The Hosmer-Townsend-Waters House
Chimneys on Salem houses were customarily built to rise from the center of the roof—huge structures of brick, containing many flues from the fireplaces opening from the rooms arranged about them on all sides. In later periods they were placed wherever convenience dictated. A fine example of the former style is seen on the Hosmer-Townsend-Waters house at 80 Washington Square, Salem. This building dates from 1795, designed by McIntire, for Captain Joseph Hosmer. Near it, at 82 Washington Square, East, is the Boardman house, where Washington was entertained when in Salem in 1789, and which elicited from him an exclamation of wonder that the people of Salem could build such handsome residences.
In Virginia, the Colonial type was also in vogue, but with a difference. The General’s surprise was apparently at the fact that in towns, as well as upon the great estates of the South to which he had been accustomed, so large a degree of taste and comfort could prevail.
The side-door of the Hosmer dwelling has an attractive enclosed porch, almost hidden by a huge wistaria which clothes it in a tangle of leafage and bloom. It resembles that already described in the Johonnot house in the presence of oval side-lights, although differing somewhat in architectural features. The front entrance of the Hosmer house closely corresponds with that at the side in design, and both possess the correct six-panel door, relieved by brass latch and knocker.
Historical interest attaches to the Hosmer-Waters house in that it was once the home of Henry Fitz-Gilbert Waters, whose genealogical researches and writings are well-known. These include ‘John Harvard and his Ancestry,’ ‘An Examination into the English Ancestry of George Washington,’ ‘Genealogical Gleanings in England.’ Connoisseurs have stated that Mr. Waters’s collection of antique furniture was surpassed by none in New England.