Chimneys on Salem houses were customarily built to rise from the center of the roof--huge structures of brick, containing many flues from the fireplaces opening from the rooms arranged about them on all sides. In later periods they were placed wherever convenience dictated. A fine example of the former style is seen on the Hosmer-Townsend-Waters house at 80 Washington Square, Salem. This building dates from 1795, designed by McIntire, for Captain Joseph Hosmer. Near it, at 82 Washington Square, East, is the Boardman house, where Washington was entertained when in Salem in 1789, and which elicited from him an exclamation of wonder that the people of Salem could build such handsome residences. In Virginia, the Colonial type was also in vogue, but with a difference. The General’s surprise was apparently at the fact that in towns, as well as upon the great estates of the South to which he had been accustomed, so large a degree of taste and comfort could prevail. The side-door of the Hosmer dwelling has an attractive enclosed porch, almost hidden by a huge wistaria which clothes it in a tangle of leafage and bloom. It resembles that already described in the Johonnot house in the presence of oval side-lights, although differing somewhat in architectural features. The front entrance of the Hosmer house closely corresponds with that at the side in design, and both possess the correct six-panel door, relieved by brass latch and knocker. Historical interest attaches to the Hosmer-Waters house in that it was once the home of Henry FitzGilbert Waters, whose genealogical researches and writings are well-known. These include ‘John Harvard and his Ancestry,’ ‘An Examination into the English Ancestry of George Washington,’ ‘Genealogical Gleanings in England.’ Connoisseurs have stated that Mr. Waters’s collection of antique furniture was surpassed by none in New England. ASSEMBLY HALL [Illustration: ASSEMBLY HALL] Not long after the Revolution, the Federal Party in Salem desired a meeting-place, and Samuel McIntire was commissioned to design for this purpose the Assembly Hall. In 1782 the building was erected at 138 Federal Street. Not to be outdone, the Democrats also, though somewhat later, built Washington Hall, likewise the work of McIntire. Social festivities of all sorts immediately found their center in the Assembly Hall. In 1789, when Washington, for whose personal use the Boardman house had been designated during his stay, paid a visit to Salem, a ball was arranged in his honor, and this took place in Assembly Hall, where he opened the festivities with Miss Abbot, daughter of General Abbot, his host of the occasion. Washington, however, turned his fair partner over to General Knox when the dancing began, asserting that this was out of his line. At Assembly Hall a banquet was tendered Lafayette on his first tour of America some years earlier.