Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 11

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802

USA > Massachusetts > Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people > Part 11

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Several decisions of Massachusetts equity courts have had a bearing on labor. In 1910, the courts handed down the important decision (Mariana de Minico v. Daniel Craig) that it was within their jurisdiction to declare whether or not a strike was 'legal'; and in the following year a strike for the closed shop by the Boston Photo-Engravers' Union against all non- union employers in Boston was enjoined as 'illegal.' Considered as illegal in Massachusetts are picketing with banners (picketing without banners is 'peaceful persuasion,' and legal), and sympathetic strikes. In 1937, a law was passed making 'sit-down' strikes illegal. Two important decisions favorable to labor were that which upheld a law making blacklisting by employers illegal (John Cornellier v. Haverhill Shoe Manufacturing As- sociation, 1915), and the decision (Commonwealth v. Walter M. Libby) upholding the constitutionality of a State law which makes it a criminal offense for an employer, during a strike or lockout, to advertise for employees without plainly and explicitly mentioning in the advertisement that labor trouble exists.

ARCHITECTURE

FOR generations historians have been telling us that when the 'Mayflower' dropped anchor off what is now Plymouth, our ancestors went ashore and proceeded immediately to build log cabins. This would mean that, upon the spur of the moment, these workmen invented a new type of building - a construction such as they had never seen in England, of a kind un- known even to the Indians. A widely publicized painting illustrating this fanciful theory pictures a double row of such log houses reaching up the hillside of Leyden Street at Plymouth. Far from supporting this tradi- tion, all accounts of day-by-day happenings following the settlement of the coastal villages give ample proof that, so far as material and labor permitted, the first settlers in New England reproduced the homes they had left in Old England. The wooden versions of the English yeoman's cottage were not the first to be built by the settlers. The exigency of immediate shelter forced a direct retrogression to a type much earlier and more primitive than those left behind. But as there were skilled artisans and carpenters among the early settlers who were qualified by long ap- prenticeships in England to construct permanent houses, there is no need for giving more than a passing mention to the first temporary makeshift structures. The common folk were first housed in conical huts constructed of slanting poles covered with brush, reeds, and turf, sometimes with a low wall of branches and wattle plastered with clay. These were the 'English wigwams' referred to in chronicles, and were simply a transplantation of a type then in use by charcoal-burners in England. Some of these tempo- rary shelters were cellars built into the sides of banks, walled and roofed with brush and sod. In Salem a 'pioneer village' was built in 1930, and reproductions of some of the early shelters and houses may be seen there.

Soon after landing, the colonists dug saw pits in the English manner and began to produce boards in quantity suitable not only for the con- struction of their own houses but for exportation as well. In the summer of 1626, when the ship ' Fortune' sailed from Plymouth, bound for England, 'clapboards and wainscott' were listed as part of her lading. In the sum- mer of 1623 Bradford mentions the building 'of great houses in pleasant situations,' and later writes that 'they builte a forte with good timber.' Isaac de Rasières described the structure in 1627 as 'a large square house

Massachusetts: The General Background

made of thick sawn planks, stayed with oak beams.' When the fort was taken down at the close of King Philip's War in 1676, the timber was given to William Harlow, who built the Harlow House, which is still stand- ing in Plymouth.

The usual type of permanent dwelling-house was a two-story structure, the second story overhanging, with two rooms upstairs and down, a small entry, and a mammoth chimney between. Lean-tos were often added later. The Fairbanks House in Dedham (1636), solidly framed of oak, rejoices in an unadorned simplicity lost in later and more academic struc- tures. The Boardman House in Saugus (1651) combines two character- istic features of the medieval Colonial: the overhang and the original innovation of the lean-to. The long, unbroken slope of its roof is well suited to stream-line the cold north wind. Ornament occurs in the Parson Capen House at Topsfield (1683), where heavy carved pendrils or drops depending from the bottom of the jetty or overhang lend an Elizabethan flavor. As the overhang, however, had been evolved in England for the purpose of gaining additional floor area above the street line, in a new and spacious country it dwindled and soon disappeared.

The earliest ecclesiastical architecture was similarly influenced by English medievalism. The only church building of the seventeenth cen- tury still standing in the State, the Old Ship Church in Hingham, was erected by ship carpenters in 1681. Its roof, built in the form of a trun- cated pyramid, is surmounted by a belfry and lookout station. This early church, constructed to fulfill the simple needs of its congregation, is de- void of frivolity or pretense. Here, as frequently elsewhere in early Massa- chusetts architecture, deliberate indifference to any esthetic concept resulted in an effect of restraint and dignity.

