Evening Star Newspaper, June 8, 1930, Page 78

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JUNE 8 1930. W | LMD LLEPY = » - N2l \ The “House of Seven Gables.” The Town Hall and Market Place. United States to the great profit of the Salem shipowners. Among the leading shipowners of this period were Elias Hasket Derby, Wiliam Gray and Joseph Peabody. During the early years of the nineteenth century Peabody owned 83 ships, which he freighted himself and sent trading to the East Indies, Europe and St. Petersburg. He employed, it is said, a total of 7,000 seamen and other workers, and accumulated a large fortune, which is today perpetuated in more than one museum and foundation—and, of course, the name Peabody brings to mind that of Morgan, and carries the Salem tradition into the financial life of the Nation of today. In 1799, when war with France threatened, Salem, then numbering just short of 10,000 inhabitants, built and equipped the Essex, and gave it to the Nation, at a cost of about $10 a head for every man, woman and child in town. She proved the fastest ship in the navy, and captured some $2,000,000 worth of prop- erty. Meanwhile Salem skippers were showing their heels to French men-of-war and Mediter- ranean pirates. N 1807 Salem had 252 vessels on the high seas, aggregating 43,570 tons. Nearly the entire town was in some way connected with seaborn commerce, not the least important of the workers being the ship carpenters, who not only built the ships, but embellished them with beautiful and elaborate carving. There was gathered into Salem perhaps the finest body of wood-working craftsmen ever assem- bled in one place in America, and it was due to a combination of that fact and the financial prosperity of the town that the new houses which rose from the close of the Revolutionary ‘War through the first quarter of the nine- teenth century are unrivaled in America for the skill and beauty of their detail. The genius of these wood-workers was Samuel Mclntire, Salem-born in 1757, the son of a carpenter, or “housewright.” He early displayed artistic bent, and made pertrait busts in wood. He also was musical. But evidently he knew what was his serious business in life, for while learning his trade, he spent every cent he could muster on books about art and design, so that today he would be called a self-made architect. When he was only 25 he was commissioned to build what is now called the Peirce-Johonnot-Nichols house, by many esteemed the finest wooden house in America, and one day to become a museum. This house had a garden which sloped down to the water and its owner’s private wharf, and was spacious and dignified, as befitted one of the new aristocracy. When McIntire began it, he first built the west parlor, in the prevail- ing Georgian style. But the house was not finished for some 18 years, and when McIntire finally ended his work with the east parlor his style had changed, under the Adam influence, to something much more delicate, refined and characteristic of McIntire's chisels and gouges and molding planes. In that house, then, is an American wing covering two great periods of style, with furnishings to match. But during those 18 years McIntire was busy on many other houses. His grandest and, in its day, most famous house was the one he built for Elias Hasket Derby, facing the water and a series of terraced gardens leading down to the shore. Derby was then rated as the richest man in America; he had retired, and was, it is to be feared, putting on a bit of swank. He moved into his new mansion in 1799, but died soon after. None of his heirs could afford to keep up such an establishment, nor were there any other merchants who wished to take up the burden. The house was torn down only 15 years after it was finished, the site given to the town and the interior woodwork built into a simpler dwelling. An old wood cut of the house shows the usual three-story square block (the cheese box type, as it has been called), but highly ornamented with pilasters, surmounted by an elaborate cupola and flanked on both sides by ornate stables. But though this house is gone, Salem still contains many examples of Mclntire’s work, and everywhere in the old town his influence can be felt. He was designing city houses, to stand for the most part close together and close to the street, and meant for large families who at the same time refused to be cramped in small rooms. Moreover, these families, though they had money, were still not far away from their Puritan heritage of gravity and decorum. Probably all these forces operated to bring about the three-story cheese box type of dwelling which is so characteristic of Salem, as well as in other New England seaport towns. It -gets the maximum number of generous yooms on a city lot. ‘The exterior is, of course, puritanically rigid and severe, but if the proportions are good the application to this exterior of ornamental win- dow caps, perhaps a second-story central Pal- ladian window, and, finally, the crowning detail of a front entrance modeled from the classic orders, gives to