tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24961049508183837152024-02-18T23:43:38.364-05:00"Sunday Drives" Newspaper Column - Jane Griswold Radocchia ArchitectArchive of a bi-weekly newspaper column on vernacular architecture, written for the Lawrence, MA Eagle-Tribune, from 1988-1999. In 1994, the column received a Massachusetts Historic Preservation Award.Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.comBlogger103125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-4399163668497560632010-07-08T22:22:00.005-04:002010-07-11T16:05:46.152-04:00# 101 GFS Webster House, 1151 Broadway, Haverhill<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghNn8sj5d9iT3M8oo1rKNX7LY9D_e-gFPA2fdQ_JAwBpOTjsh5SKmrUlmBZSp-YusNiqFO6A36gSNhlKkld0etg8VaYWbSQjAKt8dYSj9bfGfpchYt_DS_EOMOjW84FSEup-4MvTgxWu-W/s1600/100_2240.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 153px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghNn8sj5d9iT3M8oo1rKNX7LY9D_e-gFPA2fdQ_JAwBpOTjsh5SKmrUlmBZSp-YusNiqFO6A36gSNhlKkld0etg8VaYWbSQjAKt8dYSj9bfGfpchYt_DS_EOMOjW84FSEup-4MvTgxWu-W/s320/100_2240.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491726831576262722" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Farmhouse moved but remained the same</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-65209031719381126682010-07-08T21:46:00.006-04:002010-07-08T22:21:18.617-04:00#100 305 Essex Street, Lawrence<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIUg7A9m05met4JV-XmhMtEh49VoYiyaE025kMHz0Yoi8SJthOdGHyFud8hbIkkvxdXvYwjYWJpa9cHGppskUO9w4a0Bmn5TA0lCQMly0yJxapwvoL0h6P8fN2rqr0BoXjzI2LvTe4Nud7/s1600/100_2239.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 306px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIUg7A9m05met4JV-XmhMtEh49VoYiyaE025kMHz0Yoi8SJthOdGHyFud8hbIkkvxdXvYwjYWJpa9cHGppskUO9w4a0Bmn5TA0lCQMly0yJxapwvoL0h6P8fN2rqr0BoXjzI2LvTe4Nud7/s320/100_2239.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5491725475261037458" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Old Eagle-Tribune office was built in Italianate Style</span><br /><br />Four years ago the people at the Eagle-Tribune gave me a chance to write about architecture in the Merrimack Valley. They didn't know if there would be an audience, or if I could meet deadlines. Nevertheless, they let me try. This column, the 100th, is to thank them for their support and encouragement.<br /><br />305 Essex Street, at the corner of Lawrence Street, was the offices of the newspapers The Daily Eagle, The Evening Tribune, and the weekly Essex Eagle in 1890. Today the building's brick is exposed, but originally, as seen in the photograph, the brick was stuccoed to resemble cut stone, like buildings you would see in Florence or Rome - in other words, Italianate.<br /><br />This building was designed to be seen from the street. The cast iron columns on the first floor allow large glass windows so merchants might display their goods to passing shoppers. Those columns, which could be as plain as the concrete filled steel columns in many basements, have bases, edges and flowering capitals, a treat for the pedestrian.<br />The fire escape becomes part of the ornamentation with its crossed railings. The eaves, embellished with brackets and mouldings signal the top of the office block. There is a 4th floor, but it is invisible to the pedestrian.<br />As can be seen in the photograph, its dormers are simple, without the variety of pattern seen in the walls of the lower three floors. So the massive eave line becomes the top edge of the building.<br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-16395926842992650882010-06-13T20:34:00.005-04:002010-06-13T20:56:30.201-04:00#99 55 East Haverhill St., Lawrence<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOI61OFTZcODFkT0rTFUu6mK_Bv5nABREh6QEbKsHNYtPNxMguA4OpydfPRf4QhZdKWplpp8u_Xq6FwqGMRDGgGrkUeFShMSj2P61c1UDDLQUtqpTgy4I_53RAWAm7b88HGYXmLi3mrM1O/s1600/100_2237.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 255px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOI61OFTZcODFkT0rTFUu6mK_Bv5nABREh6QEbKsHNYtPNxMguA4OpydfPRf4QhZdKWplpp8u_Xq6FwqGMRDGgGrkUeFShMSj2P61c1UDDLQUtqpTgy4I_53RAWAm7b88HGYXmLi3mrM1O/s320/100_2237.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5482426822657953698" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">A city house good enough for a fairy tale</span><br /><br />Look at all that Victorian gingerbread! all that fretwork in the gables labels the house as Stick Style.<br /><br />The name comes from the pieces - sticks of wood - used to decorate the house. The horizontal banding below the windows and the same detail used to create the frieze band at the eaves are typical details of the Stick Style, as is the cross bracing under the windows. The house is built from 'sticks' - wooden studs set side by side and braced. The trim is seen as an outward show of that framing pattern.