The first indications of a more studied architecture came at the opening of the eighteenth century with the adoption of less steep roofs, the use of sash windows instead of casements, and a growing tendency to employ a uniform cornice with a hip roof. William Price, a Boston print-seller, de- signed Christ Church (the Old North Church) in 1723, adorning its simple front with a lofty wooden steeple reminiscent of Wren. A more imposing structure, the Old South Church, erected seven years later from plans by Robert Twelve, is in this same style, which strongly influenced ecclesiasti- cal architecture in the colonies during the entire century. The architec- tural ambitions of the builders were satisfied by the steeple, little effort at further adornment being made beyond an occasional elaboration of the eaves into a classical cornice.

Independent of architectural pomposities of the mainland, the fisher-

Architecture

men along the bended elbow of the State were erecting their huddled little 'Cape Codders.' Built on flat surfaces of the dunes, these one-and-a- half-story cottages with lean-tos hugged the earth for warmth over shal- low unfinished cellars. Entrance to the cellar was provided by a trapdoor inside the house or by an outside bulkhead, its ungainliness hidden by a lilac or other flowering shrub. Since the first story was usually not over seven feet high, the half story used as a storeroom and as sleeping quarters for the children provided little headroom. The typical Cape Codder had a shingle roof, a large central chimney, a clapboarded front, sometimes painted, and unpainted shingled sides which the salt air weathered to a dull silver. The windmill, with its shingled walls and skeleton-like vanes silhouetted against the dunes, is peculiar to the Cape and Nantucket.

The floors were of pine, wide-cut, painted or 'spattered.' The doors ordi- narily had six panels and opened with a thumb latch. The first-floor win- dows had four 'lights' each, those in the upper floor but three. Smaller windows, set irregularly in the walls, provided light for closets. The parlor, more carefully finished than the kitchen, contained a 'chair rail,' a narrow moulding running around the wall about two and a half feet from the floor. So simple a cottage made up for its bareness by the bright polish of its window-panes and the gleam of its scrubbed floor.

The 'half-a-cape,' a plain dwelling with a chimney at one end, derived its name from the fact that its owner always hoped the day would come when he could add the other half and convert his cottage into a proper house with a central chimney. The 'salt-box' - the origin of the name no longer so apparent now that salt comes in cardboard containers - has a northerly lean-to roof. The 'rainbow roof' rises in a convex curve to the ridgepole, with the appearance of an inverted boat's hull. The familiar roomy gambrel roof is occasionally but not often seen on the Cape.

As the seaboard towns grew in wealth, and tools and materials were more easily secured, builders began to indulge in the free classic details of the Queen Anne and the Georgian styles. The result was Georgian colonial, which had a profound influence upon American domestic archi- tecture along the eastern seaboard. In New England, Georgian colonial buildings were almost invariably harmonious; details in most instances were delicate and refined; errors were apt to be on the side not of coarseness, but of smallness and reserve. The first phase of New England Georgian occupied the period between 1720-25 and 1740-45, of which the Royall House (1723) in Medford and the Dummer Mansion in Byfield are fine examples. The second phase, from 1745 to 1775-80, is exemplified in the Lee Mansion in Marblehead. The transition from Georgian to classicism,

Massachusetts: The General Background

showing a strong Adam influence, was dominant in the last phase, and included some of the best work of Bulfinch and McIntire.

In the absence of professional architects in Massachusetts during the eighteenth century, cultivated amateurs turned to the drafting board. Sir Francis Bernard, for nine years Colonial Governor of Massachusetts, designed Harvard Hall (1765) in Harvard Yard. Near-by Massachusetts Hall had been erected in 1720 from designs prepared by John Leverett, president of the college, and Benjamin Wadsworth, later president. John Smibert, portrait-painter, drew the plans for Faneuil Hall (1742) in Boston, later enlarged and modified by Bulfinch. Peter Harrison, a con- temporary of Smibert, although he had no professional training, became the most distinguished architect of the Colonial era. In 1749 he designed King's Chapel in Boston, in which the influence of Wren and his successor Gibbs can be seen. The exterior is dour, but the interior, with its rich sobriety, repose, and studied suavity of proportion, remains one of the finest in existence. Harrison also designed Christ Church (1761) in Cam- bridge.

