#98 174-6 Andover Street, Ballardvale, Andover

This home was once half of the depot for Ballardvale train stop

At 174-6 Andover St., Ballardvale, is a two story house with fancy double Italianate windows facing the street. The hood over the windows on the first floor is flat with brackets on each side. The second floor windows are arched within an elaborate arch with springing blocks at its beginning and a key stone at its top.The roof overhang extends so far to the sides and front that it needs brackets for support.

Why was this house built here amidst mill housing?

It wasn't. This house was once half of the depot for the Ballardvale stop on the Boston and Maine Railroad.

The photograph shows the station as it sat on the west side of the tracks. This end, probably the right end, was moved to Andover Street in the 1870's. The remaining half served as the depot until the 1950's when it was torn down.

The first railroad line through Andover was built in 1836 to the east of Ballardvale. Its railroad bed is still visible running through Rec Park and Spring Grove Cemetery on Abbot Street.
When the Shawsheen River was dammed at Ballardvale for water power, and the mills built, the tracks were relocated to their present location to the west of the river.

The station was built in 1848 in the style of the day, Italianate. The shape and details of provincial farm houses built of stone were adapted for an American railroad station built of wood.
The elaborate windows announce that this is an important building. The overhang originally meant to protect farmers and crops, here is extended so that it shelters passengers and baggage.

#93 - 28 Wolcott Avenue, Andover

Bungalow-styled homes capture relaxed, vacation atmosphere

For many people, a bungalow means a cottage, the kind of place you might rent for a vacation at the lake.

A bungalow is also a style of house built from around 1900 until World War II. This one on Wolcott Avenue in Andover, shows most of the basic elements:
* Sheltering roof with wide overhangs and gentle slope,
* Brackets to support that roof and exposed rafters,
* Generous porch with sturdy columns,
* Dormers tucked into the roof.

This is a house for relaxing, casual and cozy. That inviting porch is just right for lazy days, space enough for a swing, or to set up a jig saw puzzle. It is a place to watch the neighbors and perhaps invite them up for a visit.

If you count the steps to the porch you can see how the house sits up above the street. Note the three large dormer windows and see that this house is quite big. But it appears to be both low to the ground and small. The feeling is created by the roof. It's the most important part of the house. It shelters the front porch and the house walls. Even the bay window on the first floor seems to be under its protection. The other details of the house emphasize the roof: the porch columns are big enough to support it, the exposed rafters and turned brackets draw attention to it.

Years ago, mail order companies like Lewis Manufacturing, Gordon-Van Tine, and Sears & Roebuck offered bungalows in many variations. The ladies' magazines and the builders' periodicals featured them, and many were built in the Valley - all with that roof with its overhang and its sheltering front porch.

#90 Sarah H. Harding House, 6-8 Harding Street, Andover

Harding House is fine, local example of Greek Revival architecture

The style of this house, built in 1846, is Greek Revival. The flat board siding on the front is meant to look like the marble of Greek temples; the pediments over the windows like the roofs of those temples. The columns and entablature at the front doors mimic those of ancient Greece.

More than Greek Revival details dates the house to the 1840's. The technology of the time is also evident. Large windows speak of readily available, inexpensive glass. The height of the transoms over the front doors tells us the first floor has high ceilings. Houses built 100 years earlier had ceilings low enough to touch; these are at least nine feet tall. New Englanders had discovered that one way to cool a house in the summer was to have high ceilings and let the heat rise. Franklin and cast iron stoves had been invented, so rooms like these could be efficiently heated in winter.

I had always liked this house at 6-8 Harding Street. It is sited to face south, looking out across the hill toward town. Those large windows let in lots of light and give the house a sense of graciousness. I didn't expect to find it had so much history to go with it. The Harding family, for whom the street in named, owned land here and a partnership in the paper mill on the Shawsheen River. This double house was built for Sarah H. Harding in 1846, on land she bought from her mother. Sarah, a single woman, sold one side of the house to Hannah Barker, a widow. No longer was a woman alone expected to attach herself to a relative's household. She could be independent with her own property.

#76 Pearson Bancroft House, 9 Bancroft Rd.

Andover house fine example of 18th- century Georgian work

When this house, the Pearson Bancroft House was built in 1790, there was no road here.

