#94 - 13 Milton Street, Lawrence

Gothic Revival house reflects 1850's style, taste

Come around the corner on Milton Street and for a moment you can imagine yourself in Lawrence in 1850. This house, built for a prosperous farmer, would have been surrounded by fields, orchards, and woods. Its yard would have been clean, as it is now, without foundation plantings.

Today, even though the city surrounds it, because of the lot across the way - overgrown with trees - and the park below on Bodwell Street, and especially because of how the house was sited on the brow of the hill, the house looks out over a landscape very similar to that it surveyed when it was built.

Gothic Revival, the style of this house, was the style recommended for 'rural cottages' by Andrew Jackson Downing, a popular architect and horticulturist of the time. The books he wrote circulated widely. Local carpenters copied his verandas, arched and circular windows, and steep roofs. They also copied the verge boards - the panels running up the roof's edge - and the decorative columns. But the particular patterns or scrolls and flowers on those boards were their 0wn invention.

The veranda and its brackets -the scrolls that curve along the porch roof -were meant to frame the picturesque view across Merrimack River in an arch, like a picture frame. Probably there was a similar roof with its supports and brackets at the top of the tower.

'Gothic' in the early 1800's meant 'medieval'. The first people to build in the Gothic Revival style meant to imitate the carved stone work on medieval castles and cathedrals. When the houses were built of wood instead of stone, the details changed to fit the nature of the material. 'Gingerbread' - the scroll work - became not a copy of stone tracery, but an art form in its own right.

#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.

#89 Corporate Houses, Canal & Amesbury Sts. Lawrence

Architects to tour Lawrence to see buildings in classic mill city
On Tuesday, June 23, the American Institute of Architects will sponsor a tour of Lawrence and Lowell in conjunction with their annual conference which this year is held in Boston.

I asked them how they knew to come to Boston. The tour planner reminded me that Lawrence is in the history books as the classic mill city. Its plan is clear and orderly: the river the mills, the canals, the boarding houses, and then the retail thoroughfare and the common with its civic buildings. and most of it is still here to see.

The Great Stone Dam built by The Essex Company still holds back the Merrimack to divert its water into the canals. The guard locks and gate house are still in operation. The factories are here, anchored by the Ayer Mill clock tower, as is Essex Street and the North Common.

Two of the boarding houses for the millworkers remain. One is now the Heritage State Park Museum at Canal and Jackson Streets. The other is on the corner of Canal and Amesbury Streets, the right end of the 'corporation houses' in the picture above.

This is one of the first buildings in the city, designed in 1848 by Charles Storrow. Its Georgian proportions are updated with Greek Revival details - large windows and fancy brick work along the eave line.

What a wonderful sweep of buildings these were along the tree lined road, overlooking the water, a compliment to any city in the world. Today's visitors must imagine the rest of the boarding houses from the one piece remaining, but the trees, small though they are, have been replanted.

If you would like to go on the AIA tour, contact Alexandra Lee of the Boston Society of Architects.

#88 William Gile House, 80 Osgood St., N. Andover

North Andover half-house meant to grow, but never did

A look at the framing of a colonial center entrance farm house often reveals that one side of the house was built before the other, that the original house looked like this house, a half-house.

A half-house was usually just the beginning. As the family grew, as fortunes improved, the matching side of the house was added. But some, like the William Giles House, above, never grew. You can see where the rest of the house would have been added, to the right, but it never was.

William Gile, a mason, had this house built about 1838, on Osgood Street in North Andover. The popular style at the time was Greek Revival, here seen in the doorway - in the design of the sidelights and in the pilasters with all their column parts: base, shaft, capital and entablature, and finally the cornice which becomes a roof over the front door. similar door ways can been seen at 179 Andover Street and 83 Academy Road. No one is certain if the carpenter of those houses, Thomas Russell, built this one too. Perhaps someone just copied.

