Tag Archives: great houses

May 25, 2012

Preservation Précis

By daseger

We’re well into “Preservation Month” and I’ve yet to post on this topic, so it is definitely time. In my experience, the preservation process is seldom a smooth one, because it is ultimately a political process, tied more to property rights or urban planning than any aesthetic or cultural initiative. About a month ago, I was driving home from Maine and I decided to stop in Newburyport, a beautiful old port city north of Salem with an amazing collection of historic houses from many periods (they had their big fire in 1811, whereas we had our much larger fire in 1914).  I will take any and every opportunity to drive down High Street just to see the succession of stately homes, all perfectly preserved.  On this particular occasion, however, nearly every house had a sign in front of it:  either for the expansion of  the Local Historic District, or against. It clearly wasn’t a preservation issue–no matter what the sign said in front, the house was perfect–it was a property rights issue.  I stopped to talk to one man, with a “NO” sign on the fence in front of his beautiful Federal house, and he indicated that the appointed, not elected historic commission charged with enforcing regulations within the district were the problem–they had no accountability. His neighbor had another opinion.

For and against the Local Historic District in Newburyport.

Here in Salem a preservation controversy has been festering for months, even years.  Following the closure of St. Joseph’s Church by the Archdiocese of Boston in 2004, its development arm, The Planning Office for Urban Affairs, put forward a plan to demolish the 1949 “International Style” church and build an affordable housing complex on the site.  After a complete review process, and despite a lawsuit, the plan has been gradually moving forward, even gaining tacit approval from the Massachusetts Historical Commission (charged with enforcing the Section 106 review triggered by all redevelopment projects that are slated to receive federal funds) which ruled that the demolition of the church was unavoidable. The voices of opposition to the project–or specifically to the demolition of the church–were Salem residents who had grown up in the “Point” neighborhood surrounding the church when it was largely French Canadian (now no longer the case), who clearly saw the church as the sole physical reminder of their historic community, and Historic Salem, Incorporated (HSI), the venerable preservation organization in Salem.  HSI’s continued appeals, based on the positions that due diligence was not done and that the church could be saved and incorporated into the housing project, have divided not only the community, but also its membership and Board of Directors.  For me, one of the most interesting aspects of this process/struggle has been the continuing question of what is historic?  As you can see from the pictures below, St. Joseph’s is not a traditional “historic” structure, but a mid-century modern one. I think it has been hard for a lot of people in Salem (myself included!) to see this structure as historic, given our stock of much older (and frankly, more aesthetically pleasing) buildings.  The present building replaced the Romanesque Revival church that was destroyed in the Great Salem Fire of 1914, only a years after it was built.  If that church was slated for demolition, how would the process–and the debate–have been different?

St. Joseph’s Church before and after the Great Salem Fire of 1914, and yesterday.

Often preservation efforts result in a compromise, as is the case with the former First Baptist Church on Federal Street, saved (in large part due to HSI’s advocacy) as the historic anchor of the new Ruane Courthouse complex, but surrounded by imposing and intimidating  Soviet-style buildings.

There have been several smaller preservation projects in Salem over the past few months; no controversies here, just some nice restorations.  I wrote a post just a couple of months ago about a dilapidated and condemned Victorian house in North Salem that was almost gone; today it seems to be experiencing a near-miraculous revival. Along Derby Street, a long-declining little Georgian house has experienced a similar rebirth in the last few months, and the little Brown Street house of Daniel Bray, mariner, built in 1776, is looking better every day.

Preservation projects in North Salem, Derby Street (“before” picture courtesy of Jerome Curley/Salem Patch), and downtown.

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

May 21, 2012

Long Hill

By daseger

Just to the north of Salem, over the Danvers River, is the city of Beverly, of similar size demographically but much larger geographically.  Beverly has a vibrant downtown, which is surrounded by lots of neighborhoods which are quite distinct: Ryal Side on the river, the historic Cove, the affluent coastal communities of Beverly Farms and Pride’s Crossing, inland Montserrat and Centerville, and North Beverly.  This is not an exhaustive list; neighborhood identities are well-established in Beverly. There are amazing Gilded Age mansions in the Farms and Pride’s Crossing, and the entire North Shore coast achieved an even more gilded reputation after President William Howard Taft made Beverly the site of his “Summer White House” in 1909, first renting the Stetson Cottage at Woodbury Point in the Cove and then “Parramatta”, a house in Montserrat.

