Gideon Tucker House (1809)

by Dan//Federal, Houses, Salem

The Gideon Tucker House, also known as the Tucker-Rice House, is at 129 Essex Street in Salem. It was built in 1808-1809 for Gideon Tucker who, according to Old Time Ships of Salem (1917):

was born March 7, 1778, and built and occupied the house on Essex street opposite the Essex Institute. He was clerk for Joseph Peabody and afterwards a partner in that noted shipping firm, which he left to establish a business of his own. He died February 18, 1861. “A venerable man of exact habits and strict integrity.”

Tucker’s house, designed by Samuel McIntire, once looked very similar to the McIntire-designed Gardner-Pingree House across the street, but the Tucker House was significantly altered in 1910. As described in Cousins and Riley’s Colonial Architecture of Salem (1919):

Because of their spaciousness and large number of rooms, the three-story square houses of brick built during the early nineteenth century lend themselves admirably to adaptation as semi-public institutions, and several splendid old mansions have been so utilized. Thus in 1896 the Father Mathew Catholic Total Abstinence Society, organized in 1875, purchased the Tucker-Rice house at Number 129 Essex Street for its headquarters, and considerably remodeled it. […] Much of the handsome interior wood trim remains, but the splendid elliptical porch, one of the best proportioned in Salem, was removed to the garden of the Essex lnstitute for preservation, where it may now be seen with a contemporary three-piece door from the Rogers house on Essex Street and glasswork of attractive pattern.

In more recent times, the house has been converted for use as condominiums.

Pickering House (1651)

by Dan//Colonial, Gothic, Houses, Salem

One of Salem‘s most interesting buildings is the Pickering House at 18 Broad Street, which is the oldest house in the United States continuously occupied by one family. The earliest section, on the east, was erected by carpenter John Pickering, Sr., around 1651. The house was later expanded to the west in 1671 by his son, John Pickering II, and in 1751, Deacon Timothy Pickering raised the rear lean-to to a full two stories. A two-story ell was added in 1904. The front, with the new addition of two cross gables, was adapted to the Gothic Revival style in 1841. The fence also dates to this period. The house‘s most prominent resident was Timothy Pickering, the arch-Federalist politician (serving as a cabinet member, Senator and US Representative), who had been an aide to Washington during the Revolutionary War. Boston architect Gordon Robb, who also restored the Witch House in Salem, restored the interior of the Pickering House in 1948 and it was opened to the public in 1951 by the nonprofit Pickering Foundation.

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.

Rebecca Nurse Homestead (1678)

by Dan//Colonial, Danvers, Houses

Located on a proprty of 25 acres of fields, pasture and woods at 149 Pine Street in Danvers is the Rebecca Nurse Homestead. The house was mostly likely built in 1678, when Francis Nurse, a skilled maker of wooden household items, began renting the property from owner James Allen. Nurse would eventually purchase the house, where he lived with his wife Rebecca and eight children. In 1692, during the Salem Witch Trials, the 71-year-old Rebecca Nurse was accused of practicing witchcraft. Initially found not guilty at her trial, her young accusers went into convulsive fits which led the jury to return with a guilty verdict. Rebecca Nurse was hanged and her family secretly buried her on the Homestead land. In 1885, the family dedicated a granite memorial in her honor in the Nurse family graveyard. The monument is inscribed with a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. Francis Nurse died in 1695 and the Homestead remained in the Nurse family into the eighteenth century. Rebecca’s great-grandson, Francis, lived in the house and, as a sergeant in the Danvers Alarm Company, responded to the Lexington Alarm in 1775. The Homestead was owned by the Putnam family from 1784 to 1908. Purchased and restored by the Rebecca Nurse Memorial Asociation, the property was given to the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities in 1926 and, since 1981, has been a museum owned by the Danvers Alarm List Company.

Judge Samuel Holten House (1670)

by Dan//Colonial, Danvers, Houses

The Judge Samuel Holten House in Danvers was built in 1670 by Benjamin Holten in what was then known as Salem Village. In the house resided Sarah Holten, who testified against Rebecca Nurse during the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria of 1692. From a much smaller initial core, the house, which served as a tavern, was expanded six different times over the years, making it a prime example of the development in stages of a Colonial house. In the later eighteenth century, Judge Samuel Holten lived in the house. He was a physician and statesman who served as a member of the Continental Congress from 1778 to 1780 and again from 1782 to 1787. In 1778, he was a signer of the Articles of Confederation. Since 1921, the house been owned and restored by the General Israel Putnam Chapter of the Daughter of the American Revolution.