Tag Archives: Chestnut Street

May 6, 2012

A Bit of Bridgman

By daseger

I’m on the trail of yet-another-new-to-me-Salem-artist today:  Lewis Jesse Bridgman (1857-1931), an incredibly prolific illustrator of countless children’s books and historical sketches from the 1880s to the 1920s.  Actually, Bridgman is not entirely unknown to me, having seen a little exhibition of some of his whimsical images at our local frame shop (The Art Corner) a couple of years ago, and I probably could count all of his titles if I wanted too, but I’m a bit lazy today after the big house tour yesterday (hence the very late post).  So these images are just the tip of the iceberg for Bridgman, who should be a lot better known, I think.

Bridgman, usually credited as “J.L. Bridgman” and sometimes just as “Bridgman”, which tells you just how eminent he was after the turn of the last century, was born in Lawrence and moved to Salem after his graduation from Harvard.  He lived on Summit Avenue, off Lafayette, for much of his life but seems to have acquired a Boston address later on. He illustrated books by Rudyard Kipling, Annie Fellows Johnston, Sylvester Baxter, and Edith Robinson, as well as Mary Hazelton Blanchard’s popular Our Little (African, Indian, Korean, Japanese, Russian, German, Siamese & Eskimo–maybe more!) Cousin series. As his reputation grew, his name gets larger on the cover and title pages, until it becomes part of the title, as in Bridgman’s Kewts (1902), one of several books he produced for H.M. Caldwell, Publishers after 1900.

Here’s a very small sample of Bridgman’s work in print, in no particular order, but beginning with my favorite, PK Fitzhugh’s King Time: or the Mystical Land of the Hours (1908), another Caldwell title. With its clockfaced characters gallivanting through time, this is one of the most charming children’s books that I’ve ever seen, and I think it illustrates the range of Bridgman’s talents very well.

One of Bridgman’s own titles, Seem-So’s (1903), which plays with imagery and silhouettes in a very clever way, and a page from Bridgman’s Kewts, in which bald little creatures dressed in worldly costumes travel through the US (unfortunately the African Kewt is named Sambo):  here they are gazing upon a Newport mansion. Two more Caldwell titles from the same era:  an alligator in pursuit of a rabbit in Christmas Comes but Once a Year (1903), and the cover of Farmer Fox and other Rhymes (1904).

The decidedly less whimsical and colorful illustrations in Elbridge Streeter Brooks’ Story of New York (1888), one of Bridgman’s earliest commissions, are representative of some of the more “serious” historical and architectural illustrations that he did throughout his career, including pen and ink drawings of Salem landmarks and ships that he produced for the Essex Institute and Peabody Museum in the teens and 1920s.  Though he will probably be forever pigeonholed as a children’s book illustrator, Mr. Bridgman seems to have possessed the ability to depict nearly everything in a variety of mediums.  I couldn’t find a nice scan-able image, but I was particularly struck by his watercolor painting of a basement kitchen on Chestnut Street in the collection of Historic New England:  a rather simple scene, beautifully rendered.

7 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Culture, Paper, Salem

May 3, 2012

Chestnut Street Days

By daseger

In 1926, the year of Salem’s tercentenary, the residents of Chestnut Street threw open their doors and some old clothes and welcomed the world into their stately homes, setting the precedent for four more “Chestnut Street Days” over the next half-century. This weekend the tradition will be revived with “May Day on Chestnut Street”, an event to benefit Hamilton Hall, during which ten homes on the street will be open to ticket-bearing guests.  In a departure from the original Chestnut Street Days and the other big Salem house tour, Christmas in Salem, this tour promises to be a more low-key affair, with an emphasis on history and architecture rather than dress or decoration.

Brochures for this weekend’s tour of Chestnut Street, and the second Chestnut Street Day, held in 1939, featuring Samuel Chamberlain’s etching “Springtime in Salem”.

I am fortunate to live on this storied street and it is a privilege (and pleasure) that I never tire of, even as the tourist trolleys stop outside my bedroom window every half hour.  I see Chestnut Street as an early (circa 1805) planned development, as Salem’s merchant princes sought to distance themselves from the busy wharves from which they conducted their business and live only amongst themselves, on a big broad street of boldly American (Federal) houses, filled with the wares (to varying degrees) that they brought home from the East.  It is fortunate that the street and its houses were built, as both kept old money and old families (never a bad thing!)  in Salem as the city experienced maritime decline and industrial growth and its accompanying dynamic change later in the nineteenth century.  By the end of the century, the street had become one of the symbols of “old Salem” and a succession of postcards, produced for a national market, reinforced that image, while at the same time freezing the street in time.

