FOREWORD
Salem Doorways! How they awaken romantic memories of a glorious past, linked as they are with the days when merchantmen and clipper ships slipped from the ways to trade in foreign lands. Days when old-fashioned gardens, gay with hollyhock and fragrant with sweet brier, were laid out at the rear of the great Colonial houses of the ship-owners. Doorways that were first designed for the Derby Street houses, later appearing on Chestnut Street, when ship-owners removed to this part of the city.
These doorways were the work of ship carpenters or men who carved figureheads, although the most beautiful of all were those designed by Samuel McIntire, the wood-carver of Salem. Many of them display a marked individuality, the result of McIntire’s skill in combining various types of architecture, and adapting them to the Georgian style. Some show pilasters with Doric or Corinthian feeling, supporting a pediment often triangular in design, gaining in effect through the use of hand-tooled ornamentation.
Nathaniel Hawthorne graphically describes a simple example on the house on Charter Street, where he wooed Sophia Peabody, who later became his bride.
Another notable one adorns the Pickering house, built by John Pickering in 1650. This was the birthplace of Colonel Timothy Pickering, who served in four Cabinet offices.
The Cook-Oliver house on Federal Street shows rare bits of hand-tooling, in part taken from the Elias Hasket Derby mansion on Market Square, considered the finest house of its day.
Salem has just reason to be proud of these doorways which have given to her a distinctive name in the field of architecture. Little wonder that architects from all over the country are copying these historic doorways for reproduction in modern-day homes, with a realization that they have never been excelled by modern-day work.
Acknowledgment should be rendered to Edward Colton Fellowes, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, for assistance in arranging the material of this book.