# 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.

#93 - 28 Wolcott Avenue, Andover

Bungalow-styled homes capture relaxed, vacation atmosphere

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

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

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

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

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

# 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.

#75 Hartcourt - Campion Hall, Cochichewick Drive, N. Andover

North Andover's Hardtcourt once a Jesuit retreat house

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.

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.
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.

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.

#56 5 Campo Seco Street, Lawrence

Murder, arson and concrete part of this house's legend

I saw this house before I heard the legend, and as you can see from the photograph the house is a surprise in itself. It is built in a grand manner with quoins on the corners, courses of blocks clearly indicated on the walls, oversized hoods above the windows, bas relief sculptured panels below. And that front porch with those columns and balconies!

The texture of the walls and handling of the columns is called "rustification". The style, the very height of sophistication in Renaissance England in 1630, was just the right thing to copy in 1911 in order to make a dramatic statement to the Lawrence community. Although startling here in gray concrete, the same details formed from wood and painted white look quite straightforward when seen on houses in Newburyport. The builder, Jack Katz, came from South America, planning to convince the Valley to build with concrete. This house was his showcase.

In 1916, the house burned: the loss was listed at $48,000, a tremendous amount for the time. Only the outside shell remained. Legend on Prospect Hill says Jack Katz set the fire himself trying to kill someone, maybe not Mrs. Aaron Currier and her daughter, Ella, who died in the blaze. The house stood empty for several years. Finally a new roof was added and the inside rebuilt.

The neighborhood children nicknamed this the "Tootsie Roll House" in the 1950's in honor of those columns.

#52 Carney's Stable, 117 Osgood St., North Andover

Carney left his mark with a magnificent carriage house

Turn onto Osgood Street at the North Common and immediately you will see this carriage house. And its mansion, which surely must be magnificent to deserve such an elaborate out-building? Where is it? Gone, without even a photograph remaining.

The carriage house was built about 1908 by Michael Carney, a successful liquor dealer from Lawrence. He bought the corner, its house and barns and about 60 additional acres when its owner, Josiah Crosby, successful at groceries but unsuccessful at real estate, sold 'Elm Vale' - his name for the property - at auction in 1885.

A carriage house is what its name implies: storage for carriages and tack, stalls for horses, a second floor for hay and living quarters for the horse men, a specialized barn. And what high style has been lavished upon this barn! The long line of the roof and the massive facade are broken by the middle section which sits out over the barn doors. The distinct sections are outlined with elaborate columns and strong returns at the eaves, as well as the horizontal band below the overhang. The Palladian window - named after the Italian, Palladio, who popularized the pattern of one arched window flanked by smaller side lights - would be acceptable in a church with its columns and brackets, its glass patterns. Just as acceptable would be that oval gable vent with its oversized keystones. Even the barn door bracing is ornamental, patterned into overlapping stars.
No wonder the corner was called Carney's Corner, and the carriage house, Carney's Stable.

#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.

#36 54-56 Osgood St., S. Lawrence

A house of symmetry, columns and dentil moulding in Lawrence

The 7th and 8th grade students at the Kane School are studying American history by learning about their own neighborhood. This house, just down the street from the school, is perfect for this. It shows the energy and confidence of the country and Lawrence, creating a new world, finding new ways.

This Colonial Revival house was built in 1900 for Jeremiah McCarthy, a liquor dealer. His renter at No. 54 was William Walsh, a librarian.

It is a wonderful house. There are so many details in this facade. Luckily they are anchored by the symmetry and the bulk of the main house. When it was built Americans had discovered their past and Colonial architecture. Here are colonial ideas of symmetry, columns with simple capitals and dentil moulding. (The simple little square blocks reminded someone of teeth, hence the name, dentils.)
But look how these colonial motifs are put together. The symmetrical front bay, attached to the center of the square house is more important visually than the house. The bay has angled windows on the first and second floors and then breaks through the roof line on the third to become a square gable with columns on the corners, and a triangle with a sunburst at the top. There are dentils everywhere and never just one column where there is space for two. Add the stained glass, the bay to the south, the varied windows, and the porches, and you have a house much more connected to exuberant Victorian life than the simple forms used at the time of the American Revolution.

#121 - 10 Maplewood Ave., Methuen (10/24/97?)

This style is well adapted to those narrow city lots





Some house layouts have names. "Ranch" brings to mind a one story house with a front door on one side of the living room. "Colonial" suggests a two story house with a centered front door which opens into a hall with a room to the left and another to the right.

This house also has a familiar layout - gable to the street, two stories, entrance to the side to a hall with a stair and rooms to one side. Popular from before 1800 to World War I, and still widely used for duplexes and town houses, this layout seems to have no name. These houses are usually described by their decoration, from Greek Revival in 1830 to Queen Anne in 1890.

