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STAFF PHOTO | SPENSER HASAK
I love historic buildings– specifically historic homes– because of the stories they tell. When you look at historic homes, especially ones built before the 19th century, you can see how the residents lived. The form of these homes were so closely tied to their function, making each unique.
But historic homes do not only tell stories about the people who lived inside them, they also tell stories about the communities around them.
Before West Shore was suburban, it was long stretches of farmland.Beginning in 1635, the land was parceled out to wealthy men such as John Humphrey, deputy governor of the Massachusetts colony, and Hugh Peter, a Massachusetts Bay Company shareholder.The rural landscape would come to be dotted with farmhouses and summer houses on the coast.
Robert Girdler Harris, a descendant of Marbleheaders, had a homestead at the center of Harris Farm on the West Shore. Born in 1817, Harris had worked in the shoe trade before turning to agriculture.
Around the 1860s, Harris started farming and began providing dairy and produce to local markets.
On Manataug Trail, once the location of Harris Farm, the Girdler-Harris House still stands today. Built circa 1720, the house is atypical for the time, being three bays, or repeated structural elements, wide. Originally one-and-a-half stories tall and one room deep, the roof was raised sometime in the 18th century and has since been renovated to two rooms deep. In the 1950s, a garage was converted into living space.
Despite the layout changes, the house has retained style from the past.The clapboard, relatively flat facades, and door and window surrounds have been updated, but retain the Federalist architectural style of the time.
While the peninsula has changed greatly – farmland having been replaced with roads and houses, the memory of Harris and his family lives on in Marblehead. Farther inland, past the Village School, is Girdler Street, named after Harris’ ancestors who had lived there before moving to the West Shore in 1667.