Images (mostly cards) of Chestnut Street in (somewhat) chronological order, 1890s-1980s.

The first picture above, which I included in one of my very first blog posts, shows the opening of Chestnut Street–looking west–about 1891. You can see Samuel McIntire’s amazing South Church on the right hand side, and the second photo shows the church in its entirety.  It burned down in 1903, to be replaced by the Gothic Revival structure that you see immediately above, which also burned down, in 1950.  Apparently it was recognized that the lot was cursed at that time, so it remains a church-less “McIntire Park”.

Detroit Publishing Company postcard of Chestnut Street looking west, 1906, in black-and-white and colored versions.  These were reissued for many years as far as I can tell.  The last card is a rarer western perspective, printed in Germany and published by A. Kagan of Boston, Massachusetts.  The personal note on the back is dated 1918, but I can’t imagine American publishers ordering German postcards in 1918, so it must have been around for awhile.

The eastern perspective–looking towards the harbor and the center of town–is more common.  Above are examples from the first two decades of the twentieth century.  The “car card” is always striking because of its head-on view, but also because Chestnut Street has been one-way in the other direction for decades.  The canopy of elms always makes me sad; I have no idea why chestnut Street was lined with elms rather than chestnut trees, other than the fact that all great American streets seem to have been planted with elms in the nineteenth century.  Much of this land was an orchard belonging to the Pickering Family before Chestnut  Street was laid out; maybe chestnuts reigned at that time.

A bit further up the street and a bit later, but still looking east. The middle card (courtesy of the Dionne Collection) appears to have been taken in the 1950s, while the last card is from the 1980s.  Only the cars change!

I can’t resist closing with my own reissue of Felicie Waldo Howell’s (Mixter, 1897-1968) vibrant painting of the first Chestnut Street Day:  Salem’s 300th Anniversary, Chestnut Street, June 1926.  Such a great image–and a reminder that streets are all about people as well as houses.




6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in History, Salem

March 28, 2012

The Folly Cove Designers

By daseger

This past weekend I made a major score when I encountered a long-sought item:  a placemat depicting Chestnut Street  in Salem made by Louise Kenyon of the Folly Cove Designers in the 1950s or early 1960s.  Though it is in rather shabby condition, I snapped it right up, as I have long wanted a piece of Folly Cove and now I have one depicting my own street!

The Folly Cove Designers were a collective of textile artisans working in the Lanesville section of Gloucester, Massachusetts from the 1940s through the 1960s.  Inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement and founded by illustrator Virginia Burton Demetrios, the designers carved their own linoleum blocks and produced linens, clothing, and upholstery fabric for their own houses and also for sale.  There was a strong educational mission connected to what essentially became a guild:  aspiring Folly Cove Designers completed coursework (designed by Demetrios, apparently as innovative an educator as she was an illustrator and designer) as well as a “masterpiece” (a term that originated in the medieval craft guilds), which, if it met with the approval of a jury made up of revolving members of Folly Cove, was produced and offered for sale under the trademark of the Designers.

After Virginia Burton Demetrios’s death in 1969, the guild dissolved, but one of the earliest Folly Cove designers, Sara Elizabeth (Halloran) continued the block printing tradition in Lanesville until her death in 2009.  The Sara Elizabeth Shop is still open for business, selling old and new Folly Cove designs on fabric and paper at both their shop and their website, which is also a good source for Folly Cove history and the block printing process.

The printing process:  as demonstrated in a 1945 Life article (“Yankee printers get National Recognition”), as well as by the still-working Acorn press at the Sara Elizabeth Shop.  Below, Virginia Burton Demetrios and her students/designers from the Life article.  The piece in the center (by Demetrios) is called Diploma, because it was given to a new designer, framed, after they had sold their first block print. Note the foot–stomping (or stamping) phase of the production process.

My Chestnut Street print is not really representative of a Folly Cove design, though the guild was indeed made up of individual designers with individual visions.  Still, there are a lot of floral and naturalistic themes, and some very whimsical images, particularly of animals.  The concentrated Finnish population in mid-twentieth century Lanesville might have asserted a Scandinavian influence on the prints (though they are far from Marimekko!), as several members of this community became Folly Cove designers.  On the other hand, some of the patterns look positively Elizabethan to me.  The Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester has a very strong Folly Cove collection, including sample books and archival materials as well as textiles (in fact, the Museum recently purchased the block which produced my print).  You do run across Folly Cove products in antique shops and at auctions in our area as well:  Blackwood/March Auctioneers in Essex always seem to have lots.  Essex antiques dealer Andrew Spindler currently has several Folly Cove patterns available in his 1stdibs shop, including one of my favorites, Gossips, and some pillows covered in a perennial favorite, Lazy Daisies.

