Buildings

Francis A. Seamans House, Salem, Massachusetts

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The house at 48 Chestnut Street in Salem, around 1910. Image courtesy of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum, Frank Cousins Glass Plate Negatives Collection.

The house in 2023:

The early 20th century was they heyday of the Colonial Revival architectural movement, although in many cases these buildings bore little resemblance to actual colonial-era buildings. However, this house in Salem is an exception, and it stands out as an excellent 20th century imitation of 18th century architecture. It was built in 1910, and its architect, William G. Rantoul, drew heavily from the design of Salem’s famous Derby House when designing it. The result is a convincing replica that fits in well with the historic 18th and early 19th century homes in this neighborhood.

The original residents of this house were Francis and Caroline Seamans. They were both about 50 at the time, and Francis was a business owner who sold contractor supplies. He died in 1930, and Caroline subsequently sold the house. By the 1940 census she was listed as a boarder in a house around the corner from here, at 384 Essex Street.

The first photo was probably taken soon after the house was completed, and not much has changed since then. Although much newer than its neighbors, it is nonetheless a historic property in its own right, and it stands as a good example of early 20th century Colonial Revival architecture. it is a contributing property in  the Chestnut Street District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

Joseph Dean House, Salem, Massachusetts

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The house at the northeast corner of Essex and Flint Streets in Salem, probably around 1890-1910. Image courtesy of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum, Frank Cousins Glass Plate Negatives Collection.

The house in 2023:

This house has been expanded and altered many times over the years, but it is said to have been built around 1706 as the home of Captain Joseph Dean and his wife Elizabeth Flint. He did not get to enjoy the house for very long, because he died in 1709, but the house would remain in his family for many years, until it was sold around 1775.

The next owner of the house was Colonel Joseph Sprague, who served in the American Revolution. He also played a role in Leslie’s Retreat, a confrontation in Salem between British redcoats and colonial militiamen that occurred a little less than two months before the battles of Lexington and Concord. He lived here until his death in 1808, and the house was subsequently inherited by his daughter Sarah.

Sarah Sprague had married Dr. William Stearns in 1781, and by the time she inherited this house they had ten children. The third floor of the house appears to have been added at some point around this time, as was the portico above the front door, which is believed to have been made by Samuel McIntire, the famous architect and builder.

The Stearns family owned the house throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. The 1880 census, for example, shows William and Sarah’s daughter Harriet—who by this point was 79 years old—living here with her nephew William and his family. This younger William Stearns was a lawyer, and he was the son of William and Sarah’s youngest child Richard Stearns. By 1880 he was 57 years old, and his family here included his wife Hannah and  their sons William and Richard, both of whom were also lawyers. The family also employed three live-in servants here.

The first photo was taken at some point around the turn of the 20th century. By then, the house had undergone further changes, including additions to the back and right side. It also had a porch on the right side, which is partially visible in the photo. William Stearns died in 1905, but his son Richard subsequently inherited the house. He was the great-great grandson of Joseph Sprague, making him the fifth consecutive generation to own the property. During the 1910 census he was living here with his wife Carrie, their five children, and two servants.

The house ultimately remained in the family until 1930, and it was subsequently converted into an inn and tea house known as the East India House. It has since been converted into apartments, with a total of eight units in the building. On the exterior, though, not much has changed in its appearance. The shutters—which would not have been original to the house—have been removed, but overall it still looks essentially the same as it did at the turn of the century. Along with the other nearby homes, it is now part of the Chestnut Street District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

Joseph Neal House, Salem, Massachusetts

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The house at 358 Essex Street in Salem, probably around 1890-1910. Image courtesy of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum, Frank Cousins Glass Plate Negatives Collection.

The house in 2023:

The house in the center of these photos was built around 1729 as the home of Joseph Neal. Over the years it was expanded several times, and by the mid-19th century it was divided into two separate properties, with one family owning the western half of the left side, and another family owning the eastern half on the right. The early ownership history seems difficult to trace, but according to the book Architecture in Salem by Bryan F. Tolles Jr., the western half was owned by the Clark family during the 19th century, and the eastern half was owned by the Morgan family.

The first photo was taken sometime around the turn of the century. It was around this time that the Benson family acquired the entire building, and the 1911 city atlas lists the owner as Rebecca A. Benson. The house would remain in the Benson family for many years, and throughout this time the exterior has remained well preserved in its historic appearance.