This particular house was built in about 1902, the first house on Maplewood Avenue. Charles Wilkerson, the man standing in the yard, was the owner, and his family still lives here today. If you drive up the street, you will see several other houses built soon after this one, in the same pattern, the one across the street being the closest copy. Although this house is now covered with vinyl siding, on the house across the street the dentils still run up the eaves and across the gable, a Colonial Revival detail that manages to look charmingly Victorian as it outlines the side, front and bay window of the house.

The owners have the 1902 contract for the house, a standard 12 page form with spaces filled in by the builder, Richardson Brothers. They add a note that the house is one foot larger in all directions than the plan specified. That's why this house looks ample and broad, not quite as up and down and snug as its mate across the street.

note: I was asked to write this column as a birthday present for the first owner's grand-daughter. I was happy to comply. It was fun to give her a surprise when she opened the newspaper that Sunday morning.

#26 - 190 Berkeley Street, Methuen, 1930s

Old World quaintness touches this Depression era home

After the First World War, many Americans turned their backs on Europe in favor of our colonial past for inspiration. But not everyone - while some designers admired the European use of contemporary materials such as steel and concrete, still others discovered French and English medieval cottages. These, with their steep roofs and asymmetrical design, had a quaint look that appealed to Americans. Their reasoning was that they already had houses with adequate furnaces, electricity and indoor plumbing - now they wanted comfortable and cozy homes. This house, at 190 Berkeley St, reflects the style and feelings of those few that were built during the 1930s, in the post-WWI and Great Depression era.

The home is one of three built side-by-side for the Brandy family, Methuen mill owners, and it is an excellent example of the houses built to imitate the cottages in the English Cotswold hills.
The layout is irregular with steep roofs that do not match in pitch or height - the roof over the front door is even lower on one side than on the other. The windows, with casements grouped together, peek out from under the roof overhang, reminding us of windows under thatched roofs in England. The front entry is small and unadorned; the brick on the first floor gives way to rough-sawn siding (knots and all), extending into the eaves, and all done in natural colors. The chimney of irregular stone topped with chimney pots anchors the house spreading out around it.

But note the modern details. There is a sun room on the left (south) end, a garage attached to the house (invisible here behind the plantings), and the house is set nearly on the ground, as deep foundations could now be dug easily by machine (instead of by hand).

#63 - Methuen Firehouse, Swan and East St, c1922

Methuen firehouse rang in a new era of civic duty

This firehouse sits quietly on the land, low-key and almost ordinary, indicating that fire protection in 1922 had become part of accepted civic responsibility - no longer something to brag about.

Yet it is a building with quiet pride. Built solidly of brick, its scale is generous: large bays for the trucks, and a triple window to let light and sun into the firemen's quarters. The large windows, and doors with glass panes, also allow passersby to admire the engines. And the broad roof with its deep overhang and turned rafters, typical 1920's residential detailing, is fitting for a station serving the newly built residential neighborhoods to the west and the truck farms on the Merrimack to the east.

But the wide lintel over the doors, coupled with brackets (much simplified since Victorian times), keep the station from looking too domestic. The lintel also supports the brick above, which is laid in a decorative - decidedly not structural - herringbone pattern. A nice touch is the row of brick headers just above the lintel that continues around the corner and down the long side wall.

The architect, John Ashton, was part of the firm Ashton, Huntress and Pratt, which had offices on Essex Street in Lawrence until the 1950's. They designed many public buildings in the area, including the B&M Railroad Station in South Lawrence and the Steven Barker School.

Another interesting fact is that when the station was built, East and Swan Streets met at an angle - the safety of the driving public did not require the right angle stop that is there today.

#51 - 13 Williams St., Andover, c1920

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

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

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

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

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

#50 - 534 Prospect St., Methuen, c1905

Dutch Colonial in Methuen was constructed about 1905

Dutch Colonials originally were built in New York around the Hudson River. The Dutch colonists put their houses together differently from how our English settlers built in the Merrimack Valley. The gambrel roof is a natural way to cover the Dutch post and beam frame. Sometimes the roof was expanded to cover a porch. Once in a while someone added dormers.

Architects in the late 19th century, borrowing from colonial America, reshaped the Dutch farmhouse into what became a very popular early 20th Century style. There are Dutch Colonials all over America: little and big, some with porches, some with columns and pediments and arches, English colonial detailing, but all with that bit of gambrel roof on the ends. The house is really a full two stories, except for the last few feet on each side. With gambrel ends, the house appears to be one story with a dormer poking through the roof.

This house on Prospect Street, Methuen, was built about 1905, we think, because a mortgage taken that year was large enough to pay for not only a piece of land, but also the construction of a house. Note the front porch. This is not a rural stoop, built for weather protection or a spot to shell peas - this porch is for people who live in a town and expect to be part of it. The columns with their lattice and the low wall create a sense of place, a gathering spot: space to entertain, to talk with neighbors, to leisurely watch the comings and goings on Prospect Street.

