Category: Colonial Revival

Hawthorne Hotel (1925)

by Dan//Colonial Revival, Hotels, Salem

In 1809, the corner of Washington Square and Essex Street, off Salem Common in Salem, became the site of the Archer Block. Later called the Franklin Building, it was a commercial and residential building constructed under the direction of Samuel McIntire. Destroyed by fire in 1860, it was replaced with an Italianate-style successor. From 1833, the property was owned by the Salem Marine Society, which later agreed to raze the building and sell the land for construction of a new hotel. In return, the hotel built a room for the society’s use on the top floor. The hotel, built in 1924-1925, was named the Hawthorne Hotel, in honor of the famous Salem author. It was designed by architect Philip Horton Smith of the firm of Smith & Walker.

Unitarian Universalist Church of Marblehead (1911)

by Dan//Churches, Colonial Revival, Marblehead

In 1716, parishioners of Marblehead’s Congregational Church who favored the liberal minister, Rev. Edward Holyoke, broke away to form the town’s Second Congregational Church. A church was soon built on New Meetinghouse Lane, now called Mugford Street. The church embraced Unitarianism in 1820, under the leadership of Rev. John Bartlett. A new church was built in 1831-1832, but it was destroyed in a fire in 1910. The current gambrel-roofed Unitarian Universalist Church of Marblehead was built in 1911 and was expanded to the rear in the 1960s, after the ancient graves immediately behind the church had been moved to new locations in the old graveyard.

Vilna Shul (1919)

by Dan//Boston, Colonial Revival, Synagogues

The Vilna Shul is an Orthodox synagogue on Phillips Street on Boston‘s Beacon Hill. It was built for a congregation of Eastern European immigrants, primarily from Vilnius, Lithuania. The Anshei Vilner Congregation was founded in 1893 in the West End and moved to the north slope of Beacon Hill in 1906. Vilna Shul, designed by Boston architect David Kalman, was built in 1919. The Jewish community had mostly left the neighborhood by the 1980s and there was a debate over the future use of the building. Vilna Shul, the last remaining purpose-built immigrant era synagogue in downtown Boston, was restored to become a Jewish cultural heritage center. Continue reading “Vilna Shul (1919)”

Francis A. Seamans House (1909)

by Dan//Colonial Revival, Houses, Salem

The house at 48 Chestnut Street in Salem was built in 1909 for Caroline O. Emmerton, the philanthropist who had the year before purchased the House of the Seven Gables and would oversee its restoration as a museum. Designed by architect William G. Rantoul and modeled on the Derby House in Salem, the house on Chestnut Street was quickly sold to Francis A. Seamans, who lived there for over twenty years.

Y.M.C.A. Building, Salem (1898)

by Dan//Colonial Revival, Neoclassical, Organizations, Salem

In 1873, Alexander Graham Bell took up residence in the Sanders Homestead on Essex Street in Salem. The house was home to the grandmother of Bell’s deaf pupil George Sanders, whose father, Thomas Sanders, became an investor in Bell’s telephone system. Until 1876, Bell used a room in the Sanders House to conduct the experiments which led to his development of the telephone. The house was later torn down and in 1898 a Y.M.C.A. building was completed on the site. Designed by architect Walter J. Paine of Beverly, it combines elements of the Beaux-Arts and Colonial Revival styles. The building originally had an elaborate fourth-story loggia, since removed. The Y.M.C.A. Building also houses the North Shore Children’s Museum.