The first professional architect of the Republic began his career as a cultivated amateur. Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844), born of a well-to-do family, made an architectural 'grand tour' of Europe. As a gentleman of means and taste he designed houses for his friends. He planned the State House on Beacon Hill in Boston, the original red brick core of which, known as the Bulfinch Front, stands sandwiched between two white annexes.

Bulfinch went bankrupt in 1796, and fortunately for architecture made extended use of his talent to earn his living. In his handling of detail and ornament the influence of Adam and Chambers is obvious, but in the sterner matters of plan and composition Bulfinch struck out in new direc- tions, and his designs, characterized by slender proportions, a delicacy well suited to execution in wood, tall pilasters of slight projection, light cornices and balustrades, slender columns, shallow surface arches, and fan-lights and side-lights with tenuous tracery, were a departure in line and detail. Bulfinch had studied to good effect Chambers's fine new Somerset House in London, as is apparent from a comparison of his first sketches for the State House, submitted in 1787, with the façade of the English structure containing the Navy Office. A volume which Bulfinch purchased abroad, 'Le Vignole Moderne' (Paris, 1785), contains some of the motives used on the portico of the State House, as well as a good dome. His work in directing the completion of the Federal Capitol Build- ing in Washington after 1817, when at President Monroe's invitation he

Architecture

replaced Latrobe as architect of the Capitol, indicates that his fresh and bold approach had become somewhat restrained.

The Elias Hasket Derby Mansion in Salem profited by the combined ef- forts of Bulfinch and McIntire. Derby was so situated economically that he could demand the best talent available, so Bulfinch, who was considered the best, was asked to submit designs, which he did. Dissatisfied, Derby called in McIntire, the local master, and he carried the job to completion. He designed the house almost independently, but incorporated in it some of the features by Bulfinch.

As chairman of the board of selectmen of Boston, Bulfinch had much to do with turning the Common from a meadow into a park, and during this period he drew the plans for the warehouses on Boston's India Wharf. Other buildings of significance by Bulfinch remaining today in Massa- chusetts are Faneuil Hall (addition and revision, 1805), the Harrison Gray Otis House (1796), the Sears House (second Harrison Gray Otis House, 1800), Wadsworth House (third Harrison Gray Otis House, 1807), Bulfinch Building, Massachusetts General Hospital (1818) - all in Boston; University Hall, Harvard (1813-15); New North Church (1806) in Hingham; Lancaster Church (1810); Meeting House, Taunton; Pearson Hall (1818) and Bulfinch Hall (1818) at Phillips Academy in Andover.

As the depression of the 1780's was succeeded by better times, Yankee vessels began to pour wealth into Boston, Salem, and other seaboard towns. Port towns soon were clustered with the square white houses of shipowners and sea captains, their roofs crowned with roof decks known as 'captain's walks' or 'widow's walks,' originally lookout places for scanning the harbor. Many of the builders of these houses had been ship carpenters, taught by the exacting demands of their craft economy of line and material. As a result their houses possessed a fluidity of line seen at its best in the work of McIntire.

The work of Samuel McIntire (1757-1811), carver-architect and con- temporary of Bulfinch, shows the influence of European masters, notably Robert Adam. But McIntire possessed too much native genius to be content with servile adaptation. 'He borrowed, but he repaid with in- terest.'

McIntire houses, many of which still line Chestnut Street in Salem, had little exterior grace. They were big, four-square, three stories high. Like their mistresses, the captains' ladies, these Salem houses guarded themselves from the world by a prim, even prudish exterior. Within, however, was amiability, charm, and finely studied and eloquently exe-

Massachusetts: The General Background

cuted detail, apparent in the broad staircases with their carved balusters and twisted newels, the wooden mantels enriched with figured ornament, the raised paneled dadoes, and delicate cornices with dentils and modil- lions. The exteriors were usually flanked with great pilasters or quoins, surmounted with cornices of well-proportioned members, and the houses were not infrequently enclosed with elaborate wooden fences.