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

Andover home is an example of late Victorian architecture

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

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

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

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


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

#49 - Greenfield St., S. Lawrence, 1910

Shingle-style homes conveyed a comfortable sense of shelter

Here's a house with a gambrel roof and balanced windows, but this certainly doesn't feel like the colonial houses described in past articles.

About 1880, people began to build houses in a manner we now call the shingle style. As the name implies, shingles covered most of the walls and roof. The continuous surface of shingles coupled with the gambrel roof conveys a sense of shelter, as appealing as any pre-Revolutionary house, but coming from a different era. Architects designed dramatic shingle style mansions, but many simpler shingle style houses were also built all over the Valley.

This one, built in 1910, is one of my favorites. I especially like the emphasis of the character of the shingle style in the choice of details. The roof isn't just a gambrel, protecting the second floor; it surrounds the first floor too, emphasizing the idea of shelter. The corner post on the front porch is round and massive, big enough to carry the visual weight of that roof. The column also gives the porch the feeling of being hollowed out, within the boundaries of the house. And balancing the front, hardly visible here, are two more half columns, pilasters, which repeat the feeling of holding up the all-encompassing roof.

William Wood built this house, along with the rest of the neighborhood, probably as advertising for the American Woolen Mills. The architect, Perley F. Gilbert, of Andover and Lowell, designed each house to be built for under $2500. Each had the latest amenities: hot and cold running water, gas for lighting, stoves for heat, a cement basement floor, a clothes line. But there was no space for cars, central heat or electricity - that came later.

For a description of a gambrel roof, please read column #46, The John Ward House in Haverhill.

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

House that ice cream built owned by former slave

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

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

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

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

#80 - 3 West Lowell St., Lawrence, MA, 1922 (02/02/92)

Roaring '20s Colonial Revival alive and well in Lawrence

E.O. Steinert, a Lawrence contractor, built this house at 3 West Lowell Street in Lawrence in 1922. When I first saw it on a sunny day, all those fancy cut rafters, brackets and railings cast marvelous shadows across the face of the house. This is a fine example of Colonial Revival architecture with its ordered windows and columned porch presenting a formal face to the world.

I want to compare the way this house talks to the world with the way our colonial ancestors saw themselves within the community, since I said I would try to show something of how people lived here in the Valley at the time of the witch trials. Imagine you were invited here for tea, 70 years ago. You wouldn't just walk in the door, but would come through the stone wall, across the front lawn, and wait on the front porch to be welcomed by your hostess who would usher you into one of the front rooms. On the other hand, the delivery man, bringing tea cakes, went around to the back door. Neither you nor he would see the whole house - the family here could show outsiders what they chose.

That sense of separation from the world would have bewildered families living here in 1692. Back then, people walked into each other's houses regularly, and because families lived mainly in one room, one's whole life was open to inspection when a neighbor stopped in. A 'Good Wife' - a title of respect - believed it was her duty to visit her neighbors to insure that they were conforming to the moral code of the community. Our sense of privacy is something they simply would not have understood.

(50 people from Andover were accused of witchcraft, not 43, as I wrote earlier. But none from Andover were killed. Those killed were usually hung.)

#39 - Graham House, Wheeler Street, Andover, c1927 (06/03/90)

Many architectural styles went into Phillips clubhouse.

This building asks to be noticed. From its cupola to its front facade, every detail asks for your attention. Therefore, it’s surprising that it was built for a secret society. In 1887, when the AUV – Auctoritas, Unitas, Veritas – Society was founded at Phillips Academy, Andover, it and several other fraternities on campus had secret meetings and memberships. The school tried to prohibit such societies, but finally decided to regulate them instead. Forty years later, AUV was rich enough to build this elegant clubhouse. The Boston architects, Codman and Despradelle, borrowed the steep roof from medieval Europe, the cupola from a Colonial church, the Palladian window from a Georgian country house and the garland around the orb in the front gable from Renaissance Italy. The elements were put together in a way unrecognizable by those early builders, and we now label the result “Period.” The architects knew that club members and the rest of the school would come to this building on foot down the hill from the main campus.
So the front, more than three stories high with its green copper wreath against the red brick,
catches the eye from a distance.

And, as you approach, the artistry of the detailed workmanship is a pleasure to see. However, it is very hard to view what might be happening inside. The facade, inviting though it is visually, was a barrier for the secret society within. In the 1950s, Phillips Academy phased out all fraternities. This club, renamed Graham House, became the home of the religion Department.
The building is now used as Phillips Academy’s counseling center.

I think today this collection of details would be called Beaux Arts.

(color photo from the Phillips Andover website)
(GHW Bush was a member - ed)