<br /><br />This doesn't look like classic Greek or Roman architecture. The arches on the porch and the frieze band are the only pieces borrowed directly from that vocabulary. However, the house maintains the classic order of base (bottom), middle and top. The frieze, the banding, and the porch are also all so defined.<br /><br />This house was built about 1875 by W.H.P. Wright, a counselor ( at law? city?) with offices on Essex St. Later the Church of St. Laurence O'Toole, which was on the corner of East Haverhill St. used the house first as a rectory and then as a novitiate. In 1987, Merrimack College opened its Urban Institute here. The house is now a center for seminars, classes,, and a home for student interns in urban studies. It is the focus of the college's programs for Lawrence High School students and its collaboration with the Frost Elementary School.<br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-26916163036264837532010-06-13T20:13:00.004-04:002010-06-13T20:34:10.523-04:00#98 174-6 Andover Street, Ballardvale, Andover<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_v4H_fe7GyvM_N-umJuYLNmIRGmltwjHz2Sble4lpYUh5lSQCJu_DABfS-zifgZAE6RliaRqjnRTt9CBo5JfW86uenJRGaGNq-MoTfk6jHNXnTUx742BdqzSLxGFKVfH-_3Z5Df9xcUfg/s1600/100_2236.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 189px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_v4H_fe7GyvM_N-umJuYLNmIRGmltwjHz2Sble4lpYUh5lSQCJu_DABfS-zifgZAE6RliaRqjnRTt9CBo5JfW86uenJRGaGNq-MoTfk6jHNXnTUx742BdqzSLxGFKVfH-_3Z5Df9xcUfg/s320/100_2236.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5482420878877083266" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">This home was once half of the depot for Ballardvale train stop</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />Why was this house built here amidst mill housing?<br /><br />It wasn't. This house was once half of the depot for the Ballardvale stop on the Boston and Maine Railroad.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br />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.<br /><br />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.<br />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.<br /><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-78340287902466252342010-06-13T17:30:00.005-04:002010-06-13T20:12:39.196-04:00#97 1088 West Lowell St., Haverhill<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwguLDFEbOKcEpx7Vcg4oIFhM85oZ4FlWfJsyFopO_HqEiVZmIYXKZmc84RM4Fk_TUBz5DLlqWKhKhfcAioZ1FfhpA3pNc3-My8cLA6-HId3vq_mmy2NVa7YxeGDMaIQyq5DcTCuslfMb3/s1600/100_2234.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 236px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwguLDFEbOKcEpx7Vcg4oIFhM85oZ4FlWfJsyFopO_HqEiVZmIYXKZmc84RM4Fk_TUBz5DLlqWKhKhfcAioZ1FfhpA3pNc3-My8cLA6-HId3vq_mmy2NVa7YxeGDMaIQyq5DcTCuslfMb3/s320/100_2234.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5482415404315703650" border="0" /></a><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-9217530362976166102010-05-09T21:33:00.005-04:002010-05-09T21:58:37.533-04:00#86 - Clark-Fredrick House, 366 Hampshire Rd., Methuen<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRQUOGPQJdAs9NL2Pk3XrvhmGczedr53Ob6nsFtRibWIDBTKuufDucswg9cu615GRScHTTpKwyPNR5rE-vbd9ACG03gACddv2exgyLxTLy7clDNWM7hzRdn8n5FJp9G8eBq49AbYc5F-pT/s1600/100_2233.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 262px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRQUOGPQJdAs9NL2Pk3XrvhmGczedr53Ob6nsFtRibWIDBTKuufDucswg9cu615GRScHTTpKwyPNR5rE-vbd9ACG03gACddv2exgyLxTLy7clDNWM7hzRdn8n5FJp9G8eBq49AbYc5F-pT/s320/100_2233.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5469454647976780914" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">This house was built even before there was a town of Methuen</span><br /><br />In 1700, Methuen didn't exist.<br /><br />Haverhill's town line was about where Interstate 93 is today. The land in west Methuen between that border and the Dracut line was in no town, with no government and no taxes. Several wealthy Scotch families from Ipswich, taking advantage of the loophole, settled here on grants of several hundred acres.<br /><br />It really was away from the known world in those days. The church in Haverhill, the center of community life, would have been at least 8 miles away over Indian trails or by boat down the river. The deed to this property, the Clark-Fredrick House, written about 1700, starts in Haverhill and lays out the route up the Merrimack River before turning inland. It refers to the property as 'bounded on the north by wilderness", what is now the Methuen-Pelham town line.<br /><br />There are other references to the edge of Methuen being the frontier: Harris' Brook was once known as London Brook and Meadow, a corruption of an earlier name: Land's End Brook and Meadow. There is still a World's End Pond at the edge of Salem, NH, and Methuen. Wilderness, as the name implies, is connected to wild men and animals as well as the unknown. Choosing to live here away from society was not usual.