#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.

#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.

#118 - Sea Side School, Fowler and Railroad Ave, Salisbury Beach, c1893 (09/09/93)

High tides once canceled classes at old schoolhouse

If you had been 6 years old in 1893, and lived at Salisbury Beach, this is where you would have started first grade. Your teacher, Miss Gertrude Richards – who earned $4 a day, plus board – would have been waiting for you and the other first-, second- and third-graders when you arrived for your first day. This is a very small school building. There is no space here for the standard two front doors, one on the left for boys, one on the right for girls, or even a cloak room. There is only the classroom. But its builder, William Charles Pike, did not skimp on style. He bound the eaves by a crown moulding, and returned them neatly to a wide frieze board at the top of the clapboards. Today, 100 years later, the original siding and mouldings are still there. Notice how the school sits well above the ground, above most flood water. Even so, the records show that when the tide was especially high, school would be canceled.

The trolley along the beach ran down Railroad Avenue to the mouth of the Merrimack River at Black Rocks. A second line ran into Salisbury itself. In 1917, the Sea Side school was closed and the children rode the trolley to school in town instead. (Any idea why the school closed? Too much high tide, or too many students? And when the trolley line went in? Are the two at all connected? - ed) Today, the school looks much like the summer cottages which surround it. Its roof line, its plaque and its extra yard – probably the children’s playground – remind us of its origins.

(I've spent a lot of time looking for more info on the trolley that used to run here, but only came up with a few brief passages from books scanned by the GDP. These include page 88 of Whittier-land: A Handbook of North Essex, written by Samuel Thomas Pickard and published in 1907, and page 130 of By Trolley Through Eastern New England, written by Robert H. Derrah, and published in 1904. - ed)