The doorway is Greek Revival, but the house is built on Georgian lines, the accepted way to built since the early 1700's. The chimney is the only part of the traditional design which has been changed. It would ordinarily dominate the roof, rising above the ridge, serving a fireplace in each room. Here the chimney is small, a chimney for a stove, and it moved to the back of the house.

I haven't seen the framing here. Perhaps the central chimney was there originally. I suspect, however, that because William Giles was a mason he would have know about the latest heating systems. Inside his old-fashioned house he would have put the newest thing, an up-to-date cast iron stove.

#81 Harmon House 86 Summer St., Haverhill

Haverhill house was stopover on Underground Railroad trail

David Harmon built this house on Summer Street in Haverhill about 1840. Its classic Greek Revival style, with the gable facing the street and the heavy banding on the corners and eaves, is intended to remind the viewer of a Greek temple.

The spacing of the columns on the surrounding porch repeats the proportions of the house. The columns themselves, tapered, round, and fluted, are a graceful counterpoint to the flat board siding on the first floor. The flat siding, meant to imitate stone, is repeated in the gable, emphasizing its triangular shape, reminiscent of a Greek pediment.

David Harmon manufactured soes, but by avocation he was a farmer. He experimented extensively with fruits and vegetables on the terraced land behind his home and built a greenhouse, visible here in the lower left of the photograph.

He was also an abolitionist. The noted men of his day, from John Greenleaf Whittier, born in Haverhill, to Fredrick Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison, visited here. His house was a stop on the Underground Railroad, transporting slaves to Canada and freedom.

Although the Underground Railroad was secret and illegal, people in Haverhill seem to have known that this was one of the stops, because there are records of this house being stoned by mobs. (later note: There are also records of fugitives openly knocking on the front door to ask
for shelter and transportation north.)

Since this picture was taken, about 1870, the house has been extensively remodeled, including the addition of a tower and an elaborate back entry.

#44 256 Haverhill St., Methuen

Date of Methuen farmhouse uncertain, but its grace is certain

Stop at the light at Lowell and Haverhill Streets in Methuen and admire the house across the road at 256 Haverhill St. The land at the intersection sets off the house and allows it to be seen much as it must have appeared in the 1850's, a simple Greek Revival farmhouse with Italianate details.

The written records for the house are sketchy. Oral history says it, along with the house on the corner of Haverhill and Forest Streets, and the farm across from it on Lowell Street, were built by the same carpenter. Certainly the Greek Revival details of this house can been seen in the others: the gable turned to the street, the wide roof overhang, its return at the eaves to create the capital for the columns on the corners of the house, the hoods over the windows and the arched window in the attic.

Here the porch has light, graceful Italianate arches with drops, little turned balls, at the center points. These are repeated on the ends of the brackets carrying the roof overhang.

The house has been owned by Vincent and Douglas Cox since 1941. Their grandfather, Patrick Cox reportedly bought the house and its farmland in 1850. But there is no record of the house on the 1846 map of Methuen. The house has a cut granite foundation and post and beam framing which could indicate construction about 1830. Italianate details weren't fashionable until the 1850's. Did Patrick Cox add the brackets and arches after the bought the house?

So when was it built? It doesn't really matter. The house itself, especially with its new coat of paint, has grace enough.

Note: This column was published in August, 1990. A few years later the house was torn down to make way for a new subdivision.

#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.

#27 Hatch House, 333 S. Main S,. Bradford (Haverhill)

Bradford dormitory is typical of Greek Revival architecture

Rebecca Haseltine Emerson and her husband founded a school for girls in Wethersfield, CN. She contunued to run it for 15 years after his death, but in the 1840's she came to Bradford to build a house across from the campus of the Bradford Academy (later Bradford College), begun by her sisters.

What did she build? A straightforward brick dwelling whose charm comes from its balance and proportions. It looks very similar to houses built in the area during the previous 100 years. But its differences speak to the changes that century had brought.