The house was set on the land to take best advantage of the site. It was placed half-way up the hill, facing south for the sun's warmth. It was high enough to catch a summer breeze and be out of the damp, swampy low land. It was low enough to let the hill to the north protect it from the winter north winds. The road was just a driveway down to Hidden Road. There was no South Main Street and only fields between this house and the cape at the top of the hill.

About 1805, South Main Street - the Essex Turnpike to Boston - was built and soon after the lane was extended across to Holt Road. The jog in the map shows where the new road had to curve around the cape.

At the Pearson Bancroft House the road went through the back yard. In fact it went through the back wing of the house. So the ell was moved around to the south side and the entrance vestibule was set on the north. Now the house faced the new street.

The road was called Gardner Street until about 1909. Then the Bancroft Reservoir was built. The road was renamed for the Bancroft family who lived here for four generations, from the early 1800's to 1960.

This is just a simple farm house. It is really old. Notice the sway in the left corner and how the entrance leans against the house. It is small, only one room wide. Its windows aren't even symmetrical with two on one side of the front door, one on the other. It is plain except for the finely detailed Georgian columns and entablature at the entrance. And yet, the proportions are pleasing: each part scaled to relate to the others and create a feeling of stability and permanence.

Note: I wrote this for a class at the Bancroft School. I don't think they ever saw it or discussed it.

#73 7 Foster Circle, Andover, c. 1860

French designers had impact on Andover Victorian house

Back in the early 1940's, this house could have been the haunted house of Halloween stories. It was empty and in disrepair, the shutters crooked, the window panes cracked.
Dust and cobwebs were everywhere and the trellis work cast eerie shadows over everything.

The house was originally the home of Moses Foster, cashier for the Andover National Bank. Probably just after the Civil War, he built it on land now bound by Elm Street, Whittier Street, and Foster Circle in Andover.

The main entrance and the tower were the latest style from France - a Mansard roof with iron cresting, substantial columns and mouldings. Aside from the tower though, this house was a conservative design, a variation on the houses New Englanders had been building for 150 years. It looks like a series of boxes set beside one another with steep roofs and balanced windows. The paired brackets under the eaves and the flat board siding on the left wing were details that had been familiar with Andover builders for at least 30 years.

Moses Foster's son, Edward, lived here until his death in 1936. Then the house stood empty for years.

When Fred Cheever laid out Foster Circle along with Johnson Acres across Elm Street in the early 1940's, he demolished most of the house. The right wing was moved to a new foundation at 7 Foster Circle. The paired brackets and the gable window with its keystone at the top of the arch - visible in the photographs - are still there. The double arched windows were saved and reused in the garage.

#42 Salem St. and Holt Rd., Andover

Window provided clue that revealed house's true identity

At the corner of Salem Street and Gray Road in Andover stands a two story house with delicate Greek Revival detailing. Even the triangular window in the attic is ornate. But its windows are not placed in a classic pattern to match the trim, except on the east end. The front doors seems an afterthought, facing neither south to the weather nor presenting a welcoming face to the street.

It is one of those houses I kept on my list of puzzles until this week when I decided to write about a Holt house in honor of the Holt family reunion this weekend.

Nicholas and Elizabeth Holt came to Andover from Newbury in 1644. They settled on Holt Hill and prospered. The Andover Historical Society has a list with photographs of Holt properties, so I went to take a look. When I saw that unusual fancy window in the gable of the Holt School, I knew I had solved the puzzle.

William Jenkins built the new Holt School, the one in the picture, in the summer of 1869 for $1,642. The newspaper called it an "ornament to that part of town".

The old Holt School was moved to West Andover near Shattuck Farm.

In 1900, when the town decided to close the Holt School on Salem St., and transport students to the center of town, the school was sold to become a private home. The new owners added another floor and windows. The front doors, one for girls and one for boys, were blocked, no longer needed. The gable window remained.
Today, when I see the house, I still see the school children around it and children playing as in a Winslow Homer painting.

#15 Osgood Farm, 116 Osgood Rd., Andover

Historic farm started as half a house

In 1699, Hannah Blanchard married Stephen Osgood. Her father gave this land and his father gave the money for their first house. Originally it was only half a house, two rooms up and down, and a staircase. The door with the triangular pediment, and the part of the house to its left in this photo, are that original house.