President Taft’s first Summer White House in Beverly; after 2 summers here, his landlady, Mrs. Maria Evans, informed the President that she was replacing the house with an Italian garden (still there, in the now-public Lynch Park)!  The house was cut into halves, put on barges, and floated across the water to Peaches Point in Marblehead.  You can see all the pictures at the digital exhibition of the Beverly Historical Society.  Paramatta, the second Taft Summer White House, is below.

By way of introducing I am digressing!  Suffice it to say that Beverly had a well-established reputation as the site of a wealthy and politically-connected summer society before and after the coming of President Taft, and the architecture to prove it.  I’m going to take on a few of the greater North Shore’s more famous (and interesting) summer “cottages” myself this summer,but in the meantime you can satisfy any curiosity you may have with the wonderful book by Pamela W. Fox, North Shore Boston: Country Houses of Essex County, 1865-1930, or Joseph Garland’s Boston‘s Gold Coast: The North Shore, 1890–1929.

One theme that emerges from both books is the difference between the simple wooden structures built by the Boston Brahmins before Taft’s time and the more elaborate mansions built by non-Bostonians after.  That trend does not quite apply to the house that I am writing about today, Long Hill, built by Atlantic Monthly editor-owner Ellery Sedgwick and his wife Mabel in then-rural Centerville, away from the maddening crowd on the coast.  Sedgwick’s Massachusetts (western Massachusetts) roots go way back, but he did not choose to build a restrained Yankee cottage; instead he and Mrs. Sedgwick copied (and mined) a dilapidated Southern house:  the Isaac Ball House (1802) in Charleston, South Carolina. I tried and tried to find a photograph of the original Charleston house in situ, to no avail (only turning up images of the Ball family’s several plantations, all in sad states, and a few references to the “town house”) but Long Hill, completed around 1921, is supposed to be a close copy.

When I visited Long Hill the other day, I ran into some architect friends of mine, who pointed out details that I would have not seen on my own:  the perfect proportions (sadly missing in modern “Georgian” Mcmansions), the old, weathered, mellowed brick, certainly not circa 1920 brick, the very delicate columns, the classical details.  It is a charming house, well-situated, but it still looks a bit out-of-place to me.  I’m more impressed with the gardens, and all the surrounding woodland.  I never really understood why the Sedgwicks wanted to be so far away from coastal “society” (and breezes), because I never really knew about Mrs. Sedgwick’s horticultural interests—and achievements.  The author of The Garden Month by Month (1907, lots of illustrations and a pull-out flower color chart) wanted land, not ocean views, and she and her husband acquired 114 acres in Centerville on which to build not only their house but their very cultivated garden, even more impressive because of the contrast between it and the woodlands beyond.  Mabel Cabot Sedgwick died in 1937, but her husband remarried another horticulturalist, Marjorie Russell Sedgwick, who continued to improve the gardens at Long Hill.  The property was transferred to the Trustees of Reservations in 1979, and remains a peaceful, pastoral retreat.

The gardens at Long Hill:  woodlands surround the manicured lawns and garden “rooms” adjacent to the house:  blooming Solomon’s Seal, wisteria & peonies.

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

April 13, 2012

Salem Swags

By daseger

There is no more prominent motif of late eighteenth- and early twentieth-century design than the swag; it’s almost universal.  At least that’s my perspective from here in Salem, where I am literally surrounded by swag-embellished buildings. It certainly was a favorite feature of Samuel McIntire and his imitators, and on a nice Spring walk I suddenly took notice of all the swags around me and captured some of them on film.  Actually before I left for my walk I crawled out onto the flat roof of the apartment on the side of my house for a unique perspective of McIntire’s exterior drapery swags inserted into the brick north wall of Hamilton Hall, along with his famous eagle.

And then I was off, in swag heaven.  Right around the corner, across from where McIntire’s house once stood and now sadly no longer does, there is a lovely entrance with swag detail on the Georgian Eden-Browne-Sanders house.  The house predates McIntire, but the entrance has been attributed to him or his son.  Two streets over, on Federal Street, is a McIntire masterpiece, the Cook-Oliver House, with swags galore, embellishing both exterior and interior doors.  More McIntire swags grace the Peirce-Nichols fence urns (and a mantle inside) further down Federal Street, and the Derby summer house on the grounds of the Gardner-Pingree House downtown.

