Well I just decided to take a break from the demolition and take a walk in Cambridge.
With me, Brian Pfeiffer, who's with the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.
Brian, this is one of the oldest properties in Cambridge, right?
Yes it is.
It's a house that dates from the 17th century, which is a rare thing in Cambridge.
It's the Cooper Frost Austin house .
The tree could almost date from the seventeenth century.
It's huge.
Its huge, not quite, but close.
Now, the Cooper Frost Austin house, obviously has had various owners.
It's a salt box though right?
Yes, and that refers really that long lean to roof that you find at a lot of 17th and early 18th century New England houses.
And salt was actually sold in boxes that looked like that, right?
Yes, and the English called it cat slide, though there are plenty of names for it.
Alright, now tell us about this house.
How was it built?
This house was built in two halves.
The half that faces us was the earliest piece, built in the 1690's and it housed one family.
But when they had two generations that Married and having children, they built the second half about 1710-1715, and lived side by side thereafter as they farm the land around.
Sure, so that's where you end up with a central chimney.
How does that affect the front facade of the house?
The front was extended so it appears nearly to be symmetrical though, that's mostly a 19th century renovation to the front.
But, on the end here you see a little bit of 17th century work on this overhanging gable, which is a detail found throughout New England on houses of this period.
The clapboards up there look to be quite, quite old.
Could they be original to the--?
Probably not original.
There are no remaining 17th century ones, but they certainly are late 18th, early 19th century clapboards.
Okay.
Now, I imagine they had scores of acres around here.
Yes, this was part of a farm that extended back in all directions.
And actually, I think just around the corner there is a house designed by the architect who designed your house on what might have been an orchard at one point.
Hartwill and Richardson.
Yes.
Let's go look at it.
This a house that dates from 1890.
What would you call the style of this house?
Well, it's mostly Colonial Revival, but there are lots of elements of other things.
I think the color, kind of high hip roof, the balustrade that you see over the porch and coming down the stairs are all things that were popular as colonial revival elements in the late nineteenth century.
But it borrows from a lot of different styles, right?
Sure.
The oriel windows, those windows in the end here that curve with the glass, the curved glass were something very popular in the 1880s and 90s
And they're called oriel because they don't come all the way down to the ground, they just die into the side of the wall.
Right.
If they touch the ground, they'd be called a bay window.
It's a heavily detailed house, and if you will look at the dormer on the third floor, it has a chimney coming through the roof of the dormer.
Sure.
And then that panel with kind of a sunburst down the front, isn't that sort of Queen Anne?
It is, but again they were freely grabbing here and there elements that they liked and put them together in ways that made sense to them visually at the time.
It's spectacularly done though.
The paint job looks like it was just completed yesterday.
absolutely, and there's this nice special detail, the bow on the porch coming out in a wonderful stone vase.
A belvedere.
Now there are some shingle style houses by Hartwell and Richardson, right?
Yes, in this neigborhood, just up the street.
Now Brian this is an enormous house isn't it?
Yes, this is really among the largest that Hartwell and Richardson worked on when they had their large practice in the 1880s and 90s.
And typical of, I think, a lot of their houses , it was built for a wealthy merchant, a grocer in this case, a man named Henry Yurksa.
So there were new fortunes in the 1880s.
Sure.
Now, this is a shingle style house .
But aside from the fact that it's entirely covered in shingles, what is it that's typical of the style?
Well shingles are certainly one of the most important pieces.
But one of the qualities is this horizontal element, rather than the very vertical quality that you see in a lot of Victorian buildings.
And the kind of undulation of the wall's surface, I think you see it best on this porch where that railing is all shingled, and just keeps rippling around the base.
But also a little bit up in the towers, and then also the patterning of the... Where the decoration is really just that little curved line and a sawtooth at the basement just above the first story.
Yes.
And the line that demarcates the separation between the first and second floors.
And that slight flair too, at that point, where the wall kicks out a little bit, is very much characteristic of the shingle style.
It is kind of like stretching a skin around all the masses of the house.
And just puncturing where the windows are.
But the windows aren't really, they don't really stand out that much.
No.
And also the windows really reflect the way the way the space is laid out inside, as opposed to being rigidly symmetrical.
Is the brown a typical color that would have been used in shingle styles?
Very much so.
Earth tones, dark browns, reds.
I love it.
It's like a big chocolate cake.
Thanks for the tour.
We have to do this again.
My pleasure.
