Colonial Homes and Their FurnishingsNorthend, Mary Harrod
History
Colonial Homes and Their Furnishings
Northend, Mary Harrod
Architecture, Colonial; Furniture -- United States
Viewed from any angle, the house presents a series of pictures, each
equally as interesting as the other, and its irregular roof lines,
gables and bays, quaint, diamond-paned windows, and chimneys adorned
with chimney pots, are further embellished by the flowering vines of a
rambler rose, perhaps the finest in the country. While the house can be
seen from the road, it is only when one drives under the archway into
the courtyard, bounded on three sides by barn, stables, and house, that
he can realize its true worth.
[Illustration: PLATE V.--Andrew House Doorway, 1818.]
Salem, fortunate in specimens of early construction, is also fortunate
in examples of latter-day types, and here are to be found several of the
fine brick dwellings, built at the time of her greatest commercial
prosperity. One of these is the Andrews house, located on Washington
Square, and one of the three dwellings erected in 1818. Its brick
exterior gives no hint of its age other than the softening dignity that
time bequeaths, and it stands to-day, tall and broad, its gray-faced
bricks brightened by white trimmings, and its beauty emphasized by a
fine circular porch supported by white columns, topped with a high
balustrade. At one side is a charming old-fashioned garden, laid out in
prim, box-bordered beds, and all about its fence inclosure flowering
vines clamber. Complete, the dwelling cost forty thousand dollars,--a
large sum for the time of its erection.
Every brick used in its construction was first dipped into boiling oil
to render it impervious to moisture, and all the framework is of timbers
seasoned by long exposure to the sun and rain. On one brick is cut the
date of erection, the work of the master builder under whose supervision
the dwelling was erected. The great pillars of the side porch,
overlooking the garden, are packed, so the story goes, with rock
salt--not an uncommon process at that time--to keep out dampness and to
save the wood from being eaten by worms.
Some years previous to the erection of this dwelling, Mr. Nathan
Robinson had constructed on Chestnut Street a brick dwelling, considered
by connoisseurs to be one of the finest specimens to-day extant. The
porch, at the front, is wonderfully fine, and has attracted the
attention of any number of students and architects, who have made a
careful study of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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