tucker House, like this later photograph does (MACRIS). I had no idea the Knapp House still survived on Curtis Street, and contrary to Howells’ assertion, the Simon Forrester House on Derby Street is still very much still standing.

1 Comment | tags: Architecture, books, Colonial Era, Essex Street, Federal Era, Great Salem Fire of 1914, Historic Preservation, Photography, Samuel McIntire | posted in History, Houses, Salem

July 4, 2015

Red, White, Blue & Calico

By daseger

We are sticking very close to home this July Fourth weekend as we have welcomed a new cat only two weeks after losing Moneypenny and there are lots of adjustments to be made on the part of said new cat (Trinity), our older resident cat (Darcy), and ourselves. I wasn’t quite ready for a new cat, but I am a sucker for a calico and this one almost magically appeared at our local shelter after a rough start in life. So I find myself cleaning out closets and other mundane house chores in between hissing standoffs and prepping my upholstered furniture for the coming attack by a new young cat. Yesterday was actually a much more beautiful day than today, which is cloudy with incoming rain. I hope it holds off until after the fireworks tonight, because Salem‘s are always spectacular: bigger and better every year. So I did leave the separated cats for a long walk, a long bike ride on my (also new) bike, the adorable Spokes and Stripes parade sponsored by Parents United and dinner at the Willows–under a bright red full moon which I couldn’t capture on camera. It looked briefly like Mars before disappearing behind a cloud bank. Most of the pictures below are from this sunny July 3rd: home, Chestnut Street, some sights and scenes around Salem including the Willows–all prepped for the big Horribles Parade this morning (which I missed, but I am sure there will be some great photographs at the Creative Salem site soon). My closet cleaning has uncovered lots of discoveries, including my favorite vintage dress which I purchased DECADES ago in Saratoga Springs, NY (and it was vintage then): I’m going to put in on in a few hours and go out to a fireworks barbecue on the water, mindless of clashing cats and impending rain. A happy, safe, carefree Fourth (and Fifth) to all.

Salem on July 3 and 4: Trinity (who did not come in a bag or a box but seldom leaves the latter), the house and garden (with daneberry–the only red on display), and a shadow silhouette against Hamilton Hall, the Hall and Chestnut Street, a patriotically-painted house on Essex, the Spokes and Stripes parade on Salem Common, the Willows, my newly-rediscovered old dress.

6 Comments | tags: Architecture, Cats, Chestnut Street, Fashion, Fourth of July, Garden, Hamilton Hall, holidays, Home, Local Events | posted in Home, Salem

June 22, 2015

Evolving Essex Street

By daseger

The sight of the poster announcing the arrival of the new Korean fried chicken chain restaurant Bonchon on Essex Street reminded me of how main streets are always in transition: you can trace the history of a town just by examining the evolving nature of its buildings and hardscapes. Essex Street is fronted by structures from the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries—residential, commercial and institutional. It has been covered with dirt, cobblestones, tracks, and pavement, widened several times and in several places, and (unfortunately) transformed into a pedestrian “mall” (on which cars–or I should say trucks and trolleys–still drive)–in its central section in the 1970s. I have posted about Essex Street many, many times, so I thought I would feature some seldom-seen images today, and examine the physical evolution of this storied street.

Essex Street has run right down the center of Salem since the seventeenth century; Below, Essex Street from the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries, as imagined and in reality.

Essex Street envisioned in 1776 in Carry On, Mr. Bowditch; and in the 1820s on an old Essex Institute postcard; photographs of the street in 1870, 1874 & 1880s (Historic New England & New York Public Library Digital Gallery). Below: a shopping street–until the 1970s–although the famous stores Almy, Bigelow, & Washburn and L.H. Rogers survived into the 1980s. Only the Almy’s Clock remains, and the Rogers store is now administrative offices for the Peabody Essex Museum. (1976 photograph from Jerome Curley’s great Patch column, “Then and Now” and L.H. Rogers photograph from the website “Hawthorne in Salem”).

Below: a not-so-faithful street. It’s surprising to me how few houses of worship are located on Essex Street: at present, only one. Reverend Bentley’s Second Congregational “East Church” was on lower Essex, and before it was transformed into Daniel Low and Co., the imposing structure at the corner of Washington and Essex—the site of Salem’s first meeting house–served as the First Church of Salem–now further along (up) Essex Street. Salem’s only Jewish congregation, Temple Shalom of the Congregation Sons of David, established its first synagogue on Essex Street (its second on Lafayette Street is currently being adapted into academic offices and classrooms for Salem State University). The more mystical Swedenborgian Church was briefly located on upper Essex Street, on the present site of the Salem Athenaeum (American Jewish Historical Society, New England Archives; Weston Collection).