Thirty years later, Hannah and Stephen's second son, Issac, inherited the farm. A captain in the French and Indian War, he wore a wig to remind people of this status. So in 1739, when he enlarged the house, he embellished it with both a triangular and a half-round pediment over the doors, and cornices (hoods) over the large windows. His expansion was really just the usual center chimney house set against the existing structure. The hip roof, not common in that day, was built to accommodate the intersecting roofs.

The original house had faced west, sited to the south of the road and highly unusual for those times. One theory is that the house may have been sited this way in order to stand over the well, which is still located under the floor in the dining room. There also appears to have been a door on the north side of the house toward the road. With the 1739 addition, the house faced west and south, with a view across the creek (which circles the knoll and winds over the meadows). But the visitor approaching down Osgood Street from Andover comes awkwardly to the back of the house.

Note that the two maple trees in the photograph will leaf out and shield the house from summer sun - shutters were also added in the 1900s. Since this photograph was taken, sometime in the late 1800's the house suffered a serious fire that destroyed the front door with its curved pediment. The scarred beams are still there.

Here's an interesting bit of trivia about the house - Jacob Osgood, son of Issac, invited James Otis, Revolutionary orator and lawyer, to convalesce at his home after a head injury. Mr. Otis lived there for two years and taught school. He was killed by lightening on May 23, 1783, while standing in the front door.

#18 - Hidden-Chandler House,17 Hidden Road, Andover (7/30/89)

Andover house is example of both Federal and Colonial Revival design

When Lucy Nesmith bought this house in 1897 she wished to improve it.

What she remodeled was a house built in about 1812 by David Hidden for his father-in-law, Issac Chandler, in the Federal style popular after the American Revolution. The Hidden family had lived in the house since 1816, and had been active in the town. Mary Hidden, David's daughter, an Abbot Academy graduate known for her culture and intelligence, had provided boarding for many locally famous people. She died in 1893, and when her brother, David Hidden, died in 1896, the house was sold to Lucy Nesmith.

The nostalgia at the turn of the century for colonial America inspired builders to recreate colonial homes and Mrs. Nesmith followed the style. She rebuilt the back wing and added the porch and sunroom with its deck and railings (to the left of the picture). But while the forms she used - columns and the pediment over the entrance - were inspired by the grander homes of colonial times, the spaces are strictly 1900 in style. Actual colonial homes did not have porches: people were either in the house or out in the yard. Nor did they need sunrooms. So Mrs. Nesmith's piazza and sunroom speak of leisure unknown in early New England.

The sleeping porch on the end of the second floor is a post World War I addition, when sleeping in the fresh air was considered healthful, a far cry from the dreaded 'night vapors' of colonial times. The piazza is now gone, but the 'improved' Colonial Revival front door and sun room can still be seen.

When I wrote this I called the 1900 improvements "Neo-Colonial". Today the usual name is "Colonial Revival". Today we understand that the influences are as much the classic forms championed by Thomas Jefferson as the colonial forms of Newburyport and Portsmouth.

#11 - 213 Andover St. Firehouse, Ballardvale, Andover, c1870

Ballardvale's first fire station built in unusual 'Stick Style'

This is Ballardvale's first fire station. It was built about 1870 for the mills at the dam on the Shawsheen River. It sits almost on Andover Street, just up the hill from the mill complex. This way, the pumper, which was housed here, could be rolled downhill to the mills easily by men without wasting the time required to hitch up horses. The mills processed wool and cotton, and dust was such a constant fire hazard that J.P. Bradley, the mill owner who purchased the 'hand engine' in 1859, included the fire station in his 1872 insurance report.

The fire station had a garage for the engine on the first level and a meeting room above. Buildings in the late 1800's were built from wood cut in dimensional sizes, 2 " by 4" and so on, joined together in a frame, a change from the earlier use of large posts and beams (and which you can still be seen in barn construction). Here the 'sticks' that make up the inside structure of the building also make the decoration outside - the pattern of the doors and the detail at the gable and eaves. The cross-bracing on the doors, pieces of wood which hold the panels together, become the focus of the design, repeated in the gable, where the ends of vertical boards (as well as those under the eaves) are cut in fancy patterns. The brackets supporting the roof overhang are also shaped; this building's level of decoration befits its status of importance in the community.

