1900s

Derby House, Salem, Massachusetts

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

The house in 2019:

As explained in more detail in an earlier post, this house was built in 1762 by merchant Richard Derby as a home for his son Elias Hasket Derby and his newlywed wife Elizabeth Crowninshield. It has a brick, Georgian-style exterior with a gambrel roof, and it is believed to have been designed and built at least in part by Joseph McIntire, who was paid 40 shillings for work on the house.

The house was located directly across the street from Derby Wharf, where Elias could keep a close eye on the family merchant business. During the American Revolution he invested in a number of privateers that preyed on British shipping, and in peacetime he became one of the first American merchants to trade with China and southeast Asia. His career coincided with Salem’s peak of prosperity as an international port, and he was among the wealthiest merchants in New England at the time, which would later earn him the moniker “King Derby” in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter.

Elias and Elizabeth Derby would live here in this house until the early years of the Revolution, but they apparently moved elsewhere by 1778. In 1782 they moved into a house at the corner of Washington and Lynde Streets, and then to another house in 1799 on the present-day site of the Old Town Hall. In the meantime, this house here on Derby Street was owned by a series of other merchants and sea captains, including Henry Prince and Henry Ropes.

Salem’s status as a major seaport steadily declined in the 19th century, especially after the Embargo Act of 1807 and the subsequent War of 1812. This was reflected in the changing ownership of the Derby House. By the 1870s it was owned by Daniel Leahy, an Irish immigrant who worked as a stevedore. The Leahy family would live here until around the turn of the 20th century, and they subsequently rented it to several different immigrant families. The first photo was taken at some point during this time period, probably around the 1890s or early 1900s.

By the early 20th century the house was recognized for its historical and architectural significance, and it was eventually purchased by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities in 1927 and restored to its original appearance. Then in 1937 it was transferred to the National Park Service, and a year later it became a part of the newly-established Salem Maritime National Historic Site. The house is still a part of the National Historic Site more than 80 years later, and it stands as one of the many well-preserved historic homes from Salem’s heyday as a prosperous seaport.

Eagle Hotel, Concord, New Hampshire

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The Eagle Hotel on North Main Street in Concord, around 1907. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2022:

The Eagle Hotel, shown here in these two photos, is part of a well-preserved group of historic buildings that line the east side of North Main Street, directly across from the New Hampshire State House. This had previously been the site of the Eagle Coffee House, which opened in 1827. However, that building was destroyed by a fire in 1851, and it was subsequently replaced by the present-day building. It has undergone several major renovations since then, but it still stands as an important landmark in downtown Concord.

The new hotel was completed in November 1852, and it was featured in a November 10, 1852 article in the New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette. The article included the following description:

The main edifice occupies 115 feet front by 40 in width, four stories high. The roof is nearly flat, and tinned. The front of the lower story is of handsomely dressed Rattle Snake granite. The superstructure is of elegant pressed brick. It is ornamented with a handsome façade, embracing two piazzas, each forty feet in length, over the main entrance to the hotel. The windows are covered with green Venetian blinds. On the first story of the main building are the office of the hotel, with two spacious stores on either side. There is also an ell of brick, with tinned roof, in the rear of the main building, in which are the kitchen, gentlemen’s ordinary, and two stories containing sleeping chambers. The whole building contains about 100 rooms.

In the front of the second story of the main building are a pair of public parlors to be used for gentlemen, a large saloon, 40 by 30 feet, and another pair of parlors for ladies. The floors of the former are covered with elegant Brussels carpeting, and the latter with tapestry carpeting. The furniture is of the most elegant description. The windows are handsomely curtained, and the rooms filled with sofas, lounges and chairs, of every variety of shape, covered with brocades and velvets, mirrors, &c. The ladies’ parlors contain two new and superior pianos, one of Boston and the other of New York manufacture. The suits of parlors are connected by folding doors. The main entries run lengthwise of the building, and separate these parlors from the sleeping chambers in the rear, and a ladies’ ordinary on the same floor in which tables may be laid for 70 persons. The latter is so arranged that, by means of folding doors, it may be converted into two or three spacious parlors with bed-chambers adjoining.

