Category: Houses

Devereux-Hoffman-Simpson House (1826)

by Dan//Federal, Houses, Salem

The last of the opulent Federal-style brick mansions to be built on Chestnut Street in Salem is the Devereux-Hoffman-Simpson House at 26 Chestnut Street. Built in 1826-1827, the house‘s first resident was Humphrey Devereux. From 1842 to 1878, it was home to Charles Hoffman, a merchant and noted horticulturalist. Hoffman was engaged in trade with the West Coast of Africa. According to Charles S. Osgood and H.M. Batchelder, in their Historical Sketch of Salem, 1626-1879 (1879),

After 1848, the trade was largely in the hands of Robert Brookbouse, Edward D. Kimball, and Charles Hoffman. The last arrival at Salem from the West Coast of Africa was the brig “Ann Elizabeth,” from Sierra Leone, which was entered by Charles Hoffman, in July, 1873. Salem merchants are still engaged in this trade [in 1879], but their vessels do not enter the harbor of Salem.

From 1906 to 1939, the house was owned by Dr. James E. Simpson and his wife. They probably added the bay window above the front entrance.

3 Smith Court, Boston (1799)

by Dan//Boston, Federal, Houses

Smith Court, on Boston’s Beacon Hill, was the center of the city’s African American community in the nineteenth century. The house at 3 Smith Court, a double house with a common entryway, was built in 1799 by two white bricklayers. Just the year before, a ropewalk had been demolished on the property leading to the construction of residences. By 1830, black families were renting the house at 3 Smith Court. The longest resident of the house was was James Scott, an African American clothier, who became a tenant in 1839 and bought the property in 1865. Originally from Virginia, Scott was an abolitionist who was arrested in 1851 for his role in freeing fugitive slave Shadrach Minkins. From 1851-1856, part of the house was rented by William C. Nell, a journalist and abolitionist, who led the campaign to integrate Boston’s public schools. He became the first published African American historian when he wrote Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812 (1851) and Colored Patriots of the American Revolution (1855).

Thomas Smith House (1757)

by Dan//Agawam, Colonial, Houses

Built c. 1757, the Thomas Smith House stands at 251 North West Street in the Feeding Hills section of Agawam. Thomas Smith was born in Suffield (now in Connecticut, but then in Massachusetts) in 1725, married Esther Ball in 1755, and died in 1814. The house, previously known as the Matthew Noble House (Noble, one of Agawam’s earliest settlers, first owned the land on which the house was built), was purchased by the Agawam Historical Association in 2002. Remarkable for the fact that it has not been significantly altered since it built, the Association has restored (pdf) the the house with funding from the Agawam Community Preservation Act. It is now a living history house museum.

Dr. Reuben Champion House (1815)

by Dan//Federal, Houses, West Springfield

The house at 334 Elm Street in West Springfield was built in 1815 for Dr. Reuben Champion at the time of his marriage to Pama Stebbins. Dr. Champion was born in West Springfield in 1784 and went to school in Westfield. He set up his practice in West Springfield in 1809 and has left account books (now at UMASS) containing a chronological listing of treatment and remedies, but with very little personal information about patients. Patients could earn credit for his services by working his farm land (his homelot occupied several acres). The doctor also served as a justice of the peace and in the state senate. He died in 1865 and is buried in Meeting House Hill Cemetery, which is now called White Church Hill Cemetery. Members of the Champion family lived in the house for 163 years.

Philip Kilroy House (1905)

by Dan//Houses, Mission Revival, Springfield

On Chestnut Street in Springfield is a stuccoed Mission Revival-style house, built in 1905 as the home and office of Dr. Philip Kilroy. Coming to the United States from Ireland with his parents in 1880, Dr. Kilroy (1866-1932) studied at Harvard Medical School and in Europe, becoming a respected neurologist, dermatologist and psychologist. He was also an antiquarian, who donated his archaeological collection of Indian artifacts to what is now the Springfield Science Museum in 1902. From 1936 to 1981, radio station WSPR owned and broadcast from the Kilroy House. It was later purchased by the Springfield Library & Museums Association and is used as administrative offices. Next to the house stands a tower of turtles topped by Yertle, part of the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden.

Daniel Bray House (1776)

by Dan//Colonial, Houses, Salem

The house at 1 Brown Street in Salem, which has been vacant for several years and has an unsafe building mark on its door, was built in 1776 for Daniel Bray. A master mariner who sailed as ship’s master on several vessels owned by merchant John Derby, Bray built the house on land owned by his family, which he later purchased in 1770. After retiring from the sea, Bray managed Derby Wharf in Salem. The house remained in Bray’s family after his death in 1798 until 1856 and was then owned by the Kelley family until 1901. It was probably around 1902 that the front of the house was converted for shop space, serving first as a grocery store and then, at different times, as gift shops or for offices. Since 1983, it has been owned and rented out by the Peabody Essex Museum, which is currently investigating the architectural history of the house and will determine how best to use the structure in the future.