190 High Street

History

This is an excellent example of a two-and-one-half-story Federal-style house, even by the high standards set by Newburyport designers and builders. The southwest-facing house is set on a slight rise close to the street.

An edging of granite divides the sidewalk from the bank on which the home is set, which is planted with groundcover. A graveled drive at the west leads to the carriage barn/garage to the rear. Extensive gardens stretch behind the house to the northeast.

The house is rectangular in plan and has a three-story Federal mansion-block style, hip-roof ell set back on the northeast elevation. Much plainer than the main block, the date of this addition is not known. The main block, five bays wide by three bays deep on the northwest elevation, but five on the southeast, rises to a high, deck-on-hip roof that is higher than others of its period, a feature transitional from the earlier, heavier Georgian style. Flat-roofed dormers appear on all four elevations; those on the facade and rear elevations are filled with two windows, while those on the side elevations contain single 6/6 windows. All windows, except those at the rear of the ell, are finished with exterior shutters.

Windows are 6/6; on the first floor, they have tall crown molds, and on the second floor, they nearly touch the deep bed mold of the boxed cornice. The house is finished with wide cornerboards and a deep sill. A pedimented side entrance in the third bay of the southeast elevation features engaged, half-round Doric pilasters supporting an entablature with metopes and triglyphs. A probably twentieth-century porch with fine Federal-style rail links the main block and three-story ell. A flat-roof porch is located across the southeast elevation of the ell.

The most distinctive feature of the house is the fine central entry of the facade. It is reached by wide granite stairs and sheltered under a portico of slender, fluted Doric columns and pilasters. They support an entablature and a flat roof. A mature wisteria vine softens the composition in season. The six-panel door has a surround featuring finely reeded pilasters, an elliptical fan in a delicate leaded-glass design with carved ornaments, and a keystone in its wide surround. One-half length leaded glass sidelights with rosette-decorated ovals and circles complete this elaborate composition.

The ell has an entry in the first of the two-bay facade on the southeast. It is one bay on the southwest elevation. On the northeast or rear elevation of the ell, the fenestration is asymmetrical: on the first floor, the three bays contain a probably contemporary door, a wide, contemporary “bump-out”, and a window. The door in the first bay leads to a modern deck and stairs. Of the three bays on the second floor of the ell, the third bay contains a smaller, fixed-pane window, probably a twentieth-century alteration.

The three-bay rear elevation of the main block features another contemporary glassed entry vestibule and two original windows topped with high crown moldings. The three second-floor windows are repetitions of those on the facade and side elevations.

A well-preserved carriage barn, set back on the north, has been converted into a garage on the first floor and living or storage space above. Still, these alterations do not significantly detract from its integrity. The two-story structure with a high hip roof features an offset two-story pavilion with a windowless cross-gable wall dormer that still houses the lift for the hayloft opening below. The opening has been altered into a window. Two garage doors have been let into the building, which is three bays wide. Like the house, the barn has 6/6 sash. The side and rear elevations contain three bays. A probably original ventilator is set into the left side of the roof, and two contemporary skylights are put on the slope of the southeast elevation. A wood picket fence on the right side of the barn separates the garden from the more public barn/garage and driveway. There is a small sitting area paved with flagstones on the southeast side of the barn, probably installed in the mid-to-late twentieth century.

At the rear of the house is a large, well-planned and developed garden. Its plan dates from the Federal period; it is articulated by graveled walks, perennial borders edged with low boxwood, fruit trees, and mature deciduous and evergreen trees. Stepping down the hill in terraces that take advantage of the natural terrain, the garden progresses from a sitting area behind the house to a formal perennial garden, which becomes somewhat less formal as it progresses to a shady area at the rear.

In 1803, the Rev. James Morse, minister of St. Paul’s Church in Newburyport from 1803 to 1842, lived in this house. Morse was also one of the organizers of the Merrimack Bible Society, the Newburyport Academy, and the Newburyport Athenaeum. Upon his death in the 1840s, the land passed to his daughter, who is believed to have laid out the original garden.

The heirs of Rev. Morse owned the house until 1851, when it was conveyed to Enoch Williams, who had been one of the incorporators of the short-lived Newburyport Steam Cotton Company, established in 1837 and dissolved in 1843, and was also a Director of the Newburyport Bank. He served as alderman in the city of Newburyport in 1856 and 1857. From Williams, ownership passed in 1869 to Warren Currier, and subsequently to A. T. Ross. Henry Learned began renting the house in 1916 and purchased it a few years later. On his death, it was inherited by his daughter Lorna, who lived there until the 1990s.

In 1768, before the Reverend Morse’s ownership of 190 High Street, the heirs of Tirzah Bartlett and her husband Hathorn Coker, a Quaker, had set aside a small portion of their property as a Friends’ burying ground. As noted in Lucinda Brockway’s 2004 Gardens of the New Republic, local historians have long believed that this burying ground was located on what is now the third level of the garden at 190 High Street, but that nothing remains of the burying ground today, as the graves were moved “in the previous century.” No record of when or to where this removal took place has been found.

The belief is evidently based on Currier’s statement, citing Essex County court records, in his 1902 History of Newbury, that in 1767 Hathorn Coker, Samuel Coker, and others sued Tirzah’s estate to recover four acres of land stretching from Merrimack Street “nearly to High Street.” As a result of that suit, the entail was docked in 1768, and the division of “the Coker field” was executed. Upon that division, “nine rods of the premises being three rods square at the north west Corner thereof were set aside as a burial ground. Noting that Washington Street was laid out and accepted by the town of Newburyport in 1800, he says that, “entrance to the burying ground is from the southwesterly side of Washington Street.” He also describes a “low granite monument [that] marks the enclosure,” with an inscription dated in 1865 stating that Hathorn Coker and his family “lie buried here.” John Mead Howells and others who have written since have repeated this story in connection with the garden at 190 High Street. However, an 1884 Newburyport atlas at the Historical Society of Old Newbury clearly shows the cemetery located on a lot adjacent to but separate from the property then owned by Warren Currier and subsequently by the Learneds.

Learned is credited with the longevity of the property’s fine Federal period garden. He undertook extensive rejuvenation of the garden parterres, and much of what remains in the garden today is the result of his effort and interests. After his daughter Lorna, also an avid gardener, inherited the house, she removed some of the more complicated formal beds. Still, she retained the overall design and planting style.

The garden's layout today is believed to date back to the 1840s. The more formal flowerbeds were located close to the house, with a kitchen garden and fruit garden to the rear, at the lowest level. The garden was divided into three areas by a series of tall hedges, with a long central path running along an axis with the sitting terrace behind the house, connecting them. Boxwood hedges lined both sides of the central path, edging the wide perennial borders. Old photographs show circular box-lined beds on both sides of the first level of the garden, which were replaced with lawn when Miss Learned took over the garden's care.

This house, with its characteristic arrangement of carriage house and gardens, remains one of the finest examples of High Street’s Federal-period architecture and of its survival through the twentieth century.