<br /><br />This house, probably not the first built on this site, is not easy to photograph with its full grown trees. As Hampshire Road curves past it, you can catch glimpses of its square shape, its massive center chimney and regular windows. That form - together with how it sits on the land - dates it to about 1720. We know it was remodeled about 1790. The return and overhang on the eaves indicate more updating was done about 1840.<br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-47279552950636946172010-05-09T18:35:00.007-04:002010-05-09T21:30:40.743-04:00#95 - Gale Hill, Lawrence<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyAS4qKY7jCMUvW7T1sTj-_XtOu63DtYuCB1rpLEYOpHVWLClHvY6n7oqjPu_5fxAnGGjhK_4Gpg5biiGPCLm7fh19MqXaEFJ3f02x3nDLm5Xij9p1NFpSelRaALk9SvwFLvrAXGDiqi3E/s1600/100_2232.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 253px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyAS4qKY7jCMUvW7T1sTj-_XtOu63DtYuCB1rpLEYOpHVWLClHvY6n7oqjPu_5fxAnGGjhK_4Gpg5biiGPCLm7fh19MqXaEFJ3f02x3nDLm5Xij9p1NFpSelRaALk9SvwFLvrAXGDiqi3E/s320/100_2232.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5469447083694759346" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">written for Labor Day, 1992</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gale Hill home reflects care, pride taken in its construction</span><br /><br />This is Gale Hill in Lawrence. Or rather this photograph, taken about 1890, shows a house being moved so that Gale Hill can be cut down. Margin Street ran at the bottom of Gale Hill, which was about where Gale Street is today.<br /><br />As Lawrence grew, the hill - mostly sand, as can be seen in the foreground of the photograph - was removed to fill in low places around town and to become the sand in the filter beds of the Lawrence sanitary system.<br />We think the hill was named after John Gale and his son, John P. Gale, carriage makers on Lowell Street who lived on Greenwood Street . Their company was lost in a fire in 1867, and they did not rebuild.<br /><br />Look at the labor that went into moving this house. Men placed all that cribbing by hand to support that ramp which is at least 120 feet long. There were no machines to help build the ramp or move the house to its new location. All the work was done by men and animals.<br /><br />The house was about 20 years old, no longer fashionable with its mansard roof. Yet it was moved. Why? Partly I think because it was built by hand, like the ramp. A saw mill had cut trees into lumber to frame the house, but each piece of lumber was cut to length on the job by a man with a hand saw.<br /><br />There were no power nailers or drills or table saws, nothing run by a motor. There was no gypsum wall board. Each strip of lath had to be nailed in place to the inside walls before the plaster was smoothed on in overlapping coats. There were no asphalt shingles - that roof had slate tiles, each with two hand punched holes for the nails which held it on.<br /><br />The men who moved the house understood the time and material and talent it takes to build a house. So they thought it reasonable to labor mightily to move one.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">note: Readers told me I had the name wrong. As I remember today, I wrote 'Gage' when I should have written 'Gale'. I think... The name may still be wrong. The Lawrence historians will know. </span><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-11895161093229995902010-05-09T18:04:00.009-04:002010-05-09T21:31:22.420-04:00#94 - 13 Milton Street, Lawrence<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe77AaKPyXALX_M1DSL0BWWLWvoSW8ciURHblQIC9EMXl97mxg6wP7b6jCf9PM6u96S3-LkRqI0MRZrwvo2ibu2PEfEGcqPg4v8QRRpSzSbAxDiKv_eok5YeFbFmYkdpjA78StOm7ybBWu/s1600/100_2231.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 227px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe77AaKPyXALX_M1DSL0BWWLWvoSW8ciURHblQIC9EMXl97mxg6wP7b6jCf9PM6u96S3-LkRqI0MRZrwvo2ibu2PEfEGcqPg4v8QRRpSzSbAxDiKv_eok5YeFbFmYkdpjA78StOm7ybBWu/s320/100_2231.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5469400595822479666" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gothic Revival house reflects 1850's style, taste</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />'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.<br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-53217307948478654062010-04-18T08:39:00.004-04:002010-04-18T08:59:20.791-04:00#93 - 28 Wolcott Avenue, Andover<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGfKxR468owt6SK82IQSm7flm5Tle_vHjETxd_DLXfU4TGJ41HkqcoSZVEA4KREu0n6hYXHl4GFuA95_biI6A3jktjfBtWPox_g9tTXmctKPuwUAgw1oFlujqGHKBJnMlAw35v0UnTAnhyphenhyphen/s1600/100_2230.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 254px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGfKxR468owt6SK82IQSm7flm5Tle_vHjETxd_DLXfU4TGJ41HkqcoSZVEA4KREu0n6hYXHl4GFuA95_biI6A3jktjfBtWPox_g9tTXmctKPuwUAgw1oFlujqGHKBJnMlAw35v0UnTAnhyphenhyphen/s320/100_2230.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461461007350067074" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Bungalow-styled homes capture relaxed, vacation atmosphere</span><br /><br />For many people, a bungalow means a cottage, the kind of place you might rent for a vacation at the lake.