Tag: Gambrel

Jeremiah Page House (1754)

by Dan//Colonial, Danvers, Houses

The Page House in Danvers was built in 1754 by Jeremiah Page, a brick maker, who also fought in the Revolutionary War. During the tea embargo in 1770, Page declared that “no tea would be drunk in his house.” As related in Lucy Larcom‘s poem, “A Gambrel Roof,” Page’s wife invited her lady friends to gather for tea on the roof, since it was “Upon a house is not within it.” In 1774, a room in the house was used as an office by General Thomas Gage, who was then the British military governor of Massachusetts. Jeremiah’s son, John Page, and then his granddaughter, Ann Lemist Page, later lived in the house. In 1850, a grandson of Jeremiah Page attempted to break into the Village Bank next to the house and was shot and killed by a night guard. Various additions were made in the nineteenth century. The building, as explained by Mary H. Northend in Colonial Homes and their Furnishings (1912), originally “consisted of four rooms, but these were later moved back and a new front added, the ell being replaced by a larger one.” Ann Lemist Page, who lived in the home until her death in 1913, was a pioneer in the kindergarten movement and, for a time, she ran a school in her home. In her will, she requested that the house be demolished to prevent its falling into disrepair. The Danvers Historical Society challenged the will in court and was able to purchase the property and move it from Elm Street to Page Street to serve as their headquarters.

Crowninshield-Bentley House (1727)

by Dan//Colonial, Houses, Salem

The Crowninshield-Bentley House was built in 1727 to 1730 on Essex Street in Salem. Four generations of Crowninshields lived in the house, until 1832, beginning with merchant and sea captain John Crowninshield. The building may have begun as a half-house (the east half of the house) and was enlarged by 1761, when John Crowninshield died and his widow Hannah and son Benjamin divided the property. Benjamin added a new addition in 1794, while his mother rented her half of the house out to boarders. The house is also named for Reverend William Bentley, who boarded here from 1791 to 1819, while he was pastor of East Church. Bentley was a Unitarian minister and scholar, famous for his diary. The house was sold to the Hawthorne Hotel in the 1940s and in 1959 the Hotel donated it to the Essex institute. The house‘s modern additions were then removed and it was moved to the grounds of the Essex Institute, where it was restored as a memorial to the wealthy preservationist Louise DuPont Crowninshield. The house, which is a house museum owned by the Peabody Essex Museum, has recently had an extensive restoration.

Bowen House (1695)

by Dan//Colonial, Houses, Marblehead

The oldest sections of the house at 1 Mugford Street in Marblehead, known as the Old Bowen House, are believed to date to 1695. Located near Marblehead’s Old Town House, the building was the home of Nathan Bowen, a merchant who served as Justice of the Peace and Notary Public, and then of Nathan’s son, Ashley Bowen, a sailor, who kept a detailed journal and wrote an autobiography. Ashley Bowen also illustrated his Journal with his own paintings. Ashley Bowen’s nephew, Nathan Bowen, was a noted cabinetmaker. In the twentieth century, the Bowen House was used as the model for a house described in H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Festival” (1925). Lovecraft‘s fictional town of Kingsport is based on Marblehead.

Thomas Pellet House (1670)

by Dan//Colonial, Concord, Houses

The earliest sections of the Thomas Pellet House, off Monument Square and across from the First Parish Church in Concord, date to 1670. The house has had a number of additions, much of the present structure being completed by early in the eighteenth century. The frame house is notable for its stuccoed facade, intended to imitate stonework and most likely added when Benjamin Barrett owned the house in the 1730s. The house was later the home of Dr. Ezekiel Brown, a surgeon in the Revolutionary War. In the nineteenth century, the house became known as the Deacon Tolman or Old Tolman House, after owner Elisha Tolman, who had a shoe shop next door. Another owner was Thomas Heald, a lawyer and member of the Concord Social Circle. Harriett Lothrop, who wrote the Five Little Peppers stories under the name Margaret Sidney, lived in the famous Wayside in Concord and saved a number of historic houses in town in the later nineteenth century, including the Old Tolman House. In 1909, the Old Concord Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution bought the house, which they furnished and maintained, sometimes renting its rooms. They had a public tea room in the house in the 1910s and in 1929 they built an annex to use as a meeting hall. The house was sold in 1951 and the furniture was auctioned. The exterior of the house has recently been renovated, with colonial era style plank frame windows and restored exterior horsehair and wood lathe stucco plaster.

“Old” Nathaniel Ely House (1780)

by Dan//Colonial, Houses, Longmeadow

Nathaniel Ely House

The late Georgian brick house of Deacon Nathaniel Ely is at 674 Longmeadow Street in Longmeadow. It was built in 1780 (originally to house two families, father and son) and is referred to as the “Old” Nathaniel Ely House to differentiate it from the “New” Nathaniel Ely House nearby, built in 1856. The house’s projecting portico is probably a later Colonial Revival addition. Deacon Ely was a captain in the Revolutionary War and Tory prisoners, on their way from Boston to New York, were kept in his house during the war. Dacon Ely’s fourth wife was a widow, Martha Williams Raynolds, daughter of Longmeadow’s minister, Rev. Stephen Williams. As children, Rev. Williams and his sister Eunice had been abducted in the 1704 Raid on Deerfield. Stephen returned to Massachusetts with their father, Rev. John Williams, but Eunice remained in Canada, marrying a Mohawk man and converting to Roman Catholicism. In 1800, Thomas Thorakwaneken Williams, Eunice’s grandson, arrived in Longmeadow with his two sons, Eleazer and John, who were to stay with the Ely’s while they were educated at a local school. John later returned to Canada, but Eleazer Williams remained and attempted to become a Congregational minister, although he faced resistance from relatives due to his Indian heritage. He eventually became a missionary and later claimed to be the Lost Dauphin, son of the executed King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette!

Stebbins-Hammatt House (1795)

by Dan//Colonial Revival, Federal, Houses, Longmeadow

Stebbins-Hammett House

The Stebbins-Hammett House began as a brick house, painted red, built in 1795 for Benjamin Stebbins, in the year following his marriage to Lucy Colton. In the twentieth century, the house was owned by the Hammatt family (Julia B. Hammatt was a graduate of Wellesley in 1925). The house was eventually completely rebuilt in wood, with the exception of the two original brick front rooms on the first floor.