The Elias Hasket Derby House
Among all the residences of Old Salem, that which was most ambitious and pretentious no longer exists, save in picture and memory. This was the famous mansion built by McIntire in 1798 for Elias Hasket Derby, Salem’s greatest merchant, at a cost of $80,000. Derby lived only a few months after taking possession, and the upkeep of so expensive an establishment deterring prospective purchasers, this splendid house was dismantled and finally razed in 1815—the land being donated to the town for a public market. Derby Square, where the present Market House now stands, was the location of the famous house.
McIntire was in 1804 erecting a house at 142 Federal Street for Captain Cook. Business reverses greatly delayed its completion, and McIntire continued it at his leisure, taking advantage of the dismantling of the Derby mansion to utilize much of its beautifully carved woodwork in the interior. The result was the Cook-Oliver house, as it is now known—one of the most satisfying to the artistic sense of any in all Salem.
Existing plans and sketches of the Derby mansion show us a huge rectangular building, suggesting a court-house, or some such public structure, standing well back from the street, its great doorway flanked by double columns supporting a balustraded balcony. Above this is a splendid Palladian window, and above this again hand-tooled festoons of drapery. The door itself has ornate fanlight with side-lights to correspond, and stands at the head of a flight of massive steps.
The flat roof with its elaborate cornice and heavy balustrade is supported by pilasters, six in number, having carved capitals; and these in turn at the second floor level rest upon plain pilasters. A huge cupola surmounts the roof, with bell-shaped top, carved garlands, and arched windows. The lintels of the first two tiers of the house windows are heavy with ornament, while the third tier illustrates the familiar plan of foreshortening. A great deal of iron fencing with ornamental posts surrounds the spacious yard.
With all the prodigality of architectural detail embodied in this great mansion, it must still be admitted that it was not overdone, as the large proportions and wide spaces pleasantly distributed the ornamentation over a broad field.
The Derby mansion doubtless represented the climax of effort in the line of house-building in Salem—the sudden death of its owner, followed by its own demolition, being a melancholy comment upon the uncertainty of human plans.