So many lost Essex Street houses! Too many to mention here–I’ve focused on them individually and will continue to do so. I don’t think I’ve ever featured the Sanders House at 292 Essex however, a site now occupied by the Salem YMCA. Alexander Graham Bell lived in the house in the 1870s and conducted experiments in its attic that led to the invention of the telephone: why it couldn’t have been preserved just on this basis I do not know. It reminds me of the beautiful Pickman house down the street, also gone. This particular block of Essex was definitely trending commercial in the late nineteenth centuries, however, and Georgian structures were not long for this world. The new YMCA came in, and just across the street a bit later-the Colonial Revival structure (with its new facade) that will soon house Salem’s Bonchon.

16 Comments | tags: Architecture, Essex Street, Food and drink, Photography, urban planning, Urban Renewal | posted in History, Salem

June 14, 2015

Southern Exposure, Part Two

By daseger

Just finishing up with vacation pictures and notes before I move on to other topics this coming week: lots going on in Salem, and I also have a bunch of historical and horticultural things I’m working on. First of all, I must say that Charleston is of course a lovely city, I didn’t mean to cast aspersions on it in my previous post (people keep coming up to me!): I just preferred Savannah slightly more on this particular vacation. This was likely due more to my mood than anything else. Charleston was quite crowded when we were there, with the Spoleto festival just wrapping up, and we never really found quite the right restaurant or bar: the celebrated Husk was right near our inn, so we felt we needed to go farther afield, which was probably a mistake. And while Charleston is full of great art galleries and antique stores, King Street is all chain stores, and I couldn’t find the perfect little local shop that I’m always looking for. But the crowds and the sun drove us into the really interesting Charleston Museum, which is not much to look at on the outside but full of lots of curiosities in the inside (if arranged in rather old-fashioned exhibits): I continue to be saddened by Salem’s lack of a similar venue. And there are few avenues than can compete with the Battery and Tradd Street: very few.

A bit more of Savannah. My favorite house and a really neat shop: Prospector Co.

In Charleston. Tradd Street, a “Charleston Door” opening up to the porch, the Battery, King Street, many Massachusetts-made guns in the Charleston Museum!

2 Comments | tags: Architecture, Charleston, great houses, Savannah, Shopping | posted in Houses, Travel

June 9, 2015

Southern Exposure

By daseger

We are just back from a brief vacation down south, to Raleigh, Savannah and Charleston: three very different cities! Raleigh is clearly booming, but it’s hard to find its center in the midst of all the ring roads and housing developments, while Savannah and Charleston have long embraced their urban cores, first out of necessity, later for tourism. They are perfect walking and biking cities while you clearly need bigger wheels in Raleigh. I’ve been to Savannah and Charleston several times, and always together, inviting comparisons. This time I preferred the former, though it might have been due merely to our better accommodations (The Gastonian) and the fact that we were there on weekdays when it was a bit quieter. By the time we got to Charleston I was tired of walking around with a sheen of perspiration on my forehead, and my camera was so tired it just quit! Savannah is–of course–a city of squares and townhouses, and we saw them all, large and small. We bypassed the more touristy waterfront in favor of downtown, and sought out the full architectural spectrum, which is uniform in form but incredibly diverse in style: townhouses from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, English, French, Spanish, and even Dutch in inspiration, or so they seemed to me. We ate and drank very well (Pinkie Master’s Lounge, Crystal Beer Parlor, Alligator Soul)–probably another reason we were a bit worn out by the time we got to Charleston!

The courtyard garden at our inn and all sorts of Savannah townhouses, above; below: some notable detached houses in Savannah, including the Richardson-Owens-Thomas House (and slave quarters) and the Isaiah Davenport House. Obligatory shots of the impressive cathedral and moss.

A few more observations, some comparative, some not. I love all the outdoor gas lighting in Savannah–and the garden statuary: people really embellish their homes and gardens. Both Savannah and Charleston are cleaner (yes, even Savannah, the “beautiful woman with a dirty face”) than Salem: we should do better. Savannah is very serious about dog poop: there are special receptacles in all of the squares and cemeteries. Both cities are also quieter and more traffic-calmed–the squares of Savannah are particularly effective at that. The educational institutions in both cities, Savannah College of Art and Design and the College of Charleston, are much more integrated than our Salem State University, rehabilitating older structures downtown rather than just building new and big outside. More on Charleston in my next post, and shopping.

