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The Derby Summer House
| The Derby Summer House (sometimes called the McIntire Tea
House) was designed by Samuel McIntire for Elias Hasket Derby
of Salem in 1793 and was constructed by McIntire in July 1794
on Derby’s
Farm on Andover Street (Route 114) in Danvers (now Peabody). The
farm was located where Route 114 now intersects Route 128 and included
the area that is now the North Shore Shopping Center and an equal
amount of land on the other side of Route 128.
Samuel McIntire was Salem’s most prominent
woodcarver, house builder and cabinet maker during the Federal
period in American architecture (1790-1825). Likewise, Elias
Hasket Derby was Salem's most prominent merchant. His ships were
the first to land in Canton, China to buy spices, silks, porselains,
lacquerware and other goods.
From the diary of a young lady who visited
the Derby Farm on July 1802, we know that the Summer House sat
in the center of a garden filled with rare plants and trees.
The arch was open without the lattice doors on it today. |
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Photograph by David Bohl |
She
wrote of going up the stairs to the room above, “The air
from the windows is always pure and cool and the eye wanders
with delight over the beautiful landscape below…The room
is ornamented with some Chinese figures and seems calculated
for serenity and peace.” It is probably
that the building was used more often as a place to cool off from
the summer heat and to view the garden, than as a place to drink
tea. In 1901, Ellen Peabody Endicott (Mrs. William Crowninshield
Endicott, Sr.), purchased the Summer house and had it moved to
Glen Magna, a distance of four miles. It was so well built that
not even the plaster cracked during the move. At the same time,
however, it has only one figure on the roof – The Reaper
(below). After a twenty year search, the Milkmaid was
found again on a mill building in Andover, badly damaged by fire.
An exact duplicate was carved and in the spring of 1924, she was
placed back in her original position. The original Reaper figure
fell off in a storm in 1981. It too, was reproduced and the original
is in the collection of the Danvers Historical Society. |
The Derby Summer House is unique. There is no other building
like it in the United States today. (McIntire did design a second
summer house – for Derby’s son’s
farm – but only a painting remains to show what it looked
like). Aside from its rarity, the Summer House is important because
it represents American Federal architecture at it finest. The
Federal style was based on the work of the Scottish architect
Robert Adam who studied private homes in ancient Rome, especially
at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Walk around the Summer House and
notice the delicate columns, the festoons above the second story
windows and the runs on the roof, all carved by McIntire himself.
Check the dramatic scale and careful detail of the Reaper and
Milkmaid, carved for McIntire by John and Simon Skillin of Boston.
Look at the building from across the garden and observe the perfect
proportions. Remember, that is was all made by hand more than
two hundred years ago.
Louise Thoron Endicott (Mrs. William Crowninshield Endicott,
Jr.) willed the Derby Summer House tot he Danvers Historical
Society in 1958. |
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