Frank Cousins photographs of a Cook-Oliver doorway and a Peirce-Nichols mantle, 1910-13, New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

Of course McIntire was a genius but he had a lot of inspiration:  swags had been around for a while before he started carving them in Salem. Thomas Sheraton’s Cabinet-maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book (1791–93) is full of them, and he is hardly the only source.  I’ve just been discovering the incredibly prolific British architect Sir William Chambers (1723-96) who also drew his share of swags. They even turn up on petticoats in the 1790s.

Pencil sketch for a panel by Sir William Chambers, pen and ink sketch for a candle urn by Chambers’ studio, c. 1770, and petticoat design by a Miss Vernon, c. 1792, all courtesy of Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Back in Salem, there was a swag revival a century later when the Colonial Revival influence swept through the city.  On Essex Street, which is really Salem’s Main Street, there are several Colonial Revival houses which are almost festooned with swags.  For me, these 1890s swags seem to lack the delicacy, depth and detail of those of a century earlier, but I still think they work.  The last house is actually a colonial house, built in 1762, transformed into Colonial Revival house, swags and all, in 1893.


6 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Design, History, Houses

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

February 21, 2012

George Washington Slept Here

By daseger

Last summer, I wrote about George Washington’s visit to Salem in a post on the Assembly House where he dined; today I’m featuring the house where he spent the night (October 29, 1789) after he was feted by the city’s notables:  the Joshua Ward house, built between 1784 and 1788 on what was then waterfront and what is now busy Washington Street.  Like my post on Lincoln last week, I’m trying to recognize and remember American statesmen on the days they were actually born (February 12 and 22) rather than on the generic “Presidents’ Day”.

Teddy tries to take over:  Puck Magazine, February 1909.

President Washington came to Salem as part of a New England tour in the Fall of 1789.  His diary entries indicate that he was impressed with the commerce of the town, but he has little to say about its architecture.  Washington was no Jefferson; he was clearly more interested in the quality of the land and the roads along his route than he was in culture, material or otherwise.  The Joshua Ward house was a brand new mansion when he arrived, ostensibly the finest residence in town, but he refers to it only as his “lodgings”.  He spent the night in the second-floor northeast bedchamber, on the right in the pictures below.

A bust of Washington appears to peer out at Salem from a window over the entrance of the Joshua Ward House.

The house is now home to the Higginson Book Company and appears well-maintained and seemingly-secure, despite being wedged in between a Dunkin Donuts (one of 57,000 in Salem), modern condominiums, and an office building.  Its location has determined that the Ward House has had an interesting history, to say the least.  At this point in time, it is far better known as a haunted house than a historic one, due to the fact that it was built on the former site of the house of  George Corwin, the High Sheriff of Essex County who issued the warrants for those arrested in the Witch Trials of 1692 and infamously placed the sequential stones on Giles Corey’s body which crushed him to death for failing to enter a plea.  Sheriff Corwin dropped dead of a heart attack 4 years after the trials at age 30, and the combination of a series of shady stories involving a curse and his corpse, along with an equally shady “spirit photograph” ostensibly taken in the early 1980s, have created a ghostly reputation for the Joshua Ward House.

Its location has threatened not only its reputation but also its preservation.  The Ward house was originally built on a bluff overlooking the South River, but as Salem developed the river was filled in to create the major commercial thoroughfare of Washington Street, and Salem’s massive Boston and Maine Railroad Station was built virtually in its front yard.  Eventually it became the “Washington Hotel”, indicating that its association with Washington was well-known, and commercial storefronts were built in front of it and a “New Washington House” adjacent.

The view looking south on Washington Street in the later nineteenth century and the Boston & Maine terminal in 1910, Detroit Publishing Company. The Ward house is located just beyond and behind the “Boston” building on the right:  quite a change from the river view of a century before!  A postcard from the late 1920s.  Below, a northwestern orientation, FACING but still obscuring the Ward House:  the New Washington House  (Dionne Collection, via Salem Patch), Washington Street in the 1930s, and today.  The posts in the lower left-hand corner of the modern picture are those of the Joshua Ward House fence.

