# 101 GFS Webster House, 1151 Broadway, Haverhill

Farmhouse moved but remained the same

In 1905, George Franklin Sargent Webster - at the plow in the photograph - and his wife - on the far right - posed on their lawn for this photograph which was made into a postcard.

The house behind them had been built 2 years earlier in honor of their marriage. The original farm house, a cape, was moved up the street to 1121 Broadway. The style of the house, Colonial Revival, contrasts with the barn, built about 1800. Both use the same boxy forms but put them together in very different ways. The facade of the barn is a flat surface with windows and doors placed in patterns determined by use and proportion - the door is square, large enough for loaded wagons, while the windows are centered on their spaces. The only hint of style is in the roof overhang and the return of the eaves.

The end wall of the new house repeats the lines of the barn. But the front of the house exuberantly breaks the flat plane with bay windows and columns. The roof is broken by the front facing gable whose steep overhang returns at the eaves to become the cornice for pilasters with elaborate capitals. Compare that to the barn's simple eaves and corner boards.

At the front door the flat pilasters become the background for round columns and their architrave - the band with its cornice above the front door. Again the flat two dimensional wall is pulled into three dimensions.

The house was originally yellow with white trim. Today it is dark brown. and those bits of trees in the photograph have grown to tower over the house.

#97 1088 West Lowell St., Haverhill

A friend, describing the way houses changed from colonial days to the Victorian era, explained that they grew higher and higher, in feeling as well as reality. Drive up West Lowell Street in Haverhill to Scotland Hill and see.

This Italianate farm house sits on a knoll looking down the road. We, passing by, look up at it. Then its detailing makes it feel even higher. A curve at the top of the gable window, draws the eye up to the peak of the roof. Or see how the slender shape of the bay window, made by its four narrow windows is continued in the two long double windows just above it. From there one's eye goes to the skinny paired brackets and dentils in the eaves, and again to the roof.

Note how the brackets are bunched at the eaves' returns to act as mock Corinthian capitals to the slender pilasters on the corners of the house - a wonderful detail that reinforces the height of the house.

To the north, across W. Lowell Street, is a Georgian brick-end farm house probably built about 1800. Although it too is at the top of Scotland Hill, it sits solidly surrounded by its fields, a nice contrast to this house, built about 50 years later, so decidedly sited above its land.

Not much is recorded about this house. A local historian told me of the Polish and Armenian families who farmed here at the turn of the century. The 1851 Haverhill map lists "Dr. Merrill" next to the dot marking this house. Other houses on W. Lowell Street are associated with Ayre's Village, so perhaps this house is too.

# 87 barn at 43 N. Broadway, Haverhill

Unknown 'old salts' carved shingles at turn of the century
How did this barn, probably built in the early 1800's, come to be covered with row upon row of elaborately cut shingles 75 years later?

Shingles had been used on walls for years, and the Centennial Celebration in 1876, reminding Americans of their colonial roots, made wood shingle siding even more popular. Victorian builders took square shingles, trimmed their edges in fancy shapes, and decorated the front gables and bay windows of mansions and cottages alike. Sometimes shingles covered a whole wall and, especially in seaside resorts, the whole house.

Perhaps, I thought, a local carpenter used this barn as his shop and displayed his skill at working in the Queen Anne style on the outside; The City of Haverhill had lots of houses waiting for embellishment! I was wrong.

A retired seaman lived here in 1900. His shipmates often stayed here when they came into port. They, the sailors, cut these shingles, invented the designs. Some of the shapes are quite simple, just a repeating triangle or square. Others - for example, those at the gable window - are ingenious combinations of circles and squares. And then there is the lace at the peak of the gable - shingles cut in scallops whose edges themselves have been scalloped.

This is folk art. Although we can imagine the men carving the detail of another shingle with a careful turn of the knife, using the skills they had perfected through long hours at sea, we don't know their names. They are anonymous. But what they created is still here for us to enjoy.

notes on the Peaslee Garrison House

This note came from a reader:

I enjoy your blog, Sunday Drives - Merrimack Valley. I am interested however to learn how you dated the Peaslee Garrison c1710. The Indian uprisings were over in Haverhill by that time and my research dates the house to 1673. George W. Chase's history of Haverhill would seem to support that date.

Thank you for shedding light on this.


I replied:

Hello,

Thanks for reading the blog. Remember when you read that I am an architect, writing about seeing buildings at least as much as about history.