The most obvious change is the direction of the roof pitch. Here the gable end of the house faces the street. The triangle outlined with fascia boards is intended to remind the viewer of classic Greek temples and ancient city states such as Athens, the precursors of American democracy. The other differences are due to technological advances. These included larger windows since manufacturing glass had become easier, and instead of the massive Colonial chimneys this house has several small chimneys, which serve wood and coal stoves as well as fireplaces. And the arched window in the peak is a sign that the builders had the skill and time to create a little frivolity, as well as being the latest style.

The house is known as the Hatch House for the family who lived here from 1857 to 1937. It also served as a dormitory for Bradford College. When you drive by, note the fine Greek Revival front door with its many paned side lights, hardly visible here beneath the shadow of the porch.

#22 - 1 Jackson St., Lawrence

This was model housing - in 1850

In 1850 these brick tenements beside the North Canal were considered an excellent example of worker housing.

The Sanitary Survey of Lawrence, commissioned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, allocated five pages to floor plans, rules of conduct for boarders, and the up-to-date sanitary system of the four model boarding houses of the Bay State Mills.

The buildings were simple brick town houses, attached side to side, having rearyards with sheds along the alley. Three stories high, 20 rooms large, with dormers in the attic, they were designed to house 36 boarders. These were mainly women, who lived two and four to a room.

The tenements' architecture was traditional: the rhythm of the doors and windows following the pattern established in Georgian England and carried to the United States before 1700. The only concessions to the desires of the day for more decoration were columns at the doors, the brick returns at the eaves, and the wonderful delicate brick patterning along the roof line. With cut granite lintels and foundations, these straight forward, confident buildings were erected "not for an investment... but as a means of preserving a proper supervision over the operatives employed and for their benefit."

These boarding houses became a model duplicated by mill owners all over New England. Today the units at 1 Jackson Street can be visited as the Visitors Center for the Lawrence Heritage State Park. Appropriately, the current show at the Center is an exhibition by the Smithsonian Institute called "New uses, Old Places, Remaking America" that highlights the rescue and reuse of buildings all over America, including some in the Merrimack Valley.

#13 - 620 Prospect St., Methuen

Victorian farmhouse is eye catching

Here is a mid-18th century farmhouse. How can we tell? Because the asymmetry of the house tells us it is Victorian (although its balanced windows and eave returns remind us that Greek Revival details are still in fashion). We also know because the windows are large, and the ceilings high. The small chimneys indicate heating was by stoves, not fireplaces, so the rooms were easier to keep warm. Glass had become easier to manufacture, so more available. These are all indications that the house was built at the beginning of the American industrial revolution.

There is nothing elaborate about the house - just three boxes set together with a porch. Farmers, generally busy, didn't build fancy houses. But, understanding the weather, they faced their houses to the sun. And here the entry is on the south, protected by the porch. That practical porch keeps people out of the mud in the spring, shields the house from the sun in the summer, makes a sunny, protected place to sit in the fall, and is tall enough to let the winter sun shine through the long windows into the front room.

This photograph was taken in early spring, 1881. It shows Mr. and Mrs. Alba Farr, their daughter Esther, 10, and their daughter-in-law, Esther Farr, standing in front of their new house. Alba Farr was a farmer, who also worked at times at Washington Merrill's hat shop, about half a mile down the road. The original house was built in 1737, but was torn down. In 1867, the original wood was reused in the construction of this house.
Alba Farr was a farmer. he also worked at times at Washington Merrill's hat shop about half a mile down the road.

#59 - 19 Johnson St. Firehouse, N. Andover, 1851

North Andover Firehouse is Greek Revival-style design

The current exhibit at the North Andover Historical Society details the development of the Common in the Old Center by the North Andover Improvement Society. One picture shows the firehouse, which once stood across from the North Parish Church. The Improvement Society moved the firehouse to Johnson Street in order to extend the Common to Andover Street.

