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.
We caught the owner of this amazing 1766 house coming out, and he told us all about his restoration process—he replaced all those clapboards himself.
The Old Farmhouse; The Edge of the Lake; This Old House.
View of Tiegem in Winter, c. 1935, Christie’s; Winter Landscape, c. 1920, Mutual Art; Edward Munch, Winter Landscape, c. 1898, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Cuno Amiet, Winter House.
The House in 1940; HABS, Library of Congress.
Other Benson houses, including his own, top right; the Benson family home on Salem Common and Willowbank in Kittery Point, Portsmouth Athenaeum.
Two perspectives on the Peirce-Nichols House: Cousins and Chamberlain.
Essex Street, Church Street, the rear of the Andrew Safford House, the Retire Becket House, the Derby House, Federal and Chestnut Streets from Samuel Chamberlain’s Historic Salem in Four Seasons (1938). Both 
Wie sich ein All’ modo Monsieur im Winter kleiden solle (1629), and Parisian Ladies in their Winter Dress for 1800, collection of the British Museum.