The engine was built in Roxbury, Mass., and first used in Cambridge. It was pumped by volunteer firemen sending water from the Shawsheen River through linen and leather hoses. The fire engine is now in the barn of the Andover Historical Society. After the fire station was no longer needed for the manual pumper, the building became a young men's club. In the 1920's it was sold by the mills for use as a dwelling, which it is today.

#51 - 13 Williams St., Andover, c1920

Shawsheen Village: One man's dream of the ideal community

In 1920, William Wood, owner of the American Woolen Mill (largest manufacturer of worsted woolen cloth in the world), decided to build a company town at what was then called Frye Village, in Andover. Named Shawsheen Village, it would be more than the little neighborhood he had constructed around Greenfield Street in South Lawrence (see column #49). Those houses simply allowed the laborers to live in a pleasant neighborhood near the mill. But in this new town - built for office workers only - were a school, parks and stores, the mill and its offices. The housing - 'Brick Shawsheen' for the managers and 'White Shawsheen' (white painted houses) for the clerical staff - was designed by six architectural firms.

Andover architect, Addison LeBoutillier, drew up the plans for 13 Williams Street, a brick house with a gambrel roof. Is this a Dutch Colonial like the one we looked at on Prospect Street in Methuen (#50)? No, only the roof style is the same. Here the upper roof slope is steep, not gentle. The windows are narrow and long, not wide and airy, and the chimney faceted, not smooth. The symmetry of the front facade is completed by the curved portico, not a generous porch. This is because Addison Le Boutillier looked more to medieval England than to colonial America for his inspiration.

Although the houses in Brick Shawsheen were in the latest styles and boasted sun rooms and maid quarters, many of Mr. wood's executives did not want to move from the sophisticated city to rural Andover. In 1929, the American Woolen Mill moved its corporate headquarters to New York City. The buildings were sold and William Wood's dream for the ideal community died.

The quality of the layout and design of Shawsheen Village is still evident today. It is a well-loved, popular place to live. 'White Shawsheen' houses are now painted other colors too, and there are many garages, originally outlawed by Mr. Wood.

#48 - 269 North Main St., Andover, 1905

Andover home is an example of late Victorian architecture

Look at the planes and angles of this house! Here nothing is simple.

The first floor box has had space taken away to make the front porch. Then the main roof starts at the porch - as would a cape - but expands to allow a full second floor at the rear. There is one ordinary dormer, but the other turns into a gambrel roofed wing, which - with its symmetry and half circle window - becomes the dominant feature of the house. And everything has an extra curve or another line of moulding.

Compare this use of the gambrel roof to our colonial examples. Those houses were straightforward boxes, topped by a roof of four planes instead of two. It is hard to think of this 1905 Victorian's gambrel roof as a copy of those simpler houses, but it is. After 1875 - America's Centennial - architects began to look to our country's past rather than to Europe for inspiration. One form that seemed particularly American was the gambrel roof, so it was added to the Victorian architect's vocabulary, another shape to be used to create a successful design.

Notice the picket fence and expanse of lawn in the photograph. The widening of North Main Street has now taken almost all of that yard. The picture comes from an album of snap shots taken around the William Wood estate on North Main Street about1910. Here lived Mr. Wood's valet, and the next houses up the street were for his butler, his chauffeur and his gardener.
Houses matching this one can be seen on York and Canterbury Street. Someone researching the deeds might be able to tell if they were built by the same person.


The house on Canterbury Street was moved to its location when William Wood built Shawsheen Village in the early 1920's.
I was told later than I didn't match the right house to the right member of Mr. Wood's staff. The Andover Historical Society has the proper listing.

#47 - The Manning House, 37 Porter Rd., Andover, 1760

Gambrel designed roof may have come from England

This is the Manning House, a colonial farmhouse with a gambrel roof. Here is not a simple two-room cottage like that see in the last article (John Ward House), but a spacious home with room for an extended family, and ells for a summer kitchen, a weaving room, or a dairy.