<br /><br />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:<br />* Sheltering roof with wide overhangs and gentle slope,<br />* Brackets to support that roof and exposed rafters,<br />* Generous porch with sturdy columns,<br />* Dormers tucked into the roof.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-26307538174376977482010-04-18T07:45:00.007-04:002010-04-18T08:39:52.636-04:00#92 Nevins Memorial Library Carriage Sheds<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCAO98oXLROMfob1O3gr5i3MR1XrcGPaJmBP9LuOZMxmS02X0c6ocelX0gmn26thmuylCv41wrcrIHMNih0uwPTCfkraeXi-ho-f2neXgD0K2g3ZdHkZ8Q-HMX3YgQDlYwaT0FxbS2-Cal/s1600/100_2229.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 206px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCAO98oXLROMfob1O3gr5i3MR1XrcGPaJmBP9LuOZMxmS02X0c6ocelX0gmn26thmuylCv41wrcrIHMNih0uwPTCfkraeXi-ho-f2neXgD0K2g3ZdHkZ8Q-HMX3YgQDlYwaT0FxbS2-Cal/s320/100_2229.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5461455913376279266" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Nevins Library carriage sheds call to mind High Victorian era</span><br /><br /><br />The carriage sheds behind the Nevins Memorial Library in Methuen are unusual just because they are still there.<br /><br />Once in a while behind a country church you will see some garages for the horse and buggy which brought the farmer's family to town. But in towns like Methuen, when cars became common, the land where the sheds stood was needed for other purposes.<br /><br />Most carriage sheds were built around 1800 in the Georgian style. These Methuen ones are unusual because they were built in 1884, in high Victorian style. They are handsome in proportion and ornament - tall enough for a spirited horse, arched to cover a carriage. The posts are turned, the arches beveled, matching those of the library. The boards which partition the stalls have circular cut-outs and scalloped tops. Originally the end walls were covered with scalloped slate shingles, some of which remain on the north end.<br /><br />When the Nevins family donated the land, hired the architect and gave the money to build the library, they also had the grounds landscaped. The trees and sculpture were carefully placed as were the carriage sheds for town residents coming to browse among the books or attend festivities in the Hall.<br /><br />Broadway in those days was dirt - it wasn't paved until 1926. Most people avoided the hill altogether and used the gentler grade of Hampshire Street. They drove right past the Nevins family home, the land where Methuen's municipal offices are today. David Nevins, born in Methuen, was an importer in New York City before he returned home. His fortune came from The Methuen Cotton Co., his mill on the Spicket, which made world famous, heavy duty cotton and jute cloth.<br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-62006114416485281862010-03-12T20:43:00.003-05:002010-03-12T21:04:39.725-05:00#91 John R. Rollins School, Prospect Hill, Lawrence<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz0nSvkjFgb3EBz21r1_4w8vjpJtmDUnkkLw_NmsbxzWfmXstRuX2cGpzGskq-OzePXM3GIf6dQewXMLfIrpyBE82ekrX77KhGn_Lw051n-F6otgIbi5_X11ItRLoKnfYZmyHBftAR4RmD/s1600-h/100_2150-1.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 311px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz0nSvkjFgb3EBz21r1_4w8vjpJtmDUnkkLw_NmsbxzWfmXstRuX2cGpzGskq-OzePXM3GIf6dQewXMLfIrpyBE82ekrX77KhGn_Lw051n-F6otgIbi5_X11ItRLoKnfYZmyHBftAR4RmD/s400/100_2150-1.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5447933460240736178" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Architect designed school especially for young children</span><br /><br />When the Rollins School on Prospect Hill was built in 1892, James Cunningham, a retired sea captain, owned the land. He moved a house from the site so the school could be built.<br /><br />George C. Adams was the architect. I like his work, so I regularly stop to see this school of brick with granite arches and lintels and copper panels. One day I was admiring the row of circles above the arch at the main door. Each circle is really 3, one cut inside the other, like a bull's eye. I realized the shape was one easily understood by a child. Then I saw that Mr. Adams had designed the building especially for children.<br />The Rollins School could have been intimidating. It is big and tall. But its sections are broken into manageable sizes by the separate hip roofs and the massing of the windows. The wings are simple rectangles and the places of emphasis - the clock and the entrance - are set off by half circles, all easy shapes for children.<br />The school sits high above Platt Street to the left, but the main entrance is up a gentle walk from Howard Street. The granite arch over the main door is massive, strong enough to carry the weight of the tower above. But its shape is simple, a half circle, and it is low. The arch sits - visually - on the granite which bands gteh school. At the entry porch, the banding is about 2 feet high, just right for a child to touch. A child who standing there is within the arch, not dwarfed by it.