The Johnson Street site is now the home of the Cochichewick Lodge, A.F.& A.M. so this seemed a simple story of how an outdated firehouse became a Masonic Temple. But when I checked with Robert Hull of the Lodge and John McQuire, who knows the history of the North Andover Fire Department, the take grew more complicated.

The station had been built in 1851, when Captain Stevens donated $800 with the stipulation that the firehouse not be moved more than a 1/4 mile from the site. Built by Jacob Chickering, it was a generous size, housing the pumpers and providing meeting space on the second floor. The horses who pulled the pumpers were brought to the firehouse by neighbors when the bells rang in the church and mill towers.
The men in this photograph have names familiar in North Andover history: Dale, Spofford, Farnum, and Stevens. Warren Stevens stand to the right, with a cane and tall hat, his hand on his hip.

(important line missing here - jgr) The lot, bought for $35., was beside the Brick Store, just over a quarter of a mile away. The extra distance was overlooked, and in 1882, the firehouse was relocated. There it stood, fire station for the Old Center, for 23 more years. What happened next must be saved for the next column.

(and the next column seems to be missing too. Sorry, I'll fix it! jgr)

#60 - Rocks Village Firehouse, Main St., Haverhill, 1861

Rocks Village fire station is a landmark in Haverhill

Rocks Village built this firehouse about 1861 in order to house a hand pumper that was no longer needed in downtown Haverhill.

The village had a general store, tavern, and the ferry, and later the bridge to West Newbury. But it did not have a church or mill, so this station included its own tower and bell to summon the firefighters. That tower, with its curved roof and Italianate brackets, is just barely within the vocabulary of Greek Revival architecture, the accepted style for public buildings since the early part of the 19th century. Indeed, the whole building seems to leap from the simplicity of Greek Revival into Victorian extravagance. The front boast not only a Palladian window on the second floor, but an oriel window in the gable, while the corner pilasters are faceted (not just plain boards), the overhang is generous, and the doors are paneled in Victorian style.

Henry Ford coveted this firehouse. He wanted to move it to his museum, Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. He did buy the bridge-tender's house (to the right in this photograph, taken before 1905) and the hand pumper. But the Firemens' Association wouldn't let him have the station. Today it is maintained by the Rocks Village Memorial Society.

Note the farmland behind the firehouse in the photograph. Those are the hills of West Newbury across the Merrimack. The bridge is to the right, and today those fields are woods.

#38 - Barker Homestead, Woodland St., Methuen, c1830

Barker Homestead an eclectic blending of North and South

The Barkers, one of Methuen's original families, lived at the corner of Haverhill and Woodland Streets; in about 1830, a Barker who had gone to seek his fortune in Tennessee sent home enough money to build a house. So the old farm house was moved, and on its site was built this copy of a southern mansion.

In the South, a wrap-around porch keeps the house cool by shading it from the heat of the sun - and here is the porch with its handsome columns. But in the Merrimack Valley, the sun is welcome, so the porch roof is high and shallow, cutting out only the midsummer heat. Similarly, long windows let in cool breezes in the South, but can be cold and drafty in New England winters. So while first floor windows reach the floor, they are protected by shutters.

And although the details of the house - the entrance, the Doric columns and frieze board above - classify it as Greek Revival, there is much here that cannot be easily labeled. Whoever built this house freely adapted traditional elements - there aren't just a few dormers, but rows of them, and four triangular windows in the gable end. And the railing above the porch, playing on the shape of the steep roof and the dormers, almost becomes gingerbread fretwork.

So here are my questions: Had this builder ever seen a real Southern Mansion? Does that steep roof come from Tidewater Virginia? And what would this wonderful house look like if the Barker in Tennessee had been able to send back a photograph?

Dustin Pollard House, 30 Salem St., N. Andover, c1847

North Andover home was built by a blacksmith in mid-19th century

Dustin Pollard, a black smith, bought the 30 Salem Street, North Andover, property from Nathaniel Stevens for $400 in 1847. He built this house and a shop behind it.

