Essay
Two Garden Houses
By Lisa Zeiger
���A
garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions,��� wrote the great Brazilian landscape architect,
Roberto Burle Marx. There is something melancholy in
his summation about plants������doomed to disappearance������which might describe the fate of gardens and
garden houses as well. In North America, however, certain celebrated garden houses still stand tall���or oblong���as the case may be.
The exquisite Derby Summer House, designed in 1793
by Samuel McIntire for Elias Hasket Derby���s farm in Salem is a miniature monument to McIntire���s mastery of
the Federalist style. McIntire (1757-1811) ���the woodcarver of Salem,��� grew into the practice of architecture,
becoming one of the first architects in the United States,
building brick or wooden houses in his native New England.
The Summer House is a mere twenty feet square and
two and a half stories high, its white fa��ade decorated
with pilasters, swags and Grecian urns. On the roof stand
two statues, designed by McIntire and carved in wood
by John and Simeon Skillin of Boston (now rendered in
reproduction) of a reaper and shepherdess. We know
HYLAND