2 Comments | tags: Architecture, Charleston, Gardens, Savannah, travel, urban planning | posted in Houses, Travel

May 24, 2015

Ropes Mansion Refresh

By daseger

I’ve been anticipating the reopening of the Ropes Mansion for some time so it was with great excitement that I crossed the threshold yesterday for the first time in a decade or so: the house was shuttered for restoration after an accidental fire in 2009 and I remember it being a bit tired even before that. Not now: refreshed was the word that came into my mind almost as soon as I set foot in the front hall. It’s not just the new paint and paper (and absolutely beautiful carpets): it feels like the house’s spirit has been renewed. Most appropriately, the interpretation focuses on the Ropes family, who donated the house–as a Memorial— to the Peabody Essex Museum (then Essex Institute) in 1907, almost as much as the interior architectural features. Their possessions are all around you as you walk through the rooms: their china, their pictures, their books, their trunks, their own memorials. There are touches of modern whimsy in several of the rooms which added to the overall feeling of renewal, and details, details, details, galore. I think I’ll have to go back again and again: it’s open every weekend this summer from noon until 4pm.

The house was built in 1727 but extensively remodeled in the 1890s, so it feels (to my untrained eye) almost like a perfect blend of the Colonial and the Colonial Revival. This was most apparent on the first floor: as you walk front to back you move forward in time–from 1727 (or more precisely 1830, the date of the Asher Benjamin-influenced entrance) to the perfectly-preserved 1894 kitchen, with all its “new” equipment. Two dining rooms on the right–or I suppose a breakfast room and dining room decorated in a later 19th-century style–and on the left a double parlor with an amazing front-to-back fireplace. I’ve always loved this room, and when I walked into it yesterday it instantly reminded me of one of my favorite architectural drawings: Arthur Little’s sketch of the parlor of the long-lost Benjamin Pickman house further up Essex Street, from his (now-reissued by Historic New England) 1878 book Early New England Interiors. And for cupboard connoisseurs, the first floor of the Ropes Mansion is heaven, with fully-stocked butler’s and kitchen pantries and dining-room china cabinet.

Pickman House Parlor Arthur Little Early New England Interiors

The Benjamin Pickman House Parlor by Arthur Little, Old New England Interiors, 1878. Courtesy of Historic New England.

The second floor of the Ropes Mansion is even more intimately interpreted than the first, with one side of the house devoted to lavishly-recreated bedrooms and the other side to displays of possessions, some quite touching: I was struck particularly by a leather fire bucket (after all, this was a family, and this is a house, that experienced three major fires: besides the 2009 fire, there was a fire during the 1894 restoration and most tragically Abigail Pickman Ropes died in 1839 after her dress caught fire on this very floor–the posthumous portrait of Abigail by Charles Osgood is also on view) as well as a lovely watercolor memorial wreath dedicated to the memory of Abigail’s niece, Elizabeth Ropes Orne, who died of consumption at age 24 in 1842 (see her own sketches here). The bedrooms with their canopy beds are lovely: one rather ghostly and/or innocent, the other displaying a much more vibrant reproduction textile, and there is a fully-outfitted bathroom in the 1894 back of the house, just as “modern” as the kitchen below. Altogether a beautiful house bearing testimony to lives lived: the best kind of memorial.

A true Ropes Memorial: watercolor memorial wreath for Elizabeth Ropes Orne by her former teacher, Eliza B. Davis, who presented it to Elizabeth’s mother Sally in 1851. Elizabeth’s signature, presumably from a letter, is in the center.

5 Comments | tags: Architecture, Colonial Revival, Commemoration, Decorative Arts, great houses, Interior design, Interiors, Local Events, Memory, Peabody Essex Museum, Ropes Mansion | posted in Culture, History, Houses, Salem

May 17, 2015

Stickwork in Salem

By daseger

Stick sculptor Patrick Dougherty has been working on an installation in Salem over the past week, constructing several stickwork structures on the grounds of the Peabody Essex Museum’s Crowninshield-Bentley House. They are nearly completed, and we went over on Friday evening to check them out. Situated on a prominent corner in Salem, there were already lots of people gazing at them when we arrived, but they must have been tourists who didn’t know that these grounds are actually quite open from the back, so we were very much in the houses while they were gazing on, from the other side of the fence (we eventually told them how to get in). These structures are both solid and seemingly ethereal: almost like fairy houses in some fantasy kingdom. Another immediately apparent contrast was the whimsical and airy outline of the sculptures against the background of the very solid, seemingly (and hopefully) eternal Crowninshield-Bentley and Gardner-Pingree Houses. Here’s a few photographs of the work-in-progress: I will return to take more when they are completed.