McIntire's last houses, built from 1805 to 1811, were of brick. The use of this less pliable material and a growing classical influence gave his later work a more austere character. Outstanding examples of his archi- tecture are the Pierce-Johonnot-Nichols House (1782), Samuel Cook House (1804), John Gardner House (1805), David P. Waters House (1805), Dudley L. Pickman House (1810), all in Salem; the Elias H. Derby House (1799), and 'Oak Hill' (1800) in Peabody. Three complete McIntire rooms from 'Oak Hill' have been installed in the American Wing of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Asher Benjamin, a contemporary of McIntire, designed the Old West Church (1806) and the Charles Street Church (1807) in Boston. Possessing the native genius of neither Bulfinch nor McIntire, Benjamin made an important contribution to American architecture through his frequent publications, from 'The Country Builder's Assistant' (1797) to 'The Practical House Carpenter' (1830).

The Greek revival, started in the beginning of the nineteenth century by Benjamin Henry Latrobe with his design for the Bank of Pennsylvania, did not spread to New England until the second decade. Alexander Parris and Solomon Willard, the planners of Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown (1825-42), were its chief exponents in Massachusetts, and as such they designed Saint Paul's Cathedral (1820) in Boston. Later, with Quincy Market (1825) in Boston and the Stone Temple in Quincy (1828), Parris essayed other monuments to this revived style.

Long after the ebbing of the tide of Greek influence, one of the most studied efforts in this style was built in Boston: the United States Custom House (1847). Designed by Ammi B. Young and Isaiah Rogers, this building was originally crowned with a dome. Later a tall shaft was added, transforming it into Boston's first skyscraper and an apt tomb- stone to the movement. The dome was not removed from the interior, but the lower floors were allowed to hide it and form a shell about it. Later examples of the Greek revival travestied the classic style rather than copied it. It became common practice for the designers of com- mercial buildings to make imitations of Greek porticoes and entries and to attach them without discrimination to the façades of banks and

Architecture

markets. Allied to little in the Massachusetts tradition, the Greek revival inevitably disintegrated.

After the Greek revival came experimentation in many directions. Dwelling-houses took the form of Italian villas, or of mansard-roofed boxes - the shadows of English shadows. The result was a tedious parade of mediocrity, punctuated here and there by an outstanding atrocity. French influence fared somewhat better than English, and the Athenæum (1849), the Arlington Street Church, and the old Technology building (now Rogers Hall), all in Boston, were intelligent adaptations of Renaissance motifs.

Up to the end of the Civil War no academic training of architects was given in the State. In 1865, however, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology established the first American school for architects, in which something like the organized teaching of the École des Beaux Arts was attempted, with William R. Ware as its first director.

The period immediately following the Civil War was infected by Ruskin's fervent advocacy of medievalism and his sweeping condemna- tion of Renaissance architecture as 'immoral.' Ruskinian or Victorian Gothic, derived by an adoption of Italian Gothic detail and characterized by a confusion of aims frequently accompanied by mediocrity of achieve- ment, has its monument in Memorial Hall (1878) at Harvard, William R. Ware, architect. Probably the most severely condemned of its contem- poraries, 'Mem Hall' shows the laboring of an architect of taste and scholarship fatally hampered by a pernicious style. Boston's Copley Square, originally a swamp dear to none but duck-hunters, was filled in, and architects cast about for suitable designs for its new buildings. The Old South Church (1876) was designed by Cummings and Sears, who had obviously saturated themselves with Ruskin. A no less apparent study of the work of Sir Gilbert Scott, however, makes this building one of the more bearable examples of the Ruskinian episode in the United States. The old Museum of Fine Arts, devotedly Ruskinian (1876, no longer standing), built from designs by John Sturgis, was the first struc- ture in which domestic terra cotta was used.

Just across the square Henry Hobson Richardson was burying the corpse of Victorian Gothic and raising a splendid structure, Trinity Church (1872-78). The bold individuality of Trinity, the most important example of 'Richardson Romanesque,' can be fully appreciated, even by trained eyes, only after detailed study. Taking as its point of departure the Romanesque of southern France, Trinity is characterized by its strong, vigorous and picturesque masses of rock-faced stonework and its

Massachusetts: The General Background

rich and individual ornament. John LaFarge's windows and interior decorations are in keeping with the richness of the exterior.

Richardson was the second American to study at the École des Beaux Arts and in Paris he worked for Labrouste, the architect of that extraordi- nary building, the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève in Paris. Trinity Church, considered Richardson's most important work, is antedated by the First Baptist Church of Boston (formerly New Brattle Square Church, "1874), a failure acoustically, but notable for its tower. When Richardson designed the tower he sent for Bartholdi, a fellow student at the Beaux Arts, to execute the heavy frieze. Bartholdi became so en- grossed in his new surroundings that he was moved to design his 'Light of Liberty,' eventually reproduced in New York Harbor. Other note- worthy examples of Richardson's work in the State are Sever Hall at Harvard, the Woburn and North Easton public libraries. The Crane Memorial Library in Quincy is probably Richardson's finest.

