Historic doorways of Old Salem

by Mary Harrod Northend

The Kimball House

THE KIMBALL HOUSE

Another of McIntire’s porches, placed in 1800 upon the Kimball house at 14 Pickman Street, is interesting, as illustrating the architect’s characteristic freedom in the combination without discord of the various orders. The columns are Ionic—the entablature is Corinthian style, although incomplete. Side-lights flank the six-paneled door, but the usual fanlight is missing, paneling taking its place. Door-frame and side-lights are decorated by a border of garlands, which are of composition applied to the surface of the wood—although the capitals of the columns are painstakingly carved by hand.

The Cook-Oliver House

THE COOK-OLIVER HOUSE

One of the most elaborate examples of the work of Samuel McIntire is found in the Cook-Oliver house at 142 Federal Street. The amount of detail upon the entrance-posts and about the doorways is unusual, and is carried to a point where it just misses being overdone. Originally carved for the Derby house on Market Square, much of this work was transferred to the Cook-Oliver house about 1804, at which date this mansion was begun, although unfortunate commercial ventures delayed its completion until about 1814 or 1815. This delay may have worked out as a blessing in disguise, as was also perhaps the use of material from the Derby house, which was finally razed in 1815, although the work of demolition had begun at an earlier date.

Samuel Cook was a sea-captain, the father-in-law of General Henry K. Oliver, who was prominent in political and industrial affairs, being at various times Mayor of the city of Lawrence, Mayor also of Salem at the advanced age of eighty years, Treasurer of the State of Massachusetts, Treasurer of the Lawrence Cotton Mills, and Adjutant-General. With the present-day public, however, his chief claim to recognition lies in the fact that he was the composer of many familiar hymns, notably ‘Federal Street,’ named from the thoroughfare where he then lived.

The Cook-Oliver house is a three-story square clapboarded structure save on the eastern side, which is constructed of brick to keep out the east wind. An old-fashioned ‘jut-by,’ with flat boarding, projects from the rear L, with a side-entrance—an arrangement seldom found in houses of this late period, though common in lean-to days.