The gambrel roof expands the attic space for storage and drying food. Where did this roof shape come from? Probably Essex, England, where the roof was often used for medieval farmhouses. But why are there so few roofs like this in the Merrimack Valley? Have those which were built been torn down over the years, or was the two part roof just more time consuming to build than a simple gable? Or was it simply a matter of wood? The answer is that while the shorter rafters used to build a gambrel made good use of scarce English lumber, here in the tree rich colonies we could easily cut rafters to any size.

Hezekiah Ballard built this house in 1760 and sold it in 1771 to Thomas Manning, a cordwainer (leather worker). The house has been owned by the Manning family ever since. This year the Andover Historical Commission joined with the Andover Historical Society to present the Mannings a Certificate of Appreciation for the care they have taken to maintain the house as it was built. It is part of our landscape, enjoyed by all of us who travel Porter Road.

On Merrimack Street in Methuen is another gambrel colonial, this one with a historic tale. The story goes that the owner was working in his attic when called to service during the American Revolution. He swung his ax into the rafter and there it stayed until he came home from the war.


Today, in 2008, I live in western NE where house construction was greatly influenced by the Dutch who settled along the Hudson River, and where the gambrel roof here is a natural expression of Dutch framing methods. So I am curious to look again at how the Merrimack Valley gambrel roofs were framed and compare them to what I see here.

#1 - The Abbot House, Andover St., Andover, c1685

Benjamin Abbot House is one of the Valley's oldest

One of the oldest in the Merrimack Valley, this house on Andover Street, Andover, has some ceilings less than 6 feet high and badly sloping floors. It was built in a classic early New England style, with a door in the middle, two windows on each side, and 5 above. The original house had one room down and one up, with the chimney serving both fireplaces. Although it was a substantial farmhouse for its time, with paneled walls in the front room, by the time of the photograph the house looked quite modest. Or is it just a winter photograph? We today are lucky that no one before us tore it down in the name of progress.

Note the shed to the right covering the well, and the granite at the front corner to protect the house from road traffic - the road is still right there.

Early New England houses were built "to the weather," so this house faces south, with a view (now blocked) across its fields to the Shawsheen River. Its back and long roof are to the north, protecting it from winter winds. The front and side doors are set forward to create weather entrances: two sets of doors to keep out the cold in winter. The central chimney radiated so much heat into the house that in the summer cooking was moved from the main hall to the summer kitchen to allow the chimney to cool down. The chimney is formed with brick pilasters (ribs) as were the English chimneys of the era. This is one way to spot a very old house in New England.
In this house, since there is no fireplace for the upper left room, and wheat and chaff have been found between the floor boards, it is thought the room may have been used for storage. However since it is on the southwest corner and gets hot afternoon sun while being shielded from the north by the out buildings, the room stays quite warm without extra heat.

This was the first column I wrote, so I've added some notes as of this posting - my writing has definitely improved over time, especially as I learned to talk about one architectural idea per house.
The caption under the first photograph reads: "The Abbot House, a center chimney, center entrance colonial, was built about 1685. The salt box was added about 1715. "
The second photo was taken in 1989, showing how little the house has been changed in 300 years.

#106 - Hinton House, 104 Hidden Rd. Andover, 1905 (2/21/93)

House that ice cream built owned by former slave

I passed this house and barn many times, catching a view of it behind trees and shrubs, before I connected it to this photograph. Today the barn is painted red, the house is white. It sparkles. The house and barn in the photograph have earth- toned dark walls and roof, stone columns. These natural colors are what the architect, Perley Gilbert, intended when the house was built in 1905. Built in the latest fashion, it was a symbol of the success of Allen and Mary Hinton, who ran the Hinton Ice Cream Co., in Andover from 1877 to 1922.

Allen Hinton was born a slave in North Carolina. In 1864, he moved to Andover and began selling snacks from a wagon to Phillips and Abbot Academy students. Then someone suggested ice cream might sell well. So Mary, his wife, made the first 2 gallons, and by the early 1900's they were selling hundreds of gallons a week from their wagon and at the South Main Street store. The pavillion around the tree in the photograph served the customers before the store was built.

In 1901, Mr. Hinton was able to buy the farm where he had been a tenant at auction for $525. He immediately built a new barn - the one in the photograph - and an ice house.
He hired Perley Gilbert, whom he had known at Phillips, to design the house. It is a restrained design - spacious, with large windows, including a broad bay, a gracious porch with elegant detailing in the roof and railings. It uses the vocabulary of the Colonial Revival style, but mainly this is a comfortable house for a successful framer and businessman.