The house is obscured in all of these pictures of its streetscape, but fortunately it is revealed in the photographs of Arthur C. Haskell, taken for the Historic American Buildings Survey in 1937 and accessible at the Library of Congress. These pictures show a house (labelled the Joshua Ward “Washington” House) that looks like it has fallen upon hard times on the outside, but relatively well-preserved on the inside.  The first two exterior views show appendages growing out of both front and back, and a missing balustrade, but the interior views show an empty but still elegant interior, with woodwork which is often attributed to Samuel McIntire.  I think that the second-floor landing between the front and rear stairs is particularly impressive.

A sketch of the house; you can see all the stuff that has been built in front of it.

HABS photographs by Arthur C. Haskell, 1937:  Ward House front and back exterior, first-floor parlor mantle, second-story landing, and the room that George Washington slept in on the second floor.

It’s so interesting to see a city–the world–grow and change from the perspective of one house, bearing silent witness.  Things will get worse for the Joshua Ward house before they get better. In that horrible time of urban renewal, the 1960s and early 1970s, a developer approached the Salem Redevelopment Authority (which has planning jurisdiction over downtown) to tear down the  “junk” in back of the Washington Street storefronts at no. 148, meaning the Ward House!  In the ensuing uproar the way was cleared for an extensive restoration supervised by Salem preservation architect Staley B. McDermet, revealing the elegant mansion of Washington’s time–and ours.


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

February 5, 2012

Downton Abbey Double

By daseger

I like Downton Abbey as much as the next person (woman), but I must admit that I tune in as much (or more) for the setting and costumes, the general ambiance, as I do for the plot and the acting.  The real star of the show for me, so impressive that it even upstages Maggie Smith, is the “abbey”, or Highclere Castle.  Highclere has been the seat of the Herbert Family, the Earls of Carnarvon, from the eighteenth century.  In the 1830s, the third Earl, Henry Herbert, commissioned Sir Charles Barry, the architect of the Houses of Parliament, to dramatically enlarge and remodel an existing Georgian house into the grand Elizabethan Revival castle that it is today.  It seems to me that the Herberts were a bit nouveau riche; their peerage was of relatively recent vintage and so was their house, so they hired the  neo-Gothic architect to build them a ne0-Elizabethan house.  It’s a very Victorian story.

Highclere Castle circa 1850s-70s by photographer Francis Frith. Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Sir Charles Barry’s 1842 Study for a Highclere tower from the Christies archives; Highclere Castle today.

Apparently Downton Abbey saved Highclere Castle.  In a 2009 Daily Mail article entitled “Can Highclere Castle be Saved? Historic Home is Verging on Ruin as Lord Carnarvon Reveals £12 million Repair Bill”, the 8th Earl reveals not only the imposing estimates for the repair of his ancestral home but the dilapidated (and moldy) rooms upstairs, which contrast sharply with the ground-floor state rooms that we see on Downton.  There was even talk of subdividing the Capability Brown-designed grounds (perhaps this is still on the table). Shortly after the article was published, Andrew Lloyd Webber offered to buy the castle to house his art collection but was rebuffed by the Earl and Countess.  Then the producers of Downton came in to save the day.

Highclere upstairs bedroom, downstairs saloon and library.

From an interesting “country life” publication entitled The Field, we can see Highclere’s silk-wrapped drawing room in Downton’s time, and contrast it with a photograph from the present. Like Downton, Highclere was used as a rehabilitation hospital during the First World War and here is Downton’s Lady Sybil in the same drawing room.  After the war, the Castle underwent a “modern” redecoration, but not too modern, apparently, if this “Highclere” Liberty fabric is any indication.

"Highclere" fabric by Liberty & Co., 1931. Victoria & Albert Museum, London

I particularly like the dining-room scenes on Downton Abbey, as we can get a glance at the 1633 equestrian portrait of King Charles I by Anthony van Dyck behind Lord Grantham’s head.  Below is the dining room as set, with the Van Dyck in the background, from the Highclere Castle website.  Finally, the weathered front doors of Highclere, which are really getting a workout these days, I should think.

