Melrose spotlight: The First Period building style

This is the first installment in an occasional series on the architectural styles of Melrose homes. First up is the “first period,” which ran roughly from the start of English colonization until ca. 1725, although it is defined not by when the house was built, but by its style. First period houses are vernacular, rather than academic, meaning that they were built according to the orally handed down building traditions of craftspeople, not according to architectural style books.

Characteristics include central chimney stacks, casement windows, decorative gables and drop pendants, a lack of concern with symmetry, and saltbox rooflines—but rarely do these features all occur together because of modernizations made to these houses over time. In fact, when they do all occur together, you are probably looking at a speculative “restoration” that was carried out in the first half of the twentieth century.

The best documented first period house in Melrose is the Upham House, and it displays all of these complexities at work. When you see the house from the street, you are actually looking at it from behind, which is why the roof line seems so low; you’re seeing the back end of the saltbox. As you can see from the architectural reconstruction drawings, the house was built in stages. It began as a one room over one room structure with the chimney stack on its west end; the family added a western addition in stages, and then finally added the kitchen ell that created the saltbox roofline.

The black and white photo from 1920 shows us that the fenestration of the house has changed since restoration, with some sash windows removed and casement windows added to give the house a more “authentic” first period look. Altogether, what you see at the Upham House is a carefully curated image that is designed to take you back to the early 18^th century—but in finessing that appearance, some of the complex architectural history can get lost.

To see where some of Melrose’s other first period houses are found, please explore this map of the city’s historic structures: 

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1dQ4FG2qKsEL0n_DACsLjICrmZEsAxTX7&usp=sharing

#historicpreservation #preservationinaction #architecture #restoration #boston #thisplacematters #melrosema