In changing hands in 1896, the Tucker-Rice house became subject to alterations which considerably detracted from its original character, architecturally speaking. The previous year, its classic porch had been pronounced by an eminent authority the best-proportioned porch in Salem. It had at the time, too, an ugly modern door, and the adjacent glasswork was not appropriate. In its present location, as we note in the photograph, the fanlights and side-lights are graceful and artistic in Colonial design, while the door itself presents a rare example of the three-piece pattern belonging to the proper period. The porch itself, the work of Samuel McIntire, is in the semi-oval composite style. The tall, slender, fluted columns with their flanking pilasters seem almost to spring into the air, so light is the effect produced by their perfect proportions. The roof of the porch is borne aloft without a semblance of effort, while the easy grade of the stone steps with their wrought-iron railings provides a solid and handsome base for the whole. Directly across the street from the Tucker-Rice house stands the Gardner-White-Pingree mansion, with a porch of similar design, without the fluting of the columns. This was erected in 1810, also the work of McIntire, perhaps his last, and considered the best of his brick houses. THE ROPES MEMORIAL [Illustration: THE ROPES MEMORIAL] At 318 Essex Street stands a complete and beautiful example of the Salem residence at its best, the house now known as the ‘Ropes Memorial,’ erected in 1719, and continuously occupied by successive generations of this famous family over a period of nearly a hundred and fifty years. The Honorable Nathaniel Ropes, Judge of the Superior and Probate Courts, and a stubborn Loyalist, and after him in regular descent four other Nathaniels, lived here from 1768 until 1893, when the last one died. In 1912 a board of trustees, under the instructions by will of Mary Pickman Ropes and Eliza Orne Ropes, assumed the care of the house and its rich content of Colonial treasures, under the name of the ‘Ropes Memorial.’ As originally built, like so many dwellings of its period, the Ropes house stood close to the front of its lot. After the death of the fifth Nathaniel, it was moved back some distance from the street--the effect of the mellow brick walk, the richly carved and ornamented gate-posts, and the intervening lawn being greatly to enhance the dignified and simple beauty of the Ionic entrance with its six-paneled door. [Illustration: CLOSER VIEW OF THE ROPES DOORWAY] This doorway was added in 1807. An original treatment of the fanlight and side-lights of leaded glass, which show a pattern of alternate ovals and circles, is to be noted. The supporting columns rest upon massive plinths of granite, lending an effect of solidity and permanence to the entire construction; the pure white of the woodwork being pleasantly relieved by the green shutters which back the side-lights.