. Historic buildings of America as seen and described by famous writers; . tecture ofthe middle of the Seventeenth Century. The exact date ofits erection is unknown, but all the valid evidence available,in the absence of documentary records bearing directly onthis point, indicates that it was built as early as 1650, andthere are architects who believe that it was erected stillearlier. The extreme rarity of houses dating from that re-mote period, so soon after the settlement of Massachusetts,is due primarily to the limited longevity of wooden building,and secondarily to the fact that the coloni
. Historic buildings of America as seen and described by famous writers; . tecture ofthe middle of the Seventeenth Century. The exact date ofits erection is unknown, but all the valid evidence available,in the absence of documentary records bearing directly onthis point, indicates that it was built as early as 1650, andthere are architects who believe that it was erected stillearlier. The extreme rarity of houses dating from that re-mote period, so soon after the settlement of Massachusetts,is due primarily to the limited longevity of wooden building,and secondarily to the fact that the colonists were at firstobliged by the paucity of proper building materials to erectonly temporary cabins of logs, which were subsequentlyabandoned and neglected, after more comfortable dwellingswere made possible by the establishment of saw-mills andforges and roads. Ipswich was settled in 1633. The firstsaw-mill in the town was established in 1649. The greatposts and girders, with other surviving timbers of the frameof the old house in question, bear no marks of the axe or I. THE WHIPPLE HOUSE, IPSWICH 179 the adze, and it would be a fair inference that they weresawed, though not necessarily by water power, for we knowthat some extensive sawing was done by hand in sawpits. There are three or four successive parts or chap-ters in the serial story of the old house. The west end ofthe main structure was built first; of this there is evidencein the material, the workmanship, the age of the woodwork,and in indirect, but convincing written evidence. Themain beams of the frame—the posts, sills, girders, joists,rafters, etc.—in this wing are of American larch or tama-rack, a soft wood, which, however, has shown astonishingdurability in every part except where it has been exposedto moisture. The east part of the main structure, thesecond chapter, was possibly added in the time of the afflu-ent and pious Captain John Whipple, the second of thatname, who, in 1683, was estimated to be worth
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjecthistori, bookyear1906