The third and fourth stories are conveniently divided into parlors and sleeping rooms.—Some of the former are arranged with one or two bed-rooms adjoining, for the use of families.

In the first story, as we have already remarked, is the Office of the Hotel. The main entrance to it is from Main street; and one door north there is a private entrance for ladies to the parlors and rooms above. The Office is about 40 feet square. From this room, flights of winding stairs communicate with the stories above, leaving an oval space through which light is admitted from a sky-light of stained glass in the roof. The Reading-room is in the rear of these stairs, on the same floor and connected with the Office by arches. Both rooms, including the entries above, are warmed by a large furnace in the basement. Adjoining the Office, is a barber’s shop and wash-room, furnished with warm and cold water from a cistern below. These rooms, as well as all the dining-halls, parlors, entries, kitchen, &c. are to be lighted with gas as soon as the new gas works go into operation. In the Office, there are 70 bells connecting the various rooms; also speaking tubes connecting with the entries above, kitchen, &c.

The large kitchen in the basement of the ell is the great curiosity of the establishment. It is about forty feet square, and fitted up with a superior cooking-range, furnaces, ovens, sinks and other apparatus of the most modern improvements for promoting culinary operations. Adjacent to the kitchen, is the meat-room, pastry-room, a baking-room containing an extensive oven of the latest improvement, a wash-room with furnace, boilers and patent drying-rack, the ironing room, shed, &c.

The gentlemen’s ordinary is in the ell, immediately over the kitchen, and on the same floor with the Office. It has an entrance from the latter, and also by a wide stair-case from the parlors on the second floor. It is a spacious hall, 70 feet by 40, handsomely finished and will be lighted by three chandeliers. In it tables may be laid for about 180 persons. It is to be warmed by a large furnace below. The sleeping rooms are large and airy. The whole building is ventilated from the roof, and each of the rooms have an opening, which may be closed at pleasure, over the doors. The windows, also, throughout the house, are made to open at both top and bottom. There is a large water cistern in the attic by which water is to be supplied to all the rooms below.

The opening of the hotel came at an auspicious time in Concord’s history. Early in November 1852, Concord resident Franklin Pierce had been elected president, and he subsequently moved into a suite here in the Eagle Hotel prior to his inauguration. It was during this time that the Pierce family suffered a tragedy that would set the tone for a very difficult presidency. On January 6, 1853, Franklin Pierce, his wife Jane, and their only surviving child Benjamin were returning to Concord from Andover, Massachusetts, when their train derailed. Franklin and Jane escaped serious injury, but 11-year-old Benjamin’s skull was crushed in the accident, with the president-elect being the one to discover his son’s lifeless body in the wreckage. Pierce continued to live here in the Eagle Hotel until his departure for Washington ahead of his March 4, 1853, although Jane did not accompany him to the inauguration. Both would suffer severe depression from the tragedy, and it likely contributed to Pierce’s largely ineffective presidency.

Aside from Franklin Pierce, the Eagle Hotel had a number of other prominent visitors during its heyday. Because of its central location in the city and proximity to the state house, it played an important role in the political, social, and economic life of the city. Several other 19th century presidents would visit the hotel, including Rutherford B. Hayes, who stayed here on August 22, 1877 during a trip through New Hampshire, accompanied by his wife Lucy, Vice President William A. Wheeler, and several of his cabinet secretaries. Twelve years later, on August 15, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison would also visit the hotel, where he had lunch during a brief stop in Concord.