<br />The arch was built to a child's measure. From within the space a child can look out and see across the city and beyond. What a great symbol for a school: to protect while providing the vantage point for seeing the world.<br /><br /><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-2588062952887260822010-03-12T20:23:00.003-05:002010-03-12T20:42:29.312-05:00#90 Sarah H. Harding House, 6-8 Harding Street, Andover<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsYR4Vzq97kx1aPsCwN_Um1zNh5KXC1zBnpcom1b5mwwzDHY31_AY533g9W-fJKT84RIj4yYIDOUQFoeW0gaXZuntgNIUs1OdOchufHTyyiioLgEW-DuI9cdSiy2NuCKZsp2Ac_QIhhE98/s1600-h/100_2148-1.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsYR4Vzq97kx1aPsCwN_Um1zNh5KXC1zBnpcom1b5mwwzDHY31_AY533g9W-fJKT84RIj4yYIDOUQFoeW0gaXZuntgNIUs1OdOchufHTyyiioLgEW-DuI9cdSiy2NuCKZsp2Ac_QIhhE98/s320/100_2148-1.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5447927634802627186" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Harding House is fine, local example of Greek Revival architecture</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-6957968918288464622010-03-07T21:29:00.003-05:002010-03-07T21:48:33.888-05:00#89 Corporate Houses, Canal & Amesbury Sts. Lawrence<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz0FRZNRzXUXGeVt-ORGeDjFkLWBkC2IhrFcmCz0hMDbeHNNsN2tGgnaJXXXJ7s6EDO4m_uopYjW_yIJIicFuCxC_NL3oMzEY4bvyrbRajaYQ2BXb1lsizT_h3BBkVMqkV9985Fr0KNWGg/s1600-h/100_2147-1.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz0FRZNRzXUXGeVt-ORGeDjFkLWBkC2IhrFcmCz0hMDbeHNNsN2tGgnaJXXXJ7s6EDO4m_uopYjW_yIJIicFuCxC_NL3oMzEY4bvyrbRajaYQ2BXb1lsizT_h3BBkVMqkV9985Fr0KNWGg/s320/100_2147-1.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446089360559468002" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Architects to tour Lawrence to see buildings in classic mill city</span><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />If you would like to go on the AIA tour, contact Alexandra Lee of the Boston Society of Architects.Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-67151747027556400292010-03-07T20:49:00.005-05:002010-03-07T21:27:28.939-05:00#88 William Gile House, 80 Osgood St., N. Andover<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Kwg6nfd_O3YHTc4QfrCaG-IhUoYZFrqwC5VCo_LLA26_uglD62cmC1BItwJTzpQszNMfIvwjlOLFPhpXqut8SJfMUHCMVBmhlJX6Kc5mNZvFknKdv0Zz0jqJsVOfKFeXvHy0OkaZZ2Di/s1600-h/100_2146-1.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 274px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Kwg6nfd_O3YHTc4QfrCaG-IhUoYZFrqwC5VCo_LLA26_uglD62cmC1BItwJTzpQszNMfIvwjlOLFPhpXqut8SJfMUHCMVBmhlJX6Kc5mNZvFknKdv0Zz0jqJsVOfKFeXvHy0OkaZZ2Di/s320/100_2146-1.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446078991656069922" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />North Andover half-house meant to grow, but never did</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /> 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. <br /><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-30639255039339307262010-03-07T20:22:00.003-05:002010-03-07T20:47:31.235-05:00# 87 barn at 43 N. Broadway, Haverhill<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5aeyLs3y8HImdiDnvuuylIKAJTnXhZ9AM09PqvL1eEaPBfTYbl1sZUoZFx_6e4QXS2o1BGzcGq9Ggs0FysV5W08amYqOpJll-h8tappKUUb2Lhg9aqAbmHGJMhllhy7Dmxkqg1n5VjEb4/s1600-h/100_2145-1.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 234px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5aeyLs3y8HImdiDnvuuylIKAJTnXhZ9AM09PqvL1eEaPBfTYbl1sZUoZFx_6e4QXS2o1BGzcGq9Ggs0FysV5W08amYqOpJll-h8tappKUUb2Lhg9aqAbmHGJMhllhy7Dmxkqg1n5VjEb4/s320/100_2145-1.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446073682746583746" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Unknown 'old salts' carved shingles at turn of the century</span><br />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?<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-50604785859055554872010-03-01T19:38:00.004-05:002010-03-07T20:22:14.312-05:00#84 274 Salem Street, Lawrence<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_xS5PI1GhUIyzvdryXiQV2tZvDCKLOQgfhuzoXNVYDEdpVlZkK6v-CN69lVi_RO2WpvLzsvePh7oOijSC6MrbTNNQBWdHOtEAC2u62DOsPjMRsj8_vmE50GAPsxldqr0Wbb1_jBPBr1i7/s1600-h/100_2144-1.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 276px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_xS5PI1GhUIyzvdryXiQV2tZvDCKLOQgfhuzoXNVYDEdpVlZkK6v-CN69lVi_RO2WpvLzsvePh7oOijSC6MrbTNNQBWdHOtEAC2u62DOsPjMRsj8_vmE50GAPsxldqr0Wbb1_jBPBr1i7/s320/100_2144-1.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5446067158436697458" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Irish immigrants built home on Salem Street around 1857</span><br />In the 1840's, The Essex Company , the corporation that had built the Great Dam, leased its land on the south bank of the Merrimack River to its employees so they could build shanties. The family who built at 18 Dover Street ( as Salem St. was then called) were Michael and Mary Donovan and their children from Skibereen, Ireland. Their sons helped built the dam and worked in the mills. In 1856 Michael Donovan paid The Essex Co. $186. for this lot. He built this house, which was valued in the 1860 census at $800.