A few more of my favorite Folly Cove prints:  two designs by Zoe Eleftherio and Elizabeth Jarrabind’s Turtles, and (to set the scene) a Maurice Prendergast painting of Folly Cove from 1910-15.

11 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Design

March 4, 2012

Botts Court

By daseger

I think it’s time for a simple, literal streets of Salem post, so today we have some photographs of a small “street” that runs between Chestnut and Essex Streets in the McIntire Historic District:  Botts Court.  This charming little way is named after the Bott family, who settled here in Salem in the eighteenth century, but the possessive is never used:  all streets lose the possessive over time.  As you can see, it’s quite narrow, so it is one-way and that’s the way I’ll present it. On the corner of Chestnut and Botts Court is one of my very favorite Salem houses (there are so many):  the Bott-Fabens House, built before 1800 and before Chestnut Street:  the entrance that you see here was moved from the west (Court) side to the south side in the 1880s by the Faben family, presumably after Chestnut Street became the street on which to live. The bay window over the entrance was added at that time as well, when there must have been a bay window-building boom in Salem (and elsewhere, I’m sure).  I think the entrance’s window tracery is beautiful, and there is a very patriotic eagle as well.  This is one of several houses in Salem associated with Nathaniel Hawthorne; he lived here for a time while he was working (unhappily) at the Custom House.

Turning the corner, we’re on Botts Court, which was clearly laid out from Essex Street (Salem’s main street, dating from the seventeenth century) rather than Chestnut (developed as a very early example of “tract housing” by Salem’s merchant princes after 1805). This is very evident because of the presence of the three Georgian houses on the right-hand side of the street: great houses which still look like they’re in their 18th century milieu because of their protected Court location. On the other side of the street there are great houses too, but they were built much later. The owners of the houses on the next street over (Hamilton) must have sold parcels of property in the later nineteenth century, and Botts Court experienced a flurry of building that must have changed its character rather dramatically. I first came to Salem about 20 years ago when I was in graduate school studying English history, and as I really wanted to learn about the history of my new city, I started doing plaque research for Historic Salem, Inc.  Several Botts Court houses were my first assignments, so some (not all) of my speculation about the development of the court can be confirmed by this research.

Georgian houses on one side of Botts Court.

The best example of the late nineteenth-century development of Botts Court is the charming Tudor Revival building below:  an “automobile house” (that’s what it said on the building permit) built by the owner (then the Mayor of Salem) of the large colonial revival house on Hamilton Street, behind it. In the next century, it was conveyed to the owners of the adjacent Botts Court house, along with a particularly charming garden.

The “automobile house” of changing ownership.

I’m losing my sun, and we’re at the end of the very short but very charming Botts Court.  As you will notice, there are front porches on both eighteenth- and nineteenth-century houses on the court; a rarity in downtown Salem but not on this little protected path.  The last (early) Georgian house below, located on the corner of Botts and Essex Street (right next to the Salem Athenaeum and its expansive garden) used to be painted a bubblegum pink, marking the transition from the serious main street to the more whimsical Botts Court.

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

January 3, 2012

Salem on Canvas: the 1920s

By daseger

Exactly 90 and 91 years ago today the American artist Felicie Waldo Howell (1897-1968) opened successive exhibitions at the Macbeth Gallery in New York City, where all the best “modern” American artists showed.  Both exhibitions featured Salem scenes prominently, indeed, very prominently.  The first, Old Salem Doorways (January 3-17, 1921), was exclusively devoted to the architecture of Salem, while the second, New England Streets (January 3-23,1922), featured the streets of Salem alongside those of other New England towns and cities.  Here are two reproduction images of paintings in the first show, depicting the entrances to the Assembly House and the Ropes Mansion.