I wrote that column 20 years ago, and today, I'm not sure why I dated it c.1710. I would have used the information in the Haverhill Public Library collection. The photograph came from there. I chose that house because I wanted, as an architect, to talk about the rare early brick houses in the Valley. At a time the paper expected me to focus on Andover and N. Andover. I was gently spreading out to other towns.

I suspect I was being cautious - the house is First Period, other people had confirmed that. Construction details change about 1715. Also I know that people want their houses to be older than they are, and that a deed to the land does not necessarily mean the house you see was built on that date. The word 'garrison' for the house came with it. I cannot remember now, a discussion about Indians... the name is what was attached to the house, so I used it.

You will find 2 brief introductions to the naming of house styles if you read about the Smiley House in Haverhill and the 4-Square on Lexington Ave. in Bradford.

I have never been in the house. That was in the early days of the column and I was an unknown. Later on people welcomed me, and I was able to learn much more. In the beginning I had to write just from what I could see from the street and the photograph.

If historians skilled in determining 1670 construction from that of 1710 have looked at the house, and dated it to 1673, then what I said would be wrong. Someone might like to add a comment to my blog correcting my date and explaining why.

When I decided to transcribe the columns (207 of them) to the internet, I made a conscious decision not to update them - I would have to revisit each one and the work would never be done, especially because I no longer live in the area.


a footnote to these e-mails: I have seen a foundation in a First Period house in Haverhill that is reported to have been a garrison. It was built rather like a medieval castle, with angled window slits. If the Peaslee House has similar windows, that could verify the name, 'garrison' and push back the date. Reference to the house being used in 1670 in other writings would also help. As an architect, I find I am more comfortable using construction details.

#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.

#77 Smiley House, 994 Main Street, Haverhill

Why do we call it a Saltbox? Because it looks like one.

The next time you are stopped in traffic on Route 125 in Haverhill, enjoy the graceful entry on this house. The pilasters on each side of the door are slightly tapered with strong bases and capitals. The door is the style of the Federal period, not the 6 panel pattern we see today. The transom is made of bull's eye glass.

The house to at least 1768. It may be older. We know that James Smiley, a soldier in the Revolution, bought it and remodeled the exterior, adding the hoods over the windows and the front entry.

We call this house a 'salt box'. The name refers to the long back roof that sweeps down from the peak almost, it seems, to the ground. When houses like this were built, from the time of the Puritans until the Revolution, they weren't called by any name. The roof arrangement was simply a way to cover a house when the first floor needed to be larger than the second. It wasn't until almost 1900 that we Americans began to notice and label our Colonial past. A salt box, then, was a box for salt which hung on the kitchen wall with a hinged top, looking rather similar to this roof.

This is, more specifically, a 'broken salt-box' because the elan to roof has been added to the main roof at a slightly different angle. It is hard to know, without taking the house apart to look, if the lean-to was an addition, ar built at the same time as the original house.

James Smiley's descendents still live here. The Smiley School, across the street, was named for his grandson who was one of Haverhill's mayors.

#72 106 Summer St., Haverhill

Haverhill's 1890 Gale House typifies High Victorian style

Haverhill residents know this house. I didn't. So they sent me off to find it. I'm glad they did.

Look at all that stuff!
Three porches, each with a different style of railing, stained glass windows on both floors, elaborate dormers, and carvings on the carvings. Pattern everywhere - much of it freely adapted from European architecture: the stained glass and carved stone work are 14th c. Gothic; the first floor window framing and the chimney corbelling are 16th c. English Tudor; the arched front entry is 12th c. French Romanesque. The arch above it on the second floor is copied from Moorish castles in 11th c. Spain. That arch is one of the nicest Moorish - sometimes called Turkish - arches in the Valley!

A.W. Vinal was the architect. He designed many row houses in the Back Bay of Boston. And this house has the feeling of a row house allowed to expand, freed from a narrow lot.

John E. Gale, the owner, was a shoe manufacturer, then director of the Haverhill National Bank, a city alderman, active in many organizations. When he died in 1916, the newspaper stated that he had lived a life "without ostentation". This house, which he built in 1890, makes that statement surprising - certainly this house asks to be looked at - until you have seen its neighborhood, The Highlands, where every corner is the site for another remarkable Victorian mansion. This was the style, expected.