such a dwelling a calm dignity and a touch of style and elegant restraint. ¢INTIRE was a master in adapting the classic orders to exterior embellishments, especially porches and the carved wooden fence posts surmounted by carved wooden urns which s0 often stood in front. But he was equally a master in what were often daring but invariably successful adaptations of the classic orders and the designs of the brothers Adam to interior trim. In all such houses, of course, the fireplace was the focal point in every room, as it is still in many dwellings. McIntire was nowhere quite so happy as in his mantels and overmantels, built for the most part out of clear white pine, painted white and molded and fluted with ex- quisite art to enrich and accentuate design. Often he carved little panels and lunettes in relief to embellish further these mantels. There was no such thing in those days as machine-run trim, nor even “universal” mold- ing planes. Molding was gotten out by hand with individual planes, often designed and ground by the carpenter himself and pushed along the pine board with only the thumb to guide the plane, One of the great beauties of McIntire’s work and of that by other Salem carpenters is the beautiful precision of it with- out reaching the point of machine accuracy. Among those for whom McIntire built houses was Benjamin Crowninshield. This house still stands, well preserved, next to the Custom N By AN t ; street—and a beautiful period—to be found on this side of the Atlantic. It is a half mile of elm-shaded perfection and is worth a trip across the continent to see. H The reason it was not ruined, as so much else in America was by new building and recon- struction after the degradation of taste, was not alone the conservatism of its householders; it was even more because of the commercial de- cline of the city. Salem was badly situated to be the port of the expanding Nation and with the coming of steam railways, by which the greater ports of Boston, and especially New York, could feed the country, her doom was sealed. She had had her hour, she had seized it nobly and flowered in a comely commercial civilization, and now all that remained for her was to sleep. But not quite all. In 1804 a boy was born to her from a long line of Puritan elders and skippers and sailors. His name was Nathaniel Hawthorne. He didn't think much of the Salem he knew. Strangely for a man of such delicate taste, he considered the beautiful houses with which the town was so studded plain and drab and uninteresting. But his imagination played around the forgotten Puritan days of the town, about the grim phenomenon of witch- craft, about the dark secret places of the human spirit now overlaid by easy living. Chestnut street—a half mile of elm-shaded perfection. all of whom followed the sea, and five became masters before they were of age. The family was allied by marriage to the Derbys, and the eccentric George Crowninshield in 1816 had the money to build a pleasure yacht, called Cleo- patra’s Barge and costing half as much as the great Derby mansion. It was built by Retire Becket—a nice name, that—and was perhaps the first palatial private yacht in America. After the death of its owner it was sold to the King of the Hawalian Islands. Benjamin Crowninshield was a soberer fellow and became Secretary of the Navy under Madison and Monroe, A few of McIntire's other houses, still to be seen, are the Peabody-Silsbee house on Essex street, the Gardner-White house in the heart of town and the Kimball house on Pickman street. Many details of his work are also pre- served in the Essex Institute and the Peabody Museum, and one of his finest houses, Oak Hill, is in nearby Danvers. Mclntire ceased building in 1810, but his son and other workers carried on his tradition for another 10 or a dozen years. Mest of Chestnut street was built after MclIntire's retirement, but it is authentically in the style and it has been unspotiled by new building for a hundred years. Its houses have been largely oecupied all that time by the same families and today it is prob- ably the most perfect example. of a period FOR three years, from 1846 to 1849, Haw- thorne was in charge of the Custom House in his native town, a job which would have kept him busy in 1800, but in 1846 was not so arduous but he could find time to write a novel called “The Scarlet Letter.” Whether there was anybody in Salem who considered this book adequate compensation for the diminished pros- - perity of the port has never been discovered. But probably the rest of the world is willing to accept it as such. After “The Scarlet Letter,” three-quarters of a century ago, it can hardly be said that Salem has been a conspicuous contributor to the vitality of American life. Forces beyond her control have taken away her prosperity as a port, and with that has gone the colorful initiative which once made her a leader in laying the foundations of American commerce, American fortunes and American architecture. Today she has certain industries and, curiously enough, they are among the leaders in indus- trial