I don’t know a great deal about Howell but from what I could ascertain she had a rich and interesting life, occupied by her art throughout. She was born in Hawaii, but spent most of her life on the east coast.  Her first marriage, to the wealthy yachtsman (and navigator) George Mixter, enabled her to travel widely (and in very advantageous circles) and paint many maritime scenes.  She seems to have had a penchant for coastlines (Maine and Atlantic islands, the White Cliffs of Dover), bridges (the Golden Gate, Brooklyn) and street scenes (New York, Gloucester, Salem).  A few years after her seemingly-successful exhibitions at the Macbeth Gallery, she returned to Salem to paint several views of the city’s Tercentennial celebrations, including the celebratory scene on Chestnut Street below (from the digital archives of Christies, where it sold in 2006 for $7200).  Seldom do you see such a colorful, impressionistic view of The Street.

Felicie Waldo Howell (1897-1968), Salem’s 300th Anniversary, Chestnut Street, June 1926.

4 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Salem

August 15, 2011

Cars on Chestnut

By daseger

From two wheels to four: another annual event tied in with Salem’s Heritage Days in August is the Phillips House‘s Antique Car Meet, held yesterday right here on Chestnut Street.  Though not as large a gathering of antique automobiles as that sponsored by its sister Historic New England property, the Codman House, earlier this summer, the Phillips Meet is a bit more intimate and engaging because the cars are parked on the street,where they belong, as opposed to out in a field.  The first floor of the house was open for tours, as was the carriage house out back, home to two rare and HUGE Pierce Arrows and a nice assortment of horse-drawn carriages.

The last car above is a powder pink Edsel!  Below, what looks like a surrey with a fringe on top in the Carriage House, and peaking through at one of the Pierce Arrows.

Just another old car parked on the street, yesterday, and one of similar vintage traveling down (or up) the street in its own time, below.  Chestnut Street is one-way in the other direction now, so this car looks odd to me:  I want to say, turn around, you’re going to crash into someone to the long-dead driver.  Finally, an amazing photograph courtesy of my friend Martha, a North Shore caterer extraordinaire (Lantern Hill ) with deep Chestnut Street roots who has been making some of her old family photographs available to the public.  Pictured is Mrs. Mary Northey Wheatland out for a drive on what looks like nearby Essex Street, in the winter of 1904.

4 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in History, Houses, Salem

August 9, 2011

Mr. Allen’s Amazonian Lily

By daseger

In the summer of 1853, an Amazonian water-lily blossomed in Salem, the second to be cultivated in North America, under the careful watch of amateur botanist John Fisk Allen (1807-76).  Descended from several Salem shipping families, Allen had the means to pursue various horticultural pursuits, and he maintained a greenhouse on Flint Street (not far from his Chestnut Street residence) where he cultivated several varieties of grapes as well as tropical flowers.  He is part of what I am realizing was an active and influential botanical circle in nineteenth-century Salem, with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s uncle, Robert Manning, right in the center. Allen wanted to share his success with the world, or at least his world, so he commissioned America’s first chromolithographic printer, Boston-based William Sharp, to produce six detailed plates of the lily for inclusion in his account of  its cultivation, Victoria Regia; or The Great Water Lily of America (Boston, 1854).

I have seen a really nice edition of this volume in person, and the plates below (from the Internet Archive digital edition) do not do justice to the real thing.  They are really stunning, but apparently Sharp also took a bit of artistic license.  Allen’s text is interesting as well, as he follows the rules of strict scientific observation and tells his readers everything the lily was doing that Salem summer long ago, down to the minute.

The first two cycles of the plant’s growth:

From first flowering through full bloom:

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in History, Salem

July 12, 2011

After the Duel

By daseger

I’m a day late to commemorate the infamous duel which took place on July 11, 1804 between sitting Vice President Aaron Burr and the first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, resulting in the latter’s death.  Better late than never, however, as this was a shocking and momentous moment in the new nation’s history.  If you just run a cursory search in a digital database such as Early American Imprints, you can easily uncover a litany of literary tributes to the martyred Hamilton, in the form of eulogies, sermons, letters, poems and accounts of the dreadful event and its aftermath published in newspapers all over the country in the summer of 1804.

With time came more deliberative reactions to the Duel and attempts to memorialize it, in the form of historical accounts, prints of the scene (Weehawken, New Jersey) and even souvenir plates and historical romances (after all, what is more romantic than a duel?).  The first marble statue to be produced in the United States, sculptor Ball Hughes’ Statue of Hamilton, was erected in the Grand Rotunda of the New York Merchants Exchange in 1835, only to be destroyed six months later in the Great Fire that swept the city later that year.

