# 37 This was a parking garage in city's horse-and-buggy era

Most of the buildings around Lawrence Common are quite elaborate, so you might wonder why 182 Common St. is so simple. And why has it only three floors when the building beside it, though the same height, has four.
This was a livery stable. It was here that you left your horse and carriage when you came into town, or rented a horse - and a carriage if you didn't own one - when you went out.
The first stable, on the right, was built about 1870. The left side was wood, then rebuilt of brick around 1900.
Horse are taller than people. So the ceilings had to be higher, and doors too, so there was only space for 3 floors.
Mills were built on a bay system, a length of building with a window centered on the space, repeated until the factory was long enough. Here the stable, framed like a mill, was only as many bays long as the lot allowed. This simple construction system is very handsome. The brick itself is attractive. The proportions and rhythms of the windows are appealing. Their granite sills and arched openings keep the facade from being so severe.
The granite band at the second floor line gives the building a base: the first floor. The simple corbels at the roof line define the top.
When trucks and cars replaced wagons and carriages, the livery stables became manufacturing spaces and stores.
In 1981, the current owners restored this building to its original appearance. It now houses law offices.

note: The drawing was made for "Around and Through the Common", a brochure produced jointly by Immigrant City Archives and Lawrence High School.

# 33 Circa 1870 castle overlooks mountains of Maine, N.H.

What should sit at the end of a dirt road, on the top of a hill, looking over a lake and off to the mountains of New Hampshire and Maine? A castle, of course!

Dr. James Nichols built the castle in 1873 after a stay in England. He named it 'Winnekenni', after the Algonquin word meaning "very beautiful". This was his summer house, complimented by a boat house down by Lake Kenoza. A chemist and inventor, Dr. Nichols experimented with chemical fertilizer on his fields, below the castle.

Well aware of the endless supply of stone in New England farm land, he thought we should build with it, and he built his castle as an example. It has 4 foot thick foundations, 20 inch deep walls, quoins on the corners, crenelations at the roof, and arches over the windows.

Arches such as these are built over a wood form, and when the last stone - the 'key' stone at the top - is placed, the wood form can be removed. The wedge-shaped stone then locks the whole arch in place: gravity pulls the keystone down; its shape pushes out against the other stones, the wall keeps those stones from moving, and the whole arch stays up.

The Castle isn't really any style, but it borrows the shape of a medieval English fortress, including its battle stations. And an American summer residence is surely a Victorian gesture.

Winnekenni Castle became a part of the Haverhill park system in 1895. The inside was gutted by fire in 1967, and then rebuilt, so the Castle can be used. It is now administered by the Winnekenni Foundation.

#121 - 10 Maplewood Ave., Methuen (10/24/97?)

This style is well adapted to those narrow city lots





Some house layouts have names. "Ranch" brings to mind a one story house with a front door on one side of the living room. "Colonial" suggests a two story house with a centered front door which opens into a hall with a room to the left and another to the right.

This house also has a familiar layout - gable to the street, two stories, entrance to the side to a hall with a stair and rooms to one side. Popular from before 1800 to World War I, and still widely used for duplexes and town houses, this layout seems to have no name. These houses are usually described by their decoration, from Greek Revival in 1830 to Queen Anne in 1890.

This particular house was built in about 1902, the first house on Maplewood Avenue. Charles Wilkerson, the man standing in the yard, was the owner, and his family still lives here today. If you drive up the street, you will see several other houses built soon after this one, in the same pattern, the one across the street being the closest copy. Although this house is now covered with vinyl siding, on the house across the street the dentils still run up the eaves and across the gable, a Colonial Revival detail that manages to look charmingly Victorian as it outlines the side, front and bay window of the house.

The owners have the 1902 contract for the house, a standard 12 page form with spaces filled in by the builder, Richardson Brothers. They add a note that the house is one foot larger in all directions than the plan specified. That's why this house looks ample and broad, not quite as up and down and snug as its mate across the street.

note: I was asked to write this column as a birthday present for the first owner's grand-daughter. I was happy to comply. It was fun to give her a surprise when she opened the newspaper that Sunday morning.

#31 430 Pelham St.,Methuen

Methuen's town farm shows typical Greek Revival design

Out at the end of Pelham Street in Methuen is a substantial brick house with arched doorways and granite lintels. Across from it on a hill rises a brick apartment house.
What are they doing way out in the country? The brick house is Methuen's town farm, built about 1850, and the apartments were the town infirmary.
Town farms were popular throughout New England. They provided shelter for the homeless. some residents could pay for their keep.Others worked the farm to provide for themselves. Some were elderly or infirm.
There had been an earlier town farm before the Pelham Street location, but when the boundary line was drawn to create Lawrence and Methuen, the original town farm landed in the new city of Lawrence.
So a new town farm was needed. This house was available. Other houses in the Merrimack Valley were built about the same time and have gables that rise square above the roof on the ends between twin chimneys. But none that I know of has the arched doors and the play of windows (with their differing sizes and placement) that makes this house delightful instead of heavy and massive. I always enjoy driving past it.
The maple tree in front of the house is one of a pair, both as old as the house.

Note: Since I wrote this, I have found out that the house was originally built for a wealthy family. Its front entrance has a lovely, ornate, late Federal details, hardly visible in the picture.
Perhaps the Methuen Historical Society or the current owners know more of its history.

#30 - 290 Andover St., South Lawrence

South Lawrence house, once a tavern, dates to 18th century

This is a big house, a large room on each side of the front door, two rooms deep on both the first and second floor, the homestead of a prosperous farmer.It is the oldest house still standing in South Lawrence, built about 1760 by Joseph Parker, tavern keeper and member of the colonial legislature.
What says this house is more than 200 years old?
First it has the balance and proportion of Colonial construction. Specifically the 5 bays ( 2 windows, centered door, 2 windows), the massive central chimney and the angle of the roof. Secondly, the placing and sizes of the parts. Remove the shutters and the sidelights at the front door (added after 1810) and you would see a spare, very simple facade with wide spacing between the side windows and the window centered over the door.
Finally, this house is sited in the traditional Colonial way, to the weather: face the sun, back to the north wind. Even the side door at the back of the house faces south. It doesn't sit square to the road because the road came afterwards, laid out to come to the house.
Once there were outbuildings and a barn. Now you have to imagine its fields and pastures under the streets of South Lawrence.
The house was regularly used as a tavern. Certainly it was at the right location at the end of the road to Salem , Route 114, the Salem Turnpike. It was here that the Lawrecne Masonic Temple was founded,and this photograph is partof an historic brochure the Masons printed for the dedication of their new temple on Jackson Street in April, 1923.