In the meantime, the hotel building underwent several changes during the 19th century. It was expanded in 1872, and then in 1890 it underwent another renovation, which included both internal and external improvements. The Eagle Hotel became the first building in the city to have a central heating plant, as well as the first to have an elevator. On the exterior, the most noticeable change was the addition of a fifth story, which replaced the original gable roof. As shown in these two photos, the fifth story has a different window configuration from the lower floors, and there is also a horizontal band of bricks beneath the windows, where the old cornice used to be. The two piazzas, which were mentioned in the 1852 article, were also removed at some point in the 19th century, as were the window shutters that had once been installed on the front façade of the building.

The renovated hotel continued to play an important role in New Hampshire politics throughout the first half of the 20th century. Many state legislators stayed here while the General Court was in session, and they often held meetings here. Among those legislators was Winston Churchill, an American novelist who was, at the time, the best-known Winston Churchill in the world. Aside from his literary career, he was elected to the state legislature in 1903 and 1905, and in 1906 he published Coniston, which became the best-selling American novel of the year. It was a novel about New Hampshire politics, and it included a number of fictional places that were obvious stand-ins for real locations. These included the Pelican Hotel, which represented the Eagle Hotel. It was there that the fictional political boss Jethro Bass ruled the state from his “Throne Room” in the hotel.

Also in 1906, Churchill sought the Republican nomination for governor as an underdog candidate. Ahead of the party convention, he booked rooms here at the Eagle Hotel to use as his campaign headquarters. He ended up performing surprisingly well at the convention for an inexperienced politician, but narrowly lost the party nomination. Churchill would try again in 1912, this time as the Progressive Party candidate, but he finished third in the general election. He subsequently retired from politics, and later gave up on writing novels. And, as it turned out, his fame would be dramatically eclipsed by a different Winston Churchill on the other side of the Atlantic, who was also a politician and writer.

Even into the 1950s, the Eagle Hotel would continue to be a focal point for New Hampshire politics. Richard Nixon—who was vice president at the time—made at least two visits to the hotel. The first was on September 29, 1954, when he came to Concord to participate in the Republican state convention in advance of the midterm elections. He returned here five years later, on October 3, 1959, when he was in the midst of his own presidential campaign ahead of the 1960 election. He attended a reception here at the Eagle Hotel, and he earned the endorsements of both of the state’s U.S. senators. By the time New Hampshire’s primary election kicked off the election season five months later, Nixon was essentially unopposed and carried nearly 90% of the state’s vote, although he would ultimately lose the general election to John F. Kennedy.

Nixon’s political career would rise and fall a few more times in the coming years, but his visit to Concord proved to be the last hurrah for the Eagle Hotel. By this point automobile travel had made it easier for legislators to commute to Concord during legislative sessions, so there was less demand for long-term lodging here at the Eagle. The hotel also fell out of favor among the general public, which was a common trend for historic downtown hotels throughout the region. With interstate highways and other road improvements, it was now easier for travelers to bypass busy city centers. And, when they did need a place to stay, they tended to prefer convenient modern motels, which were right off the highway and had ample parking, rather than aging hotels in crowded downtown locations.

The Eagle Hotel closed in February 1961, and it was subsequently converted into a nursing home. However, it did not have much success either, and it closed in 1976. This was a time when many cities were demolishing their old downtown hotels and other historic landmarks as part of urban renewal projects, but the Eagle Hotel managed to avoid such a fate. Instead it was preserved, and today its exterior does not look significantly different from its appearance in the first photo, aside from alterations to the ground floor. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, and it is also a contributing property in the Downtown Concord Historic District, which was added to the National Register in 2000.

Fort Rodman, New Bedford, Massachusetts

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Fort Rodman on Clark’s Point in New Bedford, around 1906. Photographed by Blanchard, Young & Co., courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The scene in 2022:

These two photos show the old stone fort at Ford Rodman, located on Clark’s Point at the entrance to New Bedford Harbor. Construction of the fort began in 1857, using granite from nearby Fall River and also from Sullivan, Maine, but it was still incomplete in 1861, at the outbreak of the Civil War. Concerned about the threat of marauding Confederate ships attacking the city’s whaling fleet, local officials took it upon themselves to build a small earthwork fort, which they named Fort Taber in honor of the current mayor. It was located directly to the west of the stone fort, in the distance on the left side of this scene. Fort Taber remained in use for about two years, until the stone fort was was completed enough to be usable.