Today, the house is still standing here on Essex Street, as are the homes on either side of it. The elm trees that once lined the street are long gone, but otherwise this scene is still very recognizable more than a century after the first photo was taken. These houses, along with the other historic homes on Essex Street and the adjacent streets, are now part of the Chestnut Street District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

Ropes Mansion, Salem, Massachusetts (2)

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The Ropes Mansion at 318 Essex Street in Salem, probably around 1895-1910. Image courtesy of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum, Frank Cousins Glass Plate Negatives Collection.

The house in 2023:

As explained in more detail in a previous post, this house was built around the late 1720s as the home of Samuel Barnard. He was originally from Deerfield, Massachusetts, but he moved to Salem after the death of his first wife Mary and his son Samuel in 1720. In 1723 he remarried to Rachel Barnard, his cousin’s widow, and they lived in this house together until her death in 1743. Samuel later married his third wife, Elizabeth, who died in 1753, and then he subsequently married his fourth wife, Catherine, in 1756.

Samuel Barnard died in 1762, and he had no surviving heirs, so his nephew Joseph Barnard inherited this house. In 1768 he sold it to Nathaniel Ropes, a lawyer and judge who served on the Governor’s Council and on the Inferior Court of Common Pleas. In 1772, Ropes was appointed as a justice on the Superior Court of Judicature, the highest court in the colony. However, this was an inopportune time to be a justice on the royal court, especially for someone with Loyalist sentiments like Ropes. His house was supposedly attacked by an angry mob in March 1774, while Ropes was inside and gravely ill from smallpox. He died the following day, and the stress from the riot is said to have been a contributing factor in his death.

Many Loyalists lost their property in Massachusetts during the Revolution, but the Ropes family managed to retain ownership of this house, and it remained in the family for many years. By the late 19th century it was the home of Nathaniel Ropes V, the great grandson of Judge Ropes. He died in 1893, and ownership then passed to his three unmarried sisters: Sarah, Mary, and Eliza. They modernized the house with hat, electricity, and plumbing, and they also moved it further back from the street and added a large wing in the back.

The first photo was likely taken at some point during the sisters’ ownership, or soon after. The last living member of the family was Eliza Ropes, who died in 1907. With no children or close living relatives, she left the property to the Essex Institute, which subsequently preserved the house as a museum.

Today, the house is owned by the Essex Institute’s successor, the Peabody Essex Museum. It is one of a number of historic homes owned by the museum, and it stands as an important architectural landmark. However, it is a major tourist destination in modern Salem for different reasons. The 1993 film Hocus Pocus used the house as a filming location, and it was prominently featured as the home of one of the main characters, Allison Watts.

Oliver Ellsworth Homestead, Windsor, Connecticut (2)

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The Oliver Ellsworth Homestead at 778 Palisado Avenue in Windsor, around 1900. Image from Connecticut Magazine, Volume VI.

The house in 2023:

As explained in an earlier post, this house was the home of Oliver Ellsworth, a prominent Connecticut politician in the post-Revolution era. The main part of the house was built in 1781, but it was later expanded in 1788 with an addition on the right side, and later in the 19th century with the addition of the columns and porch on the right side. The house is located on the east side of Palisado Avenue in the northeastern part of modern-day Windsor, a few hundred yards to the west of the Connecticut River.

Oliver Ellsworth was born in Windsor in 1745, and he grew up in an earlier house on this site. As a young man he attended Yale and the College of New Jersey (modern-day Princeton), and after graduation he became a lawyer. In 1772 he married Abigail Wolcott, and they had nine children who were born between 1774 and 1791: Abigail, Oliver, Oliver, Martin, William, Frances, Delia, William, and Henry. Ellsworth inherited the family house in the early 1780s, and the original house was evidently demolished in order to build the current one in 1781, although it is possible that a portion of the old one was incorporated into the newer structure. He named the house Elmwood, and planted 13 elm trees in the front yard, representing the original 13 states.

In the meantime, Oliver Ellsworth became involved in politics during the American Revolution, including serving as a Connecticut delegate to the Continental Congress throughout most of the war. After the war he became a state judge, but in 1787 he was selected as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, which drafted the current United States Constitution. There, he worked with fellow Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman to create the Connecticut Compromise, establishing the current bicameral federal legislature with proportional representation in the House and equal representation for each state in the Senate.