11 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in History, Houses

November 27, 2011

Wilderstein

By daseger

I spent the last beautiful day of my Hudson River Valley Thanksgiving weekend visiting some of the region’s grand estates:  the Vanderbilt Mansion, Clermont, Olana and Wilderstein, all within a hour’s drive of one another. These are just a few representatives of the area’s rich legacy of past wealth and present preservation. Having been on the boards of historic structures here in Salem for the past couple of decades, I am very aware of the immensity of collective effort (and the piles of cash) it takes to preserve just one property; I can’t imagine how the Hudson River Valley community manages to maintain so many.

The Wilderstein estate in Rhinebeck  is referred to as the “stepchild” of the Hudson River Valley mansions in a 2007 article in the New York Times because it was the last to be transferred from the family that built it—the Suckley family, cousins to the venerable Livingstons who seem to be the foundation of all the great families of the Valley–to trusteeship.  The fact that the Suckleys ran out of money about 80 years before this transfer occurred in 1991 created a considerable preservation challenge for the non-profit organization that runs the mansion today.  When I first visited the house about a decade ago, it was a dreary dark brown, having received its last paint job in 1910 with very “good paint” according to the recorded remembrances of its most famous, and last, resident, Margaret “Daisy” Suckley, some 70 years later.  Miss Suckley was the very close friend, correspondent and confidant of her sixth cousin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who lived right down the road in Hyde Park when he wasn’t in the White House.  It was she who gave him the famous dog Fala, namesake of one of Wilderstein’s most popular annual fundraising events, the “Fala Gala”.

A lot of improvements have been made to the exterior of the house in the 20 years following Miss Suckley’s death, the most striking of which are shingle and siding repairs and the return of the original polychrome paint scheme.  The mansion is an elaborate Queen Anne confection, complete with a five-story tower, and it demands bright, contrasting colors!  You can see the dramatic change in the house’s appearance from the images below in which my photographs from yesterday are followed by those of HABS photographer Mark Zeek, taken in 1979.  I approached the house from the woods below, so it was neat to see that looming bright tower, followed by the gradual appearance of the entire facade.

The dramatic appearance of the Wilderstein mansion is accentuated by its situation, on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River, and its surrounding grounds, designed by Calvert Vaux.  On these same grounds, close to the river’s edge, is the estate’s carriage house/garage.  As you can see from the photographs below, including mine (sepia and color detail) from yesterday interspersed with the HABS images from 1979, this building has been in decline for some time.  Another great challenge for the overseers of Wilderstein, but I have no doubt that they are up to it.

Addendum:  a still image from the upcoming film (summer of 2012) Hyde Park on Hudson, starring Laura Linney as Daisy Suckley and Bill Murray (!!!!!) as FDR.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Houses, Travel

October 19, 2011

Past and Future in Ipswich

By daseger

This past weekend we went up to Ipswich, about 12 miles north of Salem, to take a look at some very old houses and a very new wind turbine.  There is discussion of installing a turbine on Salem’s Winter Island so we wanted to check out the one in Ipswich, and there are lots of other attractions there:  cider doughnuts, beautiful beaches and farms, and the largest collection of First Period houses on the North Shore, perhaps even anywhere in America.  Here are some pictures of the largest and most famous one, the John Whipple House, built by 1677, moved to its present location off Route 1A in 1927, and owned and operated by the Ipswich Museum.

I love the very colonial clam-shell paths to the house and around the period “housewife’s garden”, the super-sloping roof and the windows–all of them.

And now for a contrasting view of the future in Ipswich:  the wind turbine, located on a large coastal DPW lot well out of the center of town.  Though both graceful and green, the turbine is indeed huge; it’s really difficult to see how it could possibly fit on the much smaller lot here in Salem.  There are a couple of shots here for perspective, including one across the marsh from the turbine.  I did not find it very noisy, however, which seems to be the other major issue with its potential siting.

On our way home (well sort of) we stopped at our favorite place in nearby Essex for friend clams:  J.T. Farnhams.  You eat your fried clams sitting on picnic tables overlooking the marsh looking back at Ipswich, and the house below, which I always think is going to be claimed by the marsh but never is.