As it turned out, the fort was never needed to fend off Confederate raiders, and the construction work was not completely finished before the end of the war. The work was halted, but then in the late 1800s the Army began to expand the facility by adding newer artillery batteries on the grounds near the stone fort, along with additional buildings. Although the stone fort did not officially have a name, it was often referred to as Fort Taber, since that name had been assigned to the earlier earthwork fort. However, in 1899 the entire facility was named Fort Rodman in honor of Lieutenant Colonel William Logan Rodman, the highest-ranking New Bedford native who was killed in the Civil War.

The first photo was taken soon after this, around 1906, and it shows the view of the fort from the south, facing toward the entrance to New Bedford Harbor. On the right side of the first photo is the old Clarks Point Light, a stone lighthouse tower that had been built more than a century later in 1804. It had been use until 1869, when a new lighthouse was constructed directly atop the walls of the fort. By the time the first photo was taken the lantern at the top of the tower had been removed, but the tower itself stood here until it was demolished in 1906, probably soon after the photo was taken.

Fort Rodman never saw any combat, but it remained in use as a coastal defense facility throughout World War I and World War II. It was later used as an Army Reserve site, before eventually being sold to the city of New Bedford in the 1970s. Many of the old fort buildings are gone now, and a wastewater treatment plant now occupies a portion of the grounds, but the original stone fort is still standing here. The area around it is now a public park, known as Fort Taber Park.

Peter Tufts House, Medford, Massachusetts (2)

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The Peter Tufts House at 350 Riverside Avenue in Medford, around 1895-1905. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

The house in 2021:

As explained in more detail in the previous post, this house was built around 1677-1680 as the home of Peter Tufts Jr. and his wife Elizabeth. It has an unusual style for 17th century New England homes, as it is built of brick rather than wood, and it has features such as a gambrel roof and end chimneys that did not become common in the region until the 1700s. It was later altered with the addition of dormer windows, and the interior was extensively renovated in 1890, leaving very little original material aside from the frame and the staircase.

The first photo shows the appearance of the house around the turn of the 20th century. Since then, it has undergone a few other changes, most significantly the addition of a small porch at the front door, as shown in the second photo. Overall, though, the house stands as an important colonial-era landmark. It is one of the oldest surviving brick houses in the United States, along with being one of the earliest known examples of a gambrel roof. For many years it was owned by several different preservation organizations, including the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities and the Medford Historical Society & Museum. It is now privately owned, although it continues to be subject to deed restrictions that protect its exterior and interior appearances.

Peter Tufts House, Medford, Massachusetts

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The Peter Tufts House at 350 Riverside Avenue in Medford, around 1895-1905. Image courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

The house in 2021:

When the first photo was taken at the turn of the 20th century, this house was mistakenly identified as the Cradock House, based on the belief that it had been built in 1634 by Matthew Cradock, one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Company. This would have made it one of the oldest surviving houses in New England, but subsequent research showed that it was actually built several decades later, around 1677-1680. Although not as old as it was once assumed to be, it is nonetheless a very early New England house, and it stands as one of the oldest surviving brick houses in the United States and one of the earliest examples of a gambrel roof.

This house was built by Peter Tufts Sr. (c.1617-1700) for his son, Peter Tufts Jr. (1648-1721). At the time, the younger Peter was married to his first wife Elizabeth (1650-1684), and they had several young children. They would have a total of five children together before Elizabeth’s death in 1684, and he remarried six months later to Mercy Cotton (1666-1715). She was from a prominent family; her paternal grandfather was the famous Boston minister John Mather, and her cousin was Cotton Mather. On her mother’s side, her grandfather was Governor Simon Bradstreet, and her grandmother was Anne Bradstreet, the first published poet in British North America. Mercy and Peter had 13 children who were born between 1686 and 1709, although seven of them died in infancy.