<br /><br />What he built is a house similar to those his neighbors were building up and down the street. Today standing on Salem Street, one can still pick out those early houses by their shapes - little boxes with their gables facing the street, steep roofs set on low second floor walls, the front door on one side, the windows balanced. The wide roof overhang is generous as are the frieze and corner boards. The effect is simple and pleasing. These houses lack the glamor of later Victorian buildings, but their proportions make them charming.<br /><br />We know about 274 Salem Street because the Donovans' descendants still live here; and the because we can find them in The Essex Co. records and city directories now housed at the Immigrant City Archives. Seven generations of Donovans have been born here. Family members immigrating from Ireland stopped here first.<br />At one point a barn at the rear of the lot housed two horses. The bay window on the side with tis carved brackets was added in the 1880's, and the 1890 tornado that whipped through South Lawrence came right through the kitchen.<br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-42334435693059533342010-02-20T18:01:00.004-05:002014-01-16T15:56:42.459-05:00notes on the Peaslee Garrison HouseThis note came from a reader:<br />
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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.<br />
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Thank you for shedding light on this.<br />
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I replied:<br />
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Hello,<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-72917520901258639182010-02-08T20:46:00.005-05:002010-02-08T21:06:28.681-05:00#81 Harmon House 86 Summer St., Haverhill<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-hCIDj5qZE4VjUUEGh24D8C8ZCfOTGtrROTP_ng_hnFEma0_f-rXR0ZQXZwaCJFTUBOhyphenhyphen-lki18_pFM4mQ-6IjwcNZ-zB8eHdb9eY3jN3RcGtzFx8nDWGAToU_vpiISlF6UTQt8cvKDyV/s1600-h/100_2086.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 272px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-hCIDj5qZE4VjUUEGh24D8C8ZCfOTGtrROTP_ng_hnFEma0_f-rXR0ZQXZwaCJFTUBOhyphenhyphen-lki18_pFM4mQ-6IjwcNZ-zB8eHdb9eY3jN3RcGtzFx8nDWGAToU_vpiISlF6UTQt8cvKDyV/s320/100_2086.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5436059095725321282" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Haverhill house was stopover on Underground Railroad trail</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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. (<span style="font-style: italic;">later note:</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">There are also records of fugitives openly knocking on the front door to ask<br />for shelter and transportation north.) </span><br /><br />Since this picture was taken, about 1870, the house has been extensively remodeled, including the addition of a tower and an elaborate back entry.<br /><br /><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-82414059175762942162010-02-08T20:26:00.004-05:002010-02-08T20:44:03.670-05:00#77 Smiley House, 994 Main Street, Haverhill<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVTIGPcscga76wmXRqwW2kpd6e5lPcwXDa4zaPxAQHXQYS9rpZBLyC6yS3C9Csc15yOhegF4NFfFEvCeipSFfiBZW4TQgZEsD0PVm3-BmoH09zg9w1MImv99xCkdUPVejunDwxKpOfTDki/s1600-h/100_2081.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 265px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVTIGPcscga76wmXRqwW2kpd6e5lPcwXDa4zaPxAQHXQYS9rpZBLyC6yS3C9Csc15yOhegF4NFfFEvCeipSFfiBZW4TQgZEsD0PVm3-BmoH09zg9w1MImv99xCkdUPVejunDwxKpOfTDki/s320/100_2081.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5436053266011875394" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why do we call it a Saltbox? Because it looks like one.</span><br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-36825474738797860692010-02-08T19:58:00.006-05:002010-02-08T20:24:57.620-05:00#76 Pearson Bancroft House, 9 Bancroft Rd.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeaBX4Rzs0NG05bOO-b3RTMtzI7a0_q8bzS9TMtRjXcXaY9znKVkemXJ4Q3MRhrCWDJCsE871hR4JStthIPGsty40dQxRTy9j8fz4P8wc-3Hw7mRqK9i1Zt1IEgJw27YAjI8DhEg8KGb4w/s1600-h/100_2080.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeaBX4Rzs0NG05bOO-b3RTMtzI7a0_q8bzS9TMtRjXcXaY9znKVkemXJ4Q3MRhrCWDJCsE871hR4JStthIPGsty40dQxRTy9j8fz4P8wc-3Hw7mRqK9i1Zt1IEgJw27YAjI8DhEg8KGb4w/s320/100_2080.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5436048078782554610" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Andover house fine example of 18th- century Georgian work</span><br /><br />When this house, the Pearson Bancroft House was built in 1790, there was no road here.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Note: I wrote this for a class at the Bancroft School. I don't think they ever saw it or discussed it.