Location Danvers, Massachusetts NRHP Reference # 68000020 Opened 1793 Architectural style Federal architecture Architect Samuel McIntire | Built 1793 Designated NHL November 24, 1968 Area 1,214 m² Added to NRHP 24 November 1968 | |
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Similar Glen Magna Farms, Danvers Historical Society, Gardiner‑Pingree House, General Israel Putnam H, Peirce‑Nichols House | ||
Derby summer house
The Derby Summer House, also known as the McIntire Tea-house, is a summer house designed in 1793 by architect Samuel McIntire, now located on the grounds of the Glen Magna Farms, Danvers, Massachusetts. Since 1958 it has been owned by the Danvers Historical Society. A National Historic Landmark, it is significant as an extremely rare and well-preserved example of an 18th-century summer house, and also includes some of the earliest American sculpture in the carved wooden figures mounted on its roof.
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Description and history
Samuel McIntire designed this ornate Federal style garden house for Elias Hasket Derby's farm in Salem, Massachusetts. The structure is 20 feet square, 2½ stories high, decorated with pilasters, swags, and Grecian urns, and topped with rustic wood statues of a Reaper and Shepherdess (milkmaid). The ground floor is punctuated by central arched openings on the east and west facades, each flanked with arched windows with wooden keystones. The second floor is ornamented with swags and fluted Ionic pilasters at the corners and between windows. A young lady's diary from 1802 records her contemporary impressions:
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.
The summer house was moved to its present location in 1901, about 4 miles from its original site, where it now opens onto a walled rose garden designed by Herbert Browne. Neither of the two statues atop the house are originals. The Shepherdess was missing when the house was transported; after 20 years she was found atop an Andover mill building, damaged by fire. A duplicate was carved in 1924, and the original is now on display in the Peabody Institute. The original Reaper fell in a storm in 1981. It too was reproduced; the original is in the Danvers Historical Society collection.
The summer house was declared a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1968.