#53 125 Arlington St., Haverhill

100 year old Haverhill house has classic Shingle Style design

The Highlands of Haverhill is a neighborhood of marvelous houses. This house at 125 Arlington Street, is understated and small, compared to its neighbors, but well worth looking at.

When it was built in 1891, the Shingle Style - the extensive use of shingles to sheath walls and roof - was fashionable. Many architects simply added pieces of this style to a basic house, a shingled turret, a bowed window, a curved dormer, to please the homeowner. The architect of this house, however, understood the idea behind the Shingle Style: shingles, because they are nailed in place little piece by little piece, can cover a curved surface as a flat board - a clapboard, for example - cannot.
This house IS a curved surface, a round tower. And the design is so simple, the lines so smooth, that without its Victorian brackets, its small paned windows, it would look decidedly modern.
Everything reinforces the tower. The stone porch below supports it, heavy enough visually to carry the mass of the tower. The small windows hardly break the surface of the curve; the larger ones are set in a bay attached to the outside. The roof, a cone ending in a finial(not visible here) completes the shape. The wings and wooden porch give human scale. Without them the tower would be quite austere and forbidding.

The owner, Enoch Howes, was one of the partners of Woodman and Howes, shoe manufacturers. He moved from a classic Carpenter Gothic cottage in the center of town to the classic Shingle Style home in the Highlands.
The Haverhill Historical Society has portraits of him in his youth and later as a patriarch.

#40 11 Lexington Avenue, Bradford, Haverhill

Haverhill House typifies late 19th Century design


Something happens about the time a house reaches its 80th birthday: it becomes an antique.
People start to appreciate the way of life it represents and the workmanship they might have ignored before.
This house, built on Lexington Avenue, in the Bradford section of Haverhill, in the winter of 1899-1900, was one of four frame houses built as rental property. Even though the builder did not intend to live there, he built a gracious house. From its curved roof and hipped dormer with diamond panes, to its bay window overlooking the porch and its roof railing, it is handsome.

Ten years ago, this house did not have a name. Now we have begun to describe it as a "four square". It describes the house well, a box that feels square and upright with a hip roof sloping back from all four sides like a pyramid. This is a city house with a front porch to sit on and watch the neighborhood, with no wings or sheds that a farm would need.

Lots of these houses were built in the Merrimack Valley. They are so plentiful in Haverhill that locally they are called the 'Haverhill House'. In the Valley, four squares are most often finished as this one is, with Colonial Revival details: clapboard with corner boards and a frieze moulding at the eaves, double-hung windows with working shutters, Doric columns with simple capitals.
Other parts of the United States decorated their four squares with less sense of tradition, using Victorian, Arts and Crafts and Bungalow details.

Note: I wrote this in honor of my uncle, Erwin N. Griswold's 80th birthday. Among other things, he had been a trustee of Bradford College and knew the town well.

# 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.

#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.

#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.

#46 - John Ward House, 240 Water St., Haverhill, c1710-1740

Family who lived in original 2-room cottage lived simply

This is a simple house, one room on each side of the front door and two more under the eaves, not much space for a family. Imagine then how it would have been to live in only 2 rooms, because the right side is the original house, while the left side is a later addition.

Clearly the people in this house owned very little, lived very simply, and did not expect much privacy. They did, however, make the most of their attic space by building a gambrel roof. Because it is built of two parts - the flatter pitch at the chimney, the steeper sides to the eaves - the roof allows more usable floor area and gives room for an ample window in the gable giving good light.

This gambrel cottage is one of the buildings of the Haverhill Historical Society. It was on the land in 1750, moved to Eastern Avenue in the 1880's, the returned and restored by the Saltonstall family about 1906. Later, in the 1940's, more work was done. Unfortunately, records were not kept either time, so we cannot now know for sure what was restored, what was replaced, and what was added. Also, although the land ownership and use can be followed through successive deeds, the house is much harder to trace. There is no clear date when the original right half was built or when the left half was added. At one point the site was used for church services, but this house was not built for John Ward, the minister who came to Haverhill in 1641, as earlier historians wanted to believe. Like the other gambrel roofed cottages in the Valley, it was probably built between 1710 and 1740.

#21 - Peaslee House, 190 E. Broadway, Haverhill, c1710 (10/01/89)

Peaslee House: Bricks from 1710

Around 1710, this house was built by the Peaslee family in what is now East Haverhill - then a wilderness - uphill from the Merrimack River. At first glance it is the usual center entrance colonial home with two windows on either side of the door and five windows spaced evenly across the second floor. But the chimneys are on the ends, not centered in the middle of the roof, and the end walls are brick.