</span><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-20346761613427837212010-01-25T12:40:00.005-05:002010-01-25T13:15:28.475-05:00#75 Hartcourt - Campion Hall, Cochichewick Drive, N. Andover<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4lxd8b0sMIWCyNl2bS4soqoa8dj2kYDMYY52r95sqWMtmgOhqayLGQRx2-1BYgpuGk3Y3YN3ETGWe5gqMYf2UkABGPB_3AEKlaqJIZdvzaOV1jw4iVNv6tQgIVjQ6n68l5YOcPV107u6R/s1600-h/100_2059.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 203px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4lxd8b0sMIWCyNl2bS4soqoa8dj2kYDMYY52r95sqWMtmgOhqayLGQRx2-1BYgpuGk3Y3YN3ETGWe5gqMYf2UkABGPB_3AEKlaqJIZdvzaOV1jw4iVNv6tQgIVjQ6n68l5YOcPV107u6R/s320/100_2059.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5430742453961886370" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">North Andover's Hardtcourt once a Jesuit retreat house</span><br /><br />Hardtcourt, or Campion Hall, the house pictured here, shows how hard it is to capture buildings with a photograph. Buildings are lived in, experienced inside and out, over days and years. A photograph shows one view from one moment in time.<br /><br />This photograph shows the approach to the house across a broad field, the dignified facade with its elaborate German Baroque covered entry. The character of the mansion can only be glimpsed in the brick and limestone detailing, the dominant roof with its three foot overhang and exposed framing.<br />If you drive down the road to the left and then around the end of the house you will see how it sits on the brow of the hill and opens to the view over Lake Cochichewick with a conservatory on the east and a veranda all along its south side. You can see how the veranda steps down gracefully to the lawn and how the six second floor bay windows extend through the roof to become dormers with roofs flared to match the main roof. You can also enjoy how the red of the brick is repeated in the deep red paint of the wood bays and how the pale mortar matches the limestone. It is a very handsome house.<br /><br />George E. Kunhardt, a Lawrence woolen mill owner, asked his friend, Stephen Codman, a Boston architect, to build this house in 1906. After Mr. Kunhardt's death the house and its land were sold to the Jesuits who used it, as Campion Hall, for a retreat center. This photograph was taken when the estate was subdivided for housing in 1974. On the estate were also barns and staff housing which are now privately owned.<br /><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-71388220809109075392010-01-25T12:11:00.005-05:002010-01-25T12:35:03.874-05:00#74 Lawrence Mills, south side of Merrimack River<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXs2O7-mSrdttgZarrVVU6TlcFn8hUm1dpZKlpgUjYJV7xFKPuAXqtDyi4Vnyoh9w4Snf_jr_iX32Ckfim6Qq8Xou1Ks4oLQwHZi0lR87VsHc5tqg4Ypr8OhDX9iEkSTjSHrUXvpSs9-_Y/s1600-h/100_2058.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 259px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXs2O7-mSrdttgZarrVVU6TlcFn8hUm1dpZKlpgUjYJV7xFKPuAXqtDyi4Vnyoh9w4Snf_jr_iX32Ckfim6Qq8Xou1Ks4oLQwHZi0lR87VsHc5tqg4Ypr8OhDX9iEkSTjSHrUXvpSs9-_Y/s320/100_2058.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5430731807075921474" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lawrence mills offer unique New England architecture</span><br /><br />When I have guests new to the Merrimack Valley, I take them on a drive past Lawrence on Interstate 495. Most of I-495 cuts through rolling New England hills, past suburban developments, with exit signs indicating a town somewhere, over there. But here, where the interstate curves down around Lawrence to cross the Merrimack River, here is a city. From the river and its mills, to the water towers on the surrounding hills, the city is laid out for every traveler to see.<br /><br />And the mills! There are so many of them! So many windows and brick walls in so many long boxes set one after another along the river, seemingly held in place by those tall smokestack cylinders.<br />Then, after all that severity, the Ayer Mill clock tower! How surprising is the elaborate shape, the arches, the clock, the double curves of the roof, the finial and weather vane - all that complexity above the simplicity of the mills.<br /><br />The mills are straightforward: the necessary space for the industry generated by the water power of the river. Their simple bay pattern, a length of brick and a window repeated as many times as needed, adapted easily to changing methods of construction. The early mill walls are brick all the way through, with holes cut for windows. As glass became easier to manufacture and buildings easier to heat, the mill walls became glass, windows set within a structural frame, the brick only the skin over that frame. In the photograph that change can been seen from the older mill on the left to the newer one in the middle.<br />A note: If you intend to admire the view of the mills on the Merrimack from I-495, let someone else drive.