A lot more about the Hintons and their ice cream company can be read in the files of the Andover Historical Society.

#6 - Downing House, 269 Highland Rd., Andover, c1850

House has gingerbread charm

This is a 'gingerbread' house with all that foolishness in the eaves, so called because it looks like the pattern made from sifting sugar over paper cutouts over gingerbread. The verge boards - the gingerbread - were made possible by the then latest technology - steam powered scroll saws, which allowed a carpenter to cut the curves and repeat the pattern easily.

The house gets its name from the Downing family who had a dairy and an orchard on the hill, but the house was built as a country home for Boston businessman Benjamin Rogers in about 1850.
His carpenter probably showed the Rogers pictures of houses with similar trim and steep roof pitches from the pattern books of Andrew Jackson Downing. Mr. Downing romanticized rural life, and looked to medieval European castles and stone work for inspiration. His pattern books showed floor plans and views of his 'cottages', as well as advising the reader about landscaping and interior decoration. This house is set as A.J.Downing recommended: on a hill with a view, with porches to overlook the fields, pastures and orchards.

Note: A reader corrected me: I said the iron work noted in the recent column on a Abbot Street house was made at a lumber yard. Instead, it would have been custom-made by a blacksmith or cast in a foundry in 1880.

#7 - Punchard Barnard House, 8 High St., Andover, 1846

Italian villas inspired Andover home

In 1846 Benjamin Punchard relocated his existing home to 33 High Street in order to clear his lot at Elm Square to build this new house, where he and his family lived until1871. Jacob Barnard then bought the house in 1891, and his family lived here until the 1940's.

This house is called Italianate, echoing Italian farm villas, and using wide overhanging eaves with paired brackets, long, narrow triple windows with curved tops, and ornamental crowns (the hoods over the windows). Aluminum siding now covers the original flush boards designed to imitate stone, and the corners have wood spirals copied from stone. Since Mr. Punchard, lately returned from England, was his own architect, he also added his own ideas: the T shaped plan and the porches with their sawn posts and trim.

The house is located so as to be seen when coming through the square, and to provide a vista down Main Street for the inhabitants. One can stand there now and imagine how handsome the house was for its time, with its steps and plantings, and the railing on the roof of the bay adding emphasis to the facade.

The Punchard Free School, Andover's first high school, was built from funds provided by Benjamin Punchard, and it looked remarkably like this house.

(the second photo is borrowed from the Andover Historic Preservation website - ed)

#35 - Draper House, 27 School St., Andover, 1867

Andover's Draper House is French Second Empire design

The Draper House is well-known at Abbot Academy, the Andover girls' preparatory school now merged with Phillips Andover. Warren Draper and his wife gave much of their time and money to the school, including Draper Hall, one of the main buildings on campus.

In 1867, they built their own house directly across from Abbot Academy's gate on School Street in the style called Second French Empire. The design, the latest thing from France at the time, is marked mainly by a Mansard roof, the sloping 2nd floor roof with dormer windows. But there are other hallmarks - the matching bays, 'pavillions' on either side of the front door, the Ionic columns and the iron work (not visible) on the porch. Although the house has 8 principle rooms, not including the main hall or the servants' wing, it is a "cottage". The strong eave line at the second floor helps maintain the image despite the ceilings on the first floor being 13 ft. high!

When the house was finished in 1869, the local newspaper reported that people came from miles around to see it. In those days, before the trees grew up, the elaborate arched window on the north side would have been visible as you came up School Street from South Church. Notice however, that the carriage entrance (not visible in either photo - ed) is on the opposite side, the sunny, south side of the house. There was also once a cupola on this house - the narrow, steep stair is still in the attic, but the tower was removed in 1926.

(second current photo is from the Andover Historic Preservation website - ed)

#28 - CA Holt House, 202 Shawsheen Rd, Andover, c1880 (1/14/90)

Andover's Holt House is built in classic Victorian fashion

There is a lot to look at in this house. Queen Anne in style, it was built for Charles Abbey Holt about 1880 and sold soon afterward to GF Blake. Set back from the street, reserved and yet approachable, it has a view to the rear out across the meadow. It boasts porches, wings and roofs in abundance, and lots of trim, like spindles and carvings. Their pattern marks this as an Eastlake House.