10 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in History, Houses

October 13, 2011

Peirce-Nichols without Paint

By daseger

Last weekend the absolutely beautiful weather and the Halloween season combined to make Salem a very busy place.  There were crowds of people on the streets and sidewalks, even in the McIntire Historic District, away from the tacky witchcraft sites.  In the midst of it all was an oasis of peace and tranquility:  the Peirce-Nichols House on Federal Street.  To my untrained eye, this early McIntire house looks similar to the house I referenced in my last post; like the former Derby Mansion on Washington Street, it is a transitional Georgian/early Federal house (built in 1782) that received a high Federal makeover (1801) by the iconic Salem architect.  But fortunately for all, this house is still standing, owned and maintained by the Peabody Essex Museum since 1917.

The first thing you notice about the Peirce-Nichols house is not the house itself but its fence, topped with hand-carved wooden urns carved by McIntire and restored by Colonial Revival architect William G. Rantoul in the 1920s.  As I was walking by, dazed as usual by the urns, I noticed the gate was open and walked around back to take a few pictures of the terraced garden, which used to extend all the way to the North River, but shrank considerably (like the river) over the nineteenth century due to the infrastructure needs of the city.

The garden, though peaceful, really is a shadow of its former self so I spent more time in the courtyard between the house and the stables.  Outbuildings are interesting anyway, but as the house is being painted it was also a place and a time to examine the unveiled, unpainted work of McIntire.  Unlike the fence urns, the master architect probably didn’t carve the wide pilasters himself, but looking at their scraped surfaces was an engaging way to take in a rather imposing house.

The photographs: a stable door, looking back at the house through the garden and stables, the back of the house, and unpainted details.

Front facade:  the  Peirce-Nichols House in  a 1920s “City” Maynard Workshop postcard.


12 Comments   |  tags: , | posted in Houses, Salem

October 7, 2011

Salem Staircases

By daseger

Staircases are one of the most interesting features of older homes as what could be a very utilitarian detail is often not.  Given its history, Salem has tons of really interesting stairways, in both private homes and public buildings, dating from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries.  This post contains a rather random selection of some of my favorites, but certainly not all.  I put in one shot of our staircase, although it’s really not all that impressive, as the original simple Federal-style railing was ripped out in the 1850s and replaced with a rather bulky (though solid mahogany) “improvement”.  I didn’t want to bother all-my-Salem-friends-with-nice-staircases (because they all do) but I did bother one, as I wanted to feature one of my very favorites:  look at this beautiful suspended spiral staircase unfold.

This is the amazing staircase of the Jabez Smith House, built around 1806 on upper Essex Street and now the home of my friends Dan (an architect), Betsy (an interior designer), and their two young daughters.  Besides this elegant entryway, this house has a living room that extends the width of the street, with fireplaces at each end, and you can see the rest of the first floor (along with 12 other decorated historic buildings) in early December when it is featured on Historic Salem’s 32nd Annual Christmas in Salem tour.

Below is another spiral staircase, in the Saltonstall-Saunders House on Chestnut Street.  The next succession of photographs were all taken by Mary Harrod Northend (1850-1926), the Salem-born photographer, author, and Colonial Revival aficionado, a colleague and contemporary of Wallace Nutting and Frank Cousins.  The first photograph is from her 1911 book Colonial Homes and their Furnishings and the rest are from Historic Homes of New England (1914).  After the Saltonstall staircase, there is a rather grainy photograph of the staircase in Samuel McIntire’s Cook-Oliver House, also built in the first decade of the nineteenth century, and the staircases of the seventeenth-century Pickering House and two eighteenth-century houses (left is an unidentified Norman Street house, right is the John Derby Mansion of Washington Street–neither survive).

You can see that the owners of the Cook-Oliver House have simply draped a hall runner on their stairs, which strikes me as a great example of “Yankee thrift”.  Another example, which I have seen on many second-floor Salem stairs, is provided by these upper stairs in another McIntire building, the Peirce-Nichols House (1782 and after 1801).  Painting a runner on the upper staircase to mimic an expensive carpet runner on the first is a neat trick, and as you can see below,  I did the same thing on my second-to-third-floor stairway and saved quite a bit of money in the process.

Peirce-Nichols Second-floor Stairway. Photograph courtesy of Jim Steinhart, 2011

Two last photographs of more of my favorite Salem staircases:  a HABS shot of the elegant central stairway in the Joshua Ward House (1784-88) from the Library of Congress, and the front hall of the Brookhouse Home for Aged Women, with an interesting lattice detail on its stairs.

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