The whole house has 16 inch thick brick walls, but the front has been plastered. Houses built of brick as old as this are very rare in the Merrimack Valley, but three exist in Haverhill. The size and pattern in which the bricks have been laid comes from England, as did the settlers. Thomas Dustin, another early settler of Pentucket - the original name for Haverhill - was a brick maker by trade in a place where brick and lime for mortar were locally available. Note how small the end windows are, and the overhanging course of brick where the second floor begins. At the ridge, the brick does not come to a point, but curves in an arch. The chimneys are extensions of the brick wall, ending with the traditional British corbeling.

About 75 years after this house was built, the owners updated it by covering the brick with wood clapboard . Brick is fireproof but does not insulate as well as wood, so the new siding must have made the house warmer. The clapboard remained for at least 150 years.

Wait until a hard frost to drive past and take a look - the house is surrounded by a tall, magnificent lilac hedge. (here's a link to a map of historic places in Haverhill, including the Peaslee House - ed)

#17 - Hazen Garrison House, 8 Groveland St., Haverhill, 1724 (08/93)

If only rebuilder had kept records...photo courtesy of Haverhill Public Library





(current photo not original to the article, but it does a better job than the original at showing inset chimneys and smaller end-windows - taken by David Shultz, ed.)

Wallace Nutting, who took this photograph of the Hazen Garrison House in approximately 1920, rebuilt colonial houses at the turn of the 20th century. He had an eye for special houses – this is one of only three brick First Period (i.e., before 1725) houses built in Haverhill. Brick arches span the windows and reinforce the chimneys, and only 4 rooms large, the house feels bigger because the chimneys are built within the ends, as part of the brick walls. So, unlike a center chimney colonial with two windows on either side of the front door, here there are three – the third being a little window for the cubby hole by the fireplace. The chimney and fireplaces are set into the rooms because once they are warmed by fires; they radiate heat into the rooms. 

 

Wallace Nutting had no doubts about how this house must have looked originally. Discarding the existing windows - square paned traditional sash that slid up and down – he added the diamond paned hinged casements seen in this photograph, sure that the house had originally looked like an English medieval manor. He wanted the house to have been built before 1700. Today, we date it to about 1724. Nutting labeled it a ‘garrison’, referring to the last American Indian raid on Haverhill, which was in 1721. So this house may have been used as a refuge. The extended row of brick at the second and third floor is not an overhang of one floor over another, but a way of covering the ends of the wood joists, which tie into the brick wall there.

Historians today wish that Wallace Nutting had kept records of what he found as he rebuilt this house, so that we could agree or disagree with his vision of the original house.

(Here is a photo of the house in 1870 - I've added this as an example of how much he must have changed it. Both photos borrowed from this website. Here also is an interesting link to real estate website, which describes the house's history (both no longer active), and another to a Lawrence Eagle-Tribune newspaper story from 2007, about one of his descendants– ed)

More information, added 1/18/2014: I know of anther house in Haverhill with a lower level built as garrison with angled reveals on openings, similar to what one would  find in a castle wall. Perhaps the basement here was once partially above grade and had similar openings. The Peaslee House - which I have written about - is also reported to have been a garrison.
The Haverhill Public Library has extensive records and resources on Haverhill history.

#62 - High Street Firehouse, 1889 (05/26/91)

Firehouses reflect taste

A brick is just a block clay, the right size for the human hand to hold and set with more bricks to build a wall. So see what Victorian bricklayers built when Haverhill constructed matching firehouses at 64 Kenoza Avenue and 123 High Street in 1889. The square little bricks became round arches and mammoth columns, the flat wall at the top became a frieze simply by pulling the bricks in or pushing them out to cast a shadow and create line and pattern. Fire stations, built and paid for by the public, are good reflections of popular taste. Here is marvelous Victorian exuberance. The capitals at the springing points of the arches, the rosettes and the false pediments with urns, all of wood, balance the weight of the brick. The tower’s steep roof becomes a backdrop for its gables, finals, and weather vane. The words “column,” “arch” and “frieze” suggest classic architecture. But as can be seen here, the Victorians reinvented the forms, barely referring to the originals in Greece and Rome. The photograph, taken in 1890 by Haverhill druggist Thomas Bailey, shows the station on Kenoza Avenue.