experiment—but the town is neither an active seaport nor a hive of industry, nor any longer a leader in the arts. It is a lovely relic. It has a color of its own—Quaker gray and green. Perhaps that was not the original color, but for a long time now it has been a custom of Salem to paint the houses, even those of brick, Quaker gray, with green shut- ters and white trim. Under the green of the elm-shaded streets, the gray houses, touched with white and green, are aloof, quiet, sedate. They 2-r un- touched by the great fire of 1914, which swept away so much of the nore modern town behind them. They have been untouched by the hand of “progress” for a century, keeping their severity of outline ard perfection of de- tail, and keeping their treasures of mahogany . and china and figured wallpapers. There is, for example, & house in Salem which possesses two complete Lowestoft dinner sets, each of more than 200 pieces. But past these houses, on the ancient stireets, no longer pass swaggering sailors ashore, and Yankee teamsters come for loads of goods to haul inland, and queer folkx with monkeys and parrots to sell, and great mcrchants with the pride of ownership, extending doubtless to their womenfolk, stiff with the silks just come from India. And behind these houses, when they are near the water, no longer do terraced gar- dens go down to the docks, while up to the very hollyhocks swings a battered schoomer, and out amid the marigolds is dumped ker cargo from the Seven Seas. To see these things in Salem town you will have to shut your eyes and summon ghosis. You will have to possess the imagination of Hawthorne himself. But the material relics these things left behind, the houses, the archi« tectural taste, are still there, to a greater ex- tent than anywhere else, and brought to a finer perfection. They are what, today, Salem has to be proud of, and they are worth a visit by every American, who owes so much today to what Salem was more than a hundred years ago. White Bread Is W holesome A GROUP of five experts in dietetics has decided that while investigators have long advocated the use of whole-wheat bread, white bread is a wholesome food. The views of this group, headed by Dr. A. F. . Woods, director of scientific work of the De- partment of Agriculture, are expressed in a statement based on the scientific facts regarde ing breads made of white flour and of whole- wheat flour: “White and whole-wheat breads are both wholesome foods. They are among the most important and cheapest sources of energy and protein in the diet. The composition and value in the diet of whole-wheat and white bread vary, not only with the differences in the flour used, but also with the amount and character of other added constituents. “Whole-wheat or graham flour, which cone- tain the bran and germ portion of the grain, have lower bread making capacity and are more susceptible of spoilage, so cannot be handled as readily commercially. In general they contain more essential minerals and vitamins and more roughage than white fiour. “No person subsists on one food. Each food should be chosen in relation to the other con- stituents of the diet. Bread, either white or whole-wheat, is always an economical source of energy and protein in any diet. The form may be left to the choice of the individual when the remainder of the diet is so constituted as to contribute the necessary minerals, vitamins and any necessary roughage.” ‘Those who were consulted in the preparation of the statement are Dr. R. Adams Dutcher, head of department of agricultural biocheme istry, Pennsylvania State College; Dr. E. V. McCullum, professor of chemical hygiene, Johns , professor of physiological chemistry, Yale Uni- Hopkins Universily; Dr. Lafayette B. Mendal, professor of physiological chemistry, Yale Unie versity; Dr. H. C. Sherman, professor of cheme istry, Columbia University; Dr. Harry Steenbock, professor of agricultural chemistry, University of Wisconsin; and from the Department of Agriculture Dr. A. F. Woods, director of scien= tific work; Dr. Henry G. Knight, chief of Bureau of Chemistry and Soils; N. A. Olsen, chief of Bureau of Agricultural Economics; Dr. Louise Stanley, chief of Bureau of Home Eco- nomics; Dr. W. W. Skinner, assistant chief of chemical and technological research, Bureau of Chemistry and Soils, and Dr. F. C. Blanck, in charge of food research division, Bureau of Chemistry and Soils. “It should be evident,” said Dr. Woods, in commenting on the official statement, “that because a particular food lacks a certain vita- . min or other important food factor its value is not necessarily thereby seriously reduced in a mixed diet, in which other foods contain the necessary elements. Practically all dieticians nowadays recommend a diversified diet. “The American people have available from the farms, ranches and fisheries everything needed for producing a sound body. Those who give out information on food values should be particularly careful not to draw unwarranted conclusions as to food values based on the pres- ence or absence of some particular factor.” »