Charles Eastlake, an English designer and historian, had definite opinions. He wrote Hints on Household Taste, in 1868, describing how he thought house interiors should be furnished from the floor of the entrance hall to the place settings on the table. By 1883, his book had been reprinted seven times in the United States. Mr. Eastlake admired medieval English design, which he adapted to 19th century furnishings. But Americans weren't content to limit his ideas to the insides of their houses - they took the designs shown in Eastlake's book and applied them to the outsides as well, adding spindle work to the eaves, sturdy porch railings and carved panels, all creating patterns. Here, the carvings of flowers are applied to the wall above the door in an inventive, asymmetrical design, as well as on the rake at the gable end and in the frieze that runs just under the porch roof.

Unfortunately, Charles Eastlake described Victorian taste as "capricious to constant variation" (a quote from his book), and is reported to have disliked such adaptations of his ideas as were carried out in this delightful house.

(second photo from Andover Preservation Society website - ed)

#24 - 469 S. Main St., Andover, c1800 (11/12/89)

Toll collector's house begs for answers to its location

Why is this house here? It is obviously old, with that traditional center chimney, centered front door and balanced narrow windows. And those little square windows on the second floor date it to the early 1800's. But if it were built as a farm house, where are its pastures and fields? This house sits facing the road, with swampy land down a steep bank at its back. Or, if it were built for a craftsman, why would he have locate it here, 4 miles from town? Another option is that the house could have been moved, but why here?

This is the house for the toll collector of the Essex Turnpike. He collected the fare and "turned the pike" - a long pole that barred the way - for people who wished to use the private road.
The Essex Turnpike Corporation laid out the road , now roughly Route 28, in 1805. Crossing the Merrimack close to the railroad bridge just below the Great Stone Dam (which wasn't there at the time), it ran directly north over the hills of Methuen to New Hampshire (note that I was wrong when I said previously that the Turnpike crossed at the Casey Bridge in Sunday Drive #20).

The straight road, and its sister, Route 114, the Salem Turnpike, were successful enterprises, so the Essex Turnpike was extended south in 1806 to the North Reading line, and a toll house
was built. The first recorded toll collector, Samuel Cheever, lived here from1810 to 1827, and the turnpikes were private property. There is a story about moving the house now at 314 Broadway, Methuen, down Route 28 in Salem, NH, which at that time was owned by the Londonderry Turnpike Corporation. The toll keeper, uncertain about such activity, kept the house sitting in the middle of the road overnight while he sought approval to proceed from the owners.

#58 - Barn/Firestation, 78 Maple Ave., Andover, c1840 (03/24/91)

History moves around while waiting for the future

Pieces of our history are not always where they began - our ancestors moved buildings all over, recycling them to new uses when the old ones were not longer relevant. So when Jim Batchelder, Andover native and member of the Preservation Committee of the Andover Historical Society, looked at the 1882 map of Andover (made from a bird's eye view) and saw the fire station on Main Street where the Barcelos building is today, he wondered what had happened to that wood frame, two-story station.

The Historical Society seemed to have no record. But when he went looking and found the fire station behind a house on Maple Avenue, the owners already knew the history of their barn. Not only had the story of the firehouse been passed down from owner to owner, but the evidence was there - horse stalls in the back, the hay door above the large front entry, a curved ceiling on the second floor creating a meeting room for the firemen. The trim on the corner boards, imitating columns, the flat fascia boards under the generous roof overhang, the gentle curve over the windows and doors were appropriate details for a public building in a thrifty New England town in the 1840's - some decoration, Greek Revival in honor of our democracy, but not too much.

Back at the Historical Society, the files revealed a copy of the newspaper, 'The Andover Advertiser', which reports that in early June, 1883, Mr. Cole moved the firehouse to Maple Avenue for use as his barn and carpentry shop. A new brick firehouse had been built for Andover Center behind the building we now call Old Town Hall.

(the Barcelos supermarket was replaced by a 24-hour CVS, sometime in the late 1990s - long the only place in town to buy very last-minute Christmas presents... -ed)