<br /><br /><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-5682620494089021592010-01-17T21:56:00.003-05:002010-01-17T22:14:11.914-05:00#73 7 Foster Circle, Andover, c. 1860<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyX6D21dkITMv-xEAIxxpk5FcRl5f_yzESv4ZvOYGBftwTvhZq6VPeKxecNCnFSiTHA-8akcb0ek21_eEOsFa3IGalskCuM9J5047mhSoD_jYfoNVk0ZXm733dvhVk5Li8XWGDTu_yGOUI/s1600-h/100_2057.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 229px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyX6D21dkITMv-xEAIxxpk5FcRl5f_yzESv4ZvOYGBftwTvhZq6VPeKxecNCnFSiTHA-8akcb0ek21_eEOsFa3IGalskCuM9J5047mhSoD_jYfoNVk0ZXm733dvhVk5Li8XWGDTu_yGOUI/s320/100_2057.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427912804868820546" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">French designers had impact on Andover Victorian house</span><br /><br />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.<br />Dust and cobwebs were everywhere and the trellis work cast eerie shadows over everything.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><br />Moses Foster's son, Edward, lived here until his death in 1936. Then the house stood empty for years.<br /><br />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.<br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-20158909933877764162010-01-17T21:35:00.004-05:002010-01-17T21:56:09.065-05:00#72 106 Summer St., Haverhill<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBEd14dJ2dFodBmje4zxPiKrSzkL-ifPUNlz7h8OGhIdGrEa785_-0t-N0sNRSFuZ69240cOPOwZV5fZn1mslGKOpwZizBEGMAF8DdEMyxD9gV3szXFeFpDaLDPzl-0zNdOLzYhfO8wExP/s1600-h/100_2056.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 237px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBEd14dJ2dFodBmje4zxPiKrSzkL-ifPUNlz7h8OGhIdGrEa785_-0t-N0sNRSFuZ69240cOPOwZV5fZn1mslGKOpwZizBEGMAF8DdEMyxD9gV3szXFeFpDaLDPzl-0zNdOLzYhfO8wExP/s320/100_2056.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5427907792377905522" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Haverhill's 1890 Gale House typifies High Victorian style</span><br /><br />Haverhill residents know this house. I didn't. So they sent me off to find it. I'm glad they did.<br /><br />Look at all that stuff!<br />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!<br /><br />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.<br /><br />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.<br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2496104950818383715.post-25568266773816502972010-01-10T22:42:00.009-05:002010-01-11T15:15:19.553-05:00#70 150 Garden St., Lawrence<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1grXNR3At03PTL4C0H6MUAqJ2xHbvI-dRA6r9PL3_H2fvX4dDP9MSMc3PB0itB_I_33PEhnJg98sSX_fnR3n8F5AHKpI5I5R_T7h9ASugPlBN-GtQpwZ0JTB4TN1edw4XUf9O0WXBYtMJ/s1600-h/100_1977.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 233px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1grXNR3At03PTL4C0H6MUAqJ2xHbvI-dRA6r9PL3_H2fvX4dDP9MSMc3PB0itB_I_33PEhnJg98sSX_fnR3n8F5AHKpI5I5R_T7h9ASugPlBN-GtQpwZ0JTB4TN1edw4XUf9O0WXBYtMJ/s320/100_1977.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425578356731836482" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">C.T. Emerson designed houses which show a distinctive touch of class</span><br /><br />In the 1860's, C.T. Emerson called himself a carpenter in the Lawrence City Directory. By 1871, he listed his profession as 'architect' with an Essex Street address. By 1875, he had built this house on the corner of Garden and Newbury Streets as his own residence.<br /><br />The corner lot allowed him space to build an imposing house with double bays. The style, Second French Empire, with its distinctive Mansard roof, was the latest import from Paris. The quoins on the corners of the main house, the heavy mouldings, all copies of stone work, make the house weighty and important - worthy of that solid granite foundation.<br /><br />Mr. Emerson had a fine sense of design - see all those curves on the window hoods, and the airy touch of the roof railing where the house meets the sky. There probably was a fine view of the growing city of Lawrence from that roof. Note the elegant detail of the iron fence on the granite retaining wall and how the granite curves at the steps.<br /><br />Maintaining his architectural offices on Essex Street, Mr. Emerson lived here through the 1890's.<br /><br />The growth of Lawrence can be seen in this photograph: the Federal two-family house on the left was built before 1840. The Italianate house to the right was built about 1855. Both are now gone. Today when you look, you will see that Mr. Emerson's house has lost its Mansard roof and the elaborate facade is covered with white siding. Many houses in the Valley were similarly covered when Victorian architecture was no longer in fashion and its maintenance became too time consuming. Today that splendid ornamentation is often hidden from us.<br /><br /><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><div id="refHTML"></div>Janehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960577578174018923noreply@blogger.com0