The Richardsonian Romanesque was widely imitated, but seldom worthily adapted. An excellent adaptation of this style to a commercial purpose, however, is the Ames Building (1891), one of Boston's first tall office buildings and the last to employ all masonry instead of steel con- struction, designed by Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge, who carried on Richardson's work.

The epochal achievement of the nineteenth century was the Albertian Boston Public Library (1888-95). As his point of departure Charles Follen McKim chose the bold, unbroken lines of Labrouste's Italian Renaissance masterpiece, the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève in Paris. ' But he fused with this influence the more robust character of Alberti's San Francesco at Rimini. It is monumental, yet chaste in ornament. Everything is calculated to produce a feeling of dignity and restraint, and the whole effect is one of severity without coldness.

The Wilbur Theater (1913) in Boston was the first auditorium to be designed with the help of a pioneer in the field of acoustics, Professor Sabine of Harvard.

In Henry Adams, Massachusetts produced a scholar who sought in medieval architecture a key to the present; in Ralph Adams Cram the State possesses an architect who turns from the present to the medieval past, notably in the All Saints' Church in Ashmont; Saint Stephen's, Cohasset; First Unitarian, West Newton; All Saints' and the Church of Our Saviour in Brookline.

Up to the time of the Chicago Exposition in 1893, when the steel skeleton and the elevator had definitely severed architectural practice

ARCHITECTURAL MILESTONES

WHEN the settlers first came to America, they built some- thing very like an English charcoal burner's hut. Reproduc- tions of these early huts can be seen at the Pioneer Village in Salem. Thereafter, as soon as the people were established, they built houses as much like the familiar houses of Eliza- bethan England as their materials permitted. Many of these houses were afterward enlarged by the building of a 'lean-to' on the northern side which protected the house from the pre- vailing northerly winds. The interiors were spacious and agreeable.

Later, in the time of McIntire and Bulfinch, the architecture in Massachusetts reached a second peak. Chestnut Street in Salem shows the houses of this period at their best. On the same page with the picture of Chestnut Street is a picture of the Hill of Churches in Truro. It is included for contrast, for architecture in Massachusetts, like the people, reaches ex- tremes of barrenness as well as beauty.

Besides Chestnut Street, two other Salem houses are shown, and several interiors and a doorway; also an early example of church architecture; Bulfinch's masterpiece, the State House; and finally two later examples of Massachusetts architecture.

WHIPPLE HOUSE, IPSWICH

4.44

KITCHEN OF JOHN WARD HOUSE, HAVERHILL

HARTSHORNE HOUSE, WAKEFIELD

The

----

HILL OF CHURCHES, TRURO

CHESTNUT ST., SALEM

ASSEMBLY HOUSE, SALEM

PIERCE-NICHOLS HOUSE, SALEM

.....

.........

-----

LEE MANSION

LAYNE WILL

OLD STATE HOUSE

HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES, SALEM

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON

HOLDEN CHAPEL, HARVARD

"CONNECTICUT VALLEY' DOORWAY, MISSION HOUSE, STOCKBRIDGE

ESO ENSTOR BUILT IN THE PEOPLE AND DEDICATED TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING A.D. MDCCCLXXXVIII

PUBLIC LIBRARY, BOSTON

TRINITY CHURCH, BOSTON

Architecture

from tradition, Massachusetts held its place in the forefront of American architecture. But since the birth of the modern movement, architecture here seems to be dormant, almost oblivious of the changes taking place elsewhere. The development of a more modern style here has been prejudiced by conditions, and these for the most part have been largely sociological. In the desperate effort to keep alive her inherited British culture, Massachusetts has kept her architecture steeped in the confines of tradition and precedent. Yet in spite of this seeming retrogression. Massachusetts' influence upon modern architecture has been great. This was not in the manner of recently constructed buildings, but in the sporadic strokes of genius that formed the roots of the radical school.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Massachusetts : a guide to its places and people, Part 11

Author: Publication date: 1937 Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company Number of Pages: 802

Author:
Publication date: 1937
Publisher: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company
Number of Pages: 802