Historic doorways of Old Salem

by Mary Harrod Northend

THE POYNTON HOUSE, KNOWN AS THE ‘PINEAPPLE HOUSE’
Built in 1750

In an old painting in the Essex Institute is shown the famous Governor Bradstreet mansion, with its numerous gables, its batten door flanked by curious latticed towers, and its lozenged windows. At the tip of each gable and tower perches a carved ornament in the shape of a pineapple, the ancient symbol of hospitality. Over the doorway of the Thomas Poynton house at 7 Brown Street Court, on a pedestal between the members of a broken arch pediment, was once to be seen a similar pineapple, most elaborately and delicately carved, and resplendent in its appropriate tints of red and green. Captain Poynton was a merchant, and some foreign port may have supplied this famous ornament, which for years lent its name to the ‘Pineapple House.’ The illustration shows the doorway in its original condition, though the door itself is modern. Note the cutting-out of the blinds, made necessary by the height of the pineapple.

Now removed for safe-keeping to the Essex Institute, this beautiful entrance has always attracted the attention of architects and connoisseurs. The simplicity of the fluted Doric pilasters leads the eye upward to a sudden surprise, albeit an agreeable one, in the unusual character of the decorations above. Altogether the effect is unique and charming, and is well brought out against the gray walls of the house itself.

The Eden-Brown House

THE EDEN-BROWN HOUSE

In 1762, Thomas Eden built a house at 40 Summer Street. In 1804 the original doorway was replaced by one designed and executed by the famous McIntire, possessing one unusual feature, the elliptical fanlight unaccompanied by other glasswork. The doorway is of simple design, showing plain Doric pilasters, over each of which appears a carved rosette or floret, with festooned drapery between. Once more, the use of modern doors lends an unpardonably discordant note to this otherwise artistic composition.

Much interesting history centers in the Eden-Brown house. Thomas Eden was the first signer of the roll of the famous Salem Marine Society, founded in 1766, membership in which was conditioned upon a man’s having sailed his ship at least around the Cape of Good Hope. The quality of Salem ship-masters is seen in the fact that eighteen charter members were thus enrolled at the first meeting. Robert Hooper, of Marblehead, was a partner of Eden in his commercial ventures, and was familiarly spoken of as ‘King’ Hooper because of his Royalist leanings.

How many vigorous and adventurous figures must have passed through the Eden-Brown doorway! ‘King’ Hooper himself, owner of a house at Marblehead and another at Danvers, the well-known ‘Lindens,’ occupied as a summer home by the Royal Governor Gage, the year before Lexington. Many a wealthy captain, perhaps, and trader to the East, who in the spirit of the bold motto on the Salem official seal, ‘Unto the utmost bounds of wealthy Ind,’ had driven his fifty-ton schooner across the mysterious ocean, returning laden with silks, rugs, and shawls, mulls and muslins, jade, crystal, spices, and if not, like the far-famed navies of Solomon, with ‘ivory, apes, and peacocks,’ at least with many a comical monkey and gaudy parrot—the latter commonly past-master in the use of a certain deep-sea vocabulary not to be repeated here.