Ropes Mansion (1727)

by Dan//Colonial, Houses, Salem

Built on Essex Street in Salem around 1727, the Ropes Mansion has been open to the public since 1912. It was built by merchant Samuel Barnard of Deerfield and sold by Barnard’s heirs to Judge Nathaniel Ropes II in 1768. He was a loyalist and died of smallpox as his house was being attacked by a mob of Patriots in 1774. His family went into exile, but reclaimed the house after the Revolutionary War. It remained in the Ropes family until 1907, when sisters Mary and Eliza Ropes bequeathed it as the Ropes Memorial. Various alterations have been made to the interior of the house over the years, most dramatically in 1894, when Colonial Revival modifications were made and the structure was moved back from the street. The building‘s current entryway dates to the 1830s and was inspired by Asher Benjamin‘s American Builder’s Companion (1827). The house also has formal gardens dating to 1912. The house has had several fires: Abigail Ropes burned to death after her dress caught fire in 1839; a disgruntled worker is believed to have started a fire which gutted an addition in 1894; and the third floor attic was damaged in a fire in 2009. Today, the Ropes Mansion is owned by the Peabody Essex Museum.

Wesley United Methodist Church, Salem (1888)

by Dan//Churches, Romanesque Revival, Salem

Wesley United Methodist Church, at 8 North Street in Salem, was designed by Lawrence B. Valk of New York and was constructed in 1888-1889. The local Salem contractors were J.F. Farrin, Joseph N. Parsons, and Joseph N. Peterson. As explained in the Visitor’s Guide to Salem of 1892, at that time Salem had two Methodist churches. One, the

“Lafayette St. Methodist Episcopal Church, at the corner of Harbor street, was built and dedicated in 1853. This society had previously occupied a smaller house of worship on Sewall street, which was again occupied in 1872, as Wesley Chapel, by members who withdrew from the Lafayette St. Society, and who, largely augmented in numbers, re-organized as […] The Wesley Church and, in 1888, erected the large brick and stone church edifice on North street a few doors from Essex. In construction this is quite different from any other church building in the city. By means of sliding doors, the seating capacity can be much increased by connecting the Sunday school rooms, which are on the street end of the building, with the large audience room. The windows of the church being of stained glass present a most beautiful appearance in the evening when services are being held, the brightly lighted interior reflecting attractively through the large gothic memorial window on North street.

The Lafayette Street United Methodist Church moved to a new building at 292 Lafayette Street in 1910 and in 1994 merged with the Wesley United Methodist Church. Since 2007, the Lafayette Street church building has been the First Baptist Church of Salem.

John J. Perry House (1856)

by Dan//Houses, Natick, Vernacular

The Perry House, located on Pleasant Street in South Natick, was built in 1856 by John Jones Perry. In 1834, he had married Mary, the daughter of Oliver N. Bacon, author of A History of Natick (1856). Perry also acquired a barn on the property and moved it back from the street where he used it to stable horses used in his coal business. In 1907, the house and barn were purchased by Anna Kneeland Haggerty Shaw, widow of Robert Gould Shaw. She gave the barn (now Shaw Gym) for use by the town and renovated the house to become a children’s home for the Unitarian Society in Boston. The house has since had other owners, who have used it as a private residence.

General John Glover House (1762)

by Dan//Colonial, Houses, Marblehead

John Glover was a Marblehead fisherman and merchant who rose to the rank of general in the Revolutionary War. His schooner Hannah was the first of many privateers authorized by George Washington to raid British shipping. Glover‘s Marblehead militia became the 14th Continental Regiment, known as the “Amphibious Regiment,” which evacuated Washington’s Continental Army after it lost the Battle of Long Island. His seafaring men would again man the boats for Washington’s Crossing of the Delaware in 1776. John Glover’s gambrel-roofed house at 11 Glover Street in Marblehead was built in 1762.

Rev. T.M. Cooley House (1801)

by Dan//Federal, Granville, Houses

Rev. Timothy Mather Cooley became the minister of Granville’s Congregational Church in 1805. In 1798 and 1799, he led a religious revival in the town, where he had grown up and lived all his life. He described the revival in an article for the Connecticut Evangelical Magazine of January 1802. In 1845, a jubilee was held in Granville, celebrating Cooley’s fifty years there as pastor. A number of his sermons were published during his lifetime and Rev. Cooley also wrote Sketches of the Churches and Pastors in Hampden County, Mass. (1854). After he died in 1859, at the age of 83, Lydia Huntley Sigourney wrote a memorial poem. The Rev. T.M. Cooley House in Granville Center was built in 1801.