The style of the house (like a cape, but with the roof sitting on short second floor walls instead of meeting with the first floor ceiling) allowed more bedroom space in the attic and gave more room on the front facade of the house for decoration.
Here that means a recessed front door with pediment and columns, hoods shaped like pediments above the windows, and richly detailed columns on the corners with a frieze board at the roof line. All of these details recall Greek temples, labeling this house a Greek Revival cottage.
More fashionable houses would also have been turned on end, in order to build a Greek pediment in the gable facing the street. (see the Farnham School in this series.)

This practical house faces its roof north and south for winter wind and storm protection, and does not sit square to the street but angles to the sun. The small narrow chimneys indicate the house was heated by stoves. There are a number of similar well-built cottages in North Andover and the Merrimack Valley, indicating the comfortable standard of living a skilled craftsman could obtain in the 1840's and '50's.

#2 - Farnham District School, Rte 114, N. Andover, 1851

Greek Revival style added classic, democratic touch to buildings

Greek Revival style, one room school house, built in 1851 by the Town of Andover to replace an earlier building.
Photograph from the Andover Historical Society Collection

Notice the two front doors: the right one was for girls, the left one for boys. The windows are large to provide light since there was no electricity. And the small, single flue chimney served the pot belly stove that gave heat from the front of the room. The school faces south, down the Turnpike with its 'back' to the cold north, a common way to place a building when land was plentiful and heating inefficient.

In the early 1800's, Americans looked for new ways to express their pride in their new democracy through their buildings. Ancient Greek city states such as Athens embodied these ideals, so American builders copied Greek temples. They turned their buildings so that the ends faced the street and then added mouldings and trim to copy the marble columns and pediment of a Greek temple. By about 1830 almost everyone finished buildings, public and private with some Greek Revival detail. The builders of the Farnham (
or Farnum) School added mouldings to the corners, windows and doors. They built a wide roof overhang and added a frieze board just under the roof, simple details to remind us of Greek temples and our democracy.

This is the second column. My editor, Mary Fitzgerald, and I hadn't figured out the format yet, and I wanted to begin by describing basic architectural styles and terms. I think this column fairly boring, but it received much favorable comment over the years.

#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)

#116 - The Homestead at North Beach, Hampton, NH, c1830 (08/08/93)

200 years at the beach: House has gone with the flow

This postcard of The Homestead on Hampton’s North Beach seems easy to decipher – a Greek Revival farm house built around 1830, its gable detailed as a pediment, facing the sun and High Street. Its barns to the left, it seems to be a farm that became an inn, as the beach became a tourist destination. Then I talked to the current owners, who are only the fifth family to own the house, and read Joseph Dow’s 1892 book, History of Hampton. They told me that the house was built by John Elkins on the knoll called Nut Island, just off North Beach, around 1800. Moses Leavitt bought it in 1802, just before the birth of the fifth of his twelve children.

The 1806 map of Hampton notes M. Leavitt’s tavern at the edge of the beach, so this house has in fact been a hotel for almost 200 years. That surprised me. I expected farms and fishing shacks at the beach in the early 1800s, but why a hotel? Who stayed here? The answer is that fishermen and fishmongers from Vermont came in the winter, and bought frozen fish to sell back in Vermont and Canada. While they were there, the barn housed their wagons and horses. Leavitt’s tavern had a summer trade as well – houses at the beach are listed as taking summer boarders as early as 1826. Dow’s History calls the Homestead ‘famous’ and notes that it is currently (in 1892) being run by Leavitt’s grandson, Jacob.

Over the years the house has grown from its original one story size. The corner pilasters, the square moldings at the windows and doors, and the tall stately chimneys probably all date from an expansion in the 1830s. Today, the house has balconies all around, and is called The Windjammer. The stone outcropping seen to the left in the postcard is now the edge of the town parking lot.

(aerial photo taken in 1929, and is from the Lane Memorial Library's excellent online archives -ed)