Ellsworth had to leave the Philadelphia convention before the Constitution was finished, so he did not sign the final draft of it. However, once the Constitution was ratified, he played several important roles in the new government. He was one of Connecticut’s first two senators, serving from 1789 to 1796, and during this time perhaps his most significant contribution was writing the Judiciary Act of 1789. In the Constitution, the structure of the judicial branch was intentionally left vague, to allow Congress to establish courts as they saw fit. This act set the size of the Supreme Court, and it also established a system of lower federal courts and judicial districts.

The first Chief Justice of the United States was John Jay, who served from 1789 to 1795, when he resigned to become governor of New York. George Washington then nominated John Rutledge as the next Chief Justice, and Rutledge served for a few months as a recess appointment. However, the Senate ultimately rejected his appointment, so Washington instead nominated Ellsworth, who was unanimously approved by the Senate. He became Chief Justice on March 8, 1796, and he served in that role for the next four years. At the time, the Supreme Court was not generally seen as being anywhere near as important as the other two branches of the federal government, so there were no landmark cases during Ellsworth’s time, although he did institute the practice of justices issuing a single majority opinion, rather than each justice writing an individual opinion.

In 1799, while Ellsworth was still serving as Chief Justice, President John Adams sent him to France as an envoy, where he negotiated with Napoleon in order to prevent war between the two countries. However, the trip to Europe left Ellsworth in poor health, and he ultimately retired from the court in December 1800. This decision would prove to have far-reaching effects; it came in the closing months of Adams’s presidency, after he had already been defeated for re-election by Thomas Jefferson. However, Adams was still president until March 1801, and as such he nominated John Marshall as Ellsworth’s replacement. Confirmed by the Senate in 1801, Marshall would go on to serve as Chief Justice for the next 34 years, where he played a crucial role in establishing key precedents and upholding Federalist ideals, long after the Federalist party itself had faded into obscurity. Had Ellsworth not retired when he did, his successor would likely have been someone appointed by Thomas Jefferson, which would likely have radically altered the course of American history.

This house remained Oliver Ellsworth’s home throughout his political career, and during this time he entertained visitors such as George Washington and John Adams. Washington’s visit came on October 21, 1789, when he stopped here during his tour of the New England states. He spent an hour here on his way from Hartford to Springfield, writing in his diary:

By promise I was to have Breakfasted at Mr. Ellsworths at Windsor on my way to Springfield, but the Morning proving very wet and the rain not ceasing till past 10 Oclock I did not set out till half after that hour; I called however on Mr. Ellsworth and stay’d there near an hour.

A decade later, on October 3, 1799, John Adams became the second sitting president to visit this house. This occurred exactly a month before Ellsworth departed for France, so it seems likely that much of their visit involved conversation about diplomatic issues and the potential for war with France.

Following his return to America and his retirement from the Supreme Court, Ellsworth came back here to his home in Windsor, where he lived for the rest of his life, until his death in 1807 at the age of 62. The house would remain in his family for nearly a century after his death, and it was still owned by his descendants when the first photo was taken around 1900.

The first photo shows several exterior alterations that had occurred during the 19th century, including the columns and portico on the right side, along with exterior shutters on the windows. Overall, though, it still looked much the same as it did when Oliver Ellsworth lived here a century earlier. There were also many large elm trees in the front yard in the first photo, which were likely the same ones that Ellsworth had planted here.

In 1903, shortly after the first photo was taken, the Ellsworth family donated the house to the Connecticut chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. It was then preserved as a museum, and over the years it has seen few exterior changes, aside from removing the exterior shutters. The elm trees that Ellsworth had planted are now long gone, having probably fallen victim to Dutch Elm Disease in the early 20th century, but the house itself still stands as an important Connecticut landmark. It is still owned by the DAR, and it is open periodically for public tours.

Medlicott House, Longmeadow, Massachusetts (2)

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The house at 720 Longmeadow Street in Longmeadow, on November 4, 1916. Image courtesy of the Longmeadow Historical Society, Paesiello Emerson Collection.

The scene in 2023:

As explained in more detail in the previous post, this house was evidently built sometime in the early 19th century. It was originally the home of Calvin and Experience Burt, but in 1851 it was purchased by William G. Medlicott, a woolen manufacturer who lived here until his death in 1883. During this time, he made substantial renovations to the house, including adding the porch and Mansard roof, both of which significantly altered the original Federal-stye architecture of the house.

His son, William B. Medlicott, subsequently owned the house and lived here until 1917. It was then demolished around 1921, and a around 1927 a new house was built further back on the lot. That new house is still standing, as seen in the distance on the right side of the first photo, but the only surviving remnant from the first photo is the Brewer- Young Mansion, which is visible on the left side of both photos.