The architecture of this house is unusual for 17th century New England. Houses of this period tended to be built of wood, and typically had central chimneys rather than the chimneys on either end of the house. The gambrel roof was also unusual for this time period, and would not become common in New England until the rise of Georgian architecture in the mid-1700s. Another distinctive feature of the house is its window arrangement, which includes small oval windows here on the front facade and also on the sides of the house.

By the time the first photo was taken, the house was over 200 years old, and it had undergone some exterior changes, including the addition of dormer windows. However, there were even more drastic changes on the interior, which occurred after an 1890 renovation. In the process, almost the entire interior was gutted, leaving only the beams and the staircase from the original structure. Another change, which occurred shortly after the first photo was taken, was the addition of a small porch at the front door, as shown in the second photo.

In the years since the first photo was taken, the city of Medford has grown up around the house. When the first photo was taken, the house was situated on a fairly large lot at the corner of Riverside Avenue and Spring Street. However, most of this property was later subdivided, leaving just a small parcel for the old house. Because it was built long before the modern street network was laid out, the house sits at an odd angle relative to the street and the adjacent houses. Its front facade faces due south, while its neighbors generally face south-southwest.

During the 20th century, the Peter Tufts House was owned by several different preservation organizations. In 1930 it was acquired by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, which later became Historic New England. The house was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1968, and then in 1982 it was purchased by the Medford Historical Society & Museum, which rented it to resident caretakers. However, by the early 2000s it was in need of significant work that was beyond the capacity of the historical society. As a result, in 2017 it was sold to a private owner, although it continues to be protected by deed restrictions placed on it by Historic New England, which limit the kinds of exterior and interior changes that can be made to the house.

Old Hadley Cemetery, Hadley, Massachusetts

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Gravestones at Old Hadley Cemetery, around 1905. Image from History of Hadley (1905).

The scene in 2021:

Hadley was settled by European colonists in 1659, and incorporated as a town in 1661. Around the same time, this burying ground was laid out in a meadow just to the northwest of the town center, with the earliest known burials dating back to 1661. Among these was John Webster (1590-1661), who had served as governor of Connecticut before relocating to Hadley. As was the case for most of the other 17th century burials here, his grave was not marked by a stone, although a monument to him was installed in the cemetery in 1818 by his great-great-great grandson Noah Webster, the famous lexicographer and dictionary author.

The earliest surviving gravestones in the cemetery are two matching tablestones for Rebecca and John Russell. They died in 1688 and 1692, respectively, and their stones were installed in 1693, although they are not visible in this particular scene. Otherwise, though, gravestones were rare here until the 1710s, when Hadley resident Joseph Nash began carving gravestones. He used tan sandstone, and his gravestones were typically small, irregularly shaped, and with crudely-cut lettering. Despite the primitive appearance of the stones, he was evidently popular because his work appears in most of the early burying grounds in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts. Several of his stones are visible in this particular scene, including those of Mehetebel Marsh (1694-1739) on the far right, and Aaron Cook (1641-1716) and Sarah Cook (1644-1730) near the foreground on the far left side.

The two large tablestones in the center of this scene are for Joanna Porter (1665-1713) on the left and her husband Samuel Porter Jr. (1660-1722) on the right. Joanna was the daughter of Aaron and Sarah Cook, and she was also the mother of Mehetebel Marsh, so this was evidently their family plot. Tablestones were relatively uncommon because of the high cost, and were typically only used for clergymen and other prominent town residents. In this case, Samuel Porter was a wealthy merchant, and he also served as a representative in the colonial legislature, and as a judge and county sheriff. The Porter tablestones were not carved by Joseph Nash, as this was likely seen as too costly of a job to leave to a rather amateurish local stonecutter. Instead, these stones appear to have been carved by the Stanclift family in Middletown, Connecticut, who specialized in monuments such as these.