Print illustration of the Hughes Hamilton Statue, NYPL

1830 Print of Caleb Wheeler Etching, NYPL

Booth's History of New York, 1886

Duel Souvenir Plate, Collection of the New York Historical Society

Cover of Blennerhassett, or the Decrees of Fate. A Romance founded upon Events in American History by Charles Felton Pidgin, 1901

Salem was no exception in the expressed immediate outpouring of anger and grief at the killing of Hamilton, but the most lasting tribute the Federalist icon was built of bricks, not words:  the soon-to-be completed “new” Assembly House on Chestnut Street, designed by Samuel McIntire, was named Hamilton Hall in his honor.  For me, this building is quite literally the monument next door.  I enjoy seeing the aged russet bricks and McIntire’s spectacular carved eagle and swags every day, but I must admit that I don’t immediately think about Hamilton when I do so.

Hamilton Hall in 1940, HABS, Library of Congress

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

May 12, 2011

Spring around Salem

By daseger

Just a few photographs of Salem sites with no particular connection other than the season.  It’s been a cold spring so far, and I think blooming is a little delayed—always the case with my own garden, which doesn’t look like much until a little later in the year.  I’m kind of a quirky gardener as I’m more interested in individual plants rather than the garden as a whole, and I tend to like plants with interesting historical connections, which generally means later-blooming herbs.  But I did inherit a nicely laid out garden from the previous owners of our house, bordered by boxwoods which thankfully survived the harsh winter.

The central perennial bed is above, and off to left is a little “woodland garden” with a pond and this amazing plant, which is in bloom right now.

Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum)!  Aren’t they amazing?  They always surprise me this time of year, along with my yellow lady slippers which are not quite ready for exposure.  Across the street from our house, is “McIntire Park”, the site of the former magnificent McIntire South Church, which I wrote about in an earlier post.  Today it is home to flowering dogwoods, among other trees.

A few more shots of Salem over the past week:  tulips in the Ropes Mansion garden on Essex Street, the shop window of Modern Millie Vintage and Consignments on Washington Street, and the “Mighy Wave”, a one-day installation of plastic bottles collected in one week from last Saturday’s Clean Salem, Green Salem event on the Common.

Finally the view as I approach my office at Salem State University: twin rows of trees lining the path to work.

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

April 30, 2011

Doorways (and wreaths) around Salem

By daseger

For architectural photographers of the early and mid-twentieth century, the doorway shot was a stock image.  Frank Cousins issued many doorway postcards and compiled a portfolio of images in 1912.  A decade later, his fellow Salem photographer Mary Harrod Northend issued Historic Doorways of Old Salem and Samuel Chamberlain included many Salem doorways in his popular New England Doorways in 1939.  As a frame itself, the doorway is an easily framed image, and can serve as the epitome of the architectural style of the entire house.  In the forward to New England Doorways, Chamberlain identifies the doorway (and the fireplace) as “focal points of interest in the early houses, where the builder might forget stern necessity for a moment and indulge in his distinctive desire for ornament.”

Two of Chamberlain’s photographs are below:  the Phillips House doorway on Chestnut Street and the pedimented “shutter door” of the Clark-Morgan House on Essex Street (a great Georgian colonial house which is currently for sale).  The caption below the Phillips House reads:  “Salem is the supreme New England setting for doorways of this formal pattern, which seem to reflect the opulence of Salem’s 19th century clipper ship owners and merchants.”  So here the doorway is not just representing the entire house, but also its location and era.

Indeed, these classic collections of Salem doorways generally include the more opulent mansions of the city, along with older houses and those with literary connections.  My own “harvest of a good many doorway hunting expeditions” (to quote Chamberlain again) therefore includes images of the doorways of smaller, lesser-known, but equally beautiful houses around town.  I was also looking for color and contrast on my expeditions, which are provided by both paint and the springtime wreaths on many Salem doors.

First, two eighteenth-century doorways on either end of Essex Street, with an updated version of the Clark-Morgan house (above) sans its shutter door.

Next, a sampling of doorways (and wreaths) in the vicinity of the House of the Seven Gables and Derby Street.

From the other end of town, a rather random sampling of doorways in the McIntire Historic District. I’ve always been partial to the brick house in the middle photograph, and its entrance its particularly beautiful.  Lots of external embellishment today, including a traditional Massachusetts golden cod.

I can’t resist throwing in a few Chestnut Street doorways:  the dual threshold of a Greek Revival double house, and the elaborate entrance of one of many brick Federal mansions on the street.  I wanted to showcase another shutter door, because there are many in the city, serving as excellent examples of how our predecessors created environmental air conditioning.

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