The Timothy Orne House
Belonging to the same period as the Stearns house, but a few years earlier in origin, having been built in 1761, the Timothy Orne house at 266 Essex Street makes a somewhat more painstaking attempt at decoration than most of those of the time.
It has balustraded roof, quoined corners, and ornamental cornice; its chimney-stacks taper at the top; while the handsome porch presents a center toward which the eye naturally reverts as the keynote of the whole.
The activities of the Committee of Safety just prior to the Revolution are well-known, as is the fate which commonly befell those persons who were suspected of Royalist leanings. Tarring and feathering was the usual method of exhibiting patriotic distaste for such proclivities; and Timothy Orne, owner of the house in question, seems to have fallen under the ban, inasmuch as some old-time correspondence relates that he narrowly escaped this humiliating ordeal, being released on condition of good behavior.
The Orne house possessed a ‘decked’ roof—the original purpose of which was to afford the Salem merchant an elevated platform from which through his glass he might scan the horizon for his incoming ships. This type of roof is found upon many of the houses of that period. The ‘belvedere,’ a small balustraded platform at the center of the roof at the summit, was a variation of the cupola idea, both of these as found upon Salem houses having their origin in utility—a lookout-place rather than an architectural feature. Nevertheless, as on the Baldwin-Lyman and Pickman-Shreve-Little houses and others, a gratifying decorative effect was secured.