The Mehetebel Marsh gravestone was likely one of the last that Joseph Nash carved before his own death in 1740. By this point, gravestones in Western Massachusetts were starting to become more refined, in part because of an increased number of stones brought up the river from the skilled Middletown-area carvers. Among these was the gravestone of Samuel Porter III (1685-1748), the tall stone just to the right of the tablestones. He was the son of Samuel and Joanna, and although he died less than a decade after his sister Mehetebel, their two gravestones show the vast differences in skill level between local carvers like Nash and the professionally-trained carvers of Middletown. His gravestone was carved by the prominent Johnson family of Middletown, and its design suggests that it may have been carved somewhat later, perhaps in the 1750s or early 1760s.

The carvers from the Johnson family dominated the gravestone business along the Connecticut River Valley during the mid-1700s, but there were also some skilled local carvers who emerged in Western Massachusetts during this period. Foremost among them was Nathaniel Phelps of Northampton, who was active from the 1740s until the 1780s. Aside from Joseph Nash, perhaps no other 18th century carver is better represented here in Hadley, and one of his gravestones stands in the lower center of this scene, marking the grave of Joanna Porter’s brother Samuel Cook (1672-1746). This stone is a close imitation of the Johnson family’s style, but Phelps would subsequently develop his own style, and he occasionally carved highly ornate gravestones that featured full-body figures of angels. Among these was the gravestone of Sarah Porter (1741-1775), the wife of Samuel and Joanna’s grandson Elisha Porter. Her gravestone is visible in the background of this scene; it is the fourth one from the left in the back row.

By the early 19th century, gravestone styles had shifted away from the ornate carvings of the 18th century. Instead, these gravestones tended to either have generic designs of willows and urns, or no images at all. And, rather than sandstone, these 19th century stones were typically carved in slate or marble. Most of these burials were further to the east of the original section of the cemetery, but there are several 19th century marble stones here in the old section, including one in the back row in the distance for Nathaniel Porter (1709-1779). Although he died in 1779, the style of his gravestone suggests that it was probably carved at some point in the first half of the 1800s.

Aside from Nathaniel Porter’s backdated gravestone, perhaps the most recent gravestone in this particular scene is that of Elisha Porter (1742-1796). Like his grandfather Samuel had done many years earlier, Elisha served as sheriff of Hampshire County, and he was also a colonel in the state militia during the American Revolution. His gravestone is carved in marble, and it has a fairly plain design that is decorated only with an urn in the upper part of the stone.

More than a hundred years would pass between Porter’s burial in 1796 and when the first photo was taken at the turn of the 20th century. It is hard to say to what extent this scene changed during that time. Colonial-era burial grounds were often laid out in a somewhat haphazard manner, and during the 19th century many were rearranged into orderly rows of gravestones, often with little concern for whether the stones on the surface corresponded to the remains underground. This was often done for aesthetic reasons or to make maintenance easier, but it seems unclear whether it happened here in Hadley. However, the 18th century gravestones here are all arranged in parallel rows, suggesting that perhaps their positions may have been adjusted at some point.

Today, nearly 120 years after the first photo was taken, the background of this scene has changed significantly. Rather than the open meadows of the first photo, there is now a house directly to the west of the cemetery, with a tall hedge marking the property line. However, here in the foreground the cemetery has remained remarkably unchanged during this time. Sandstone gravestones are often vulnerable to weathering and erosion, and many in the river valley are badly deteriorated, especially those from the Middletown area. Here in Hadley, though, the stones have generally remained well-preserved, and this cemetery is one of the finest colonial-era burial grounds in Western Massachusetts.