DANVERS — A visit to the McIntire Tea House begins as you step through a gate in the fieldstone wall and follow the manicured pebble path toward the back of the Glen Magna estate house.
You walk past a semi-circular porch that opens from the house’s main hall, turn right, and follow another path right and into the main gardens which, even in mid-September and despite the dry weather, are still quite beautiful.
At the end of the garden, you will pass a fountain and enter the pergola — eight fluted concrete pillars imported from a Georgia mansion some time after the Civil War. The pillars are joined on top by heavy cedar beams with the ends cut to an Asian pattern.
The pergola was blown down three years ago in a storm, said Danvers Historical Society President David McKenna. The only problem putting it back up, he added, was finding cedar beams that big. They managed, however, and now, even the wisteria covering the far end has nearly all grown back.
Beyond the pergola, on your left, you will get your first real glimpse at the McIntire Tea House. It is a white building, 20 feet square by two-and-a-half stories high, decorated with pilasters, swags and Grecian urns, and topped with rustic wooden statues of a reaper and a milkmaid — and it goes back some 230 years.
During the War of 1812, Joseph Peabody, the wealthiest Salem shipping merchant of his day, bought the 20-acre Danvers property, according to a brochure from the Danvers Historical Society.
It was described as “in every respect well-calculated for a gentleman’s seat.” From this initial 20-acre purchase the property grew to over 330 acres and was used as a summer retreat for the next 144 years.
At approximately the same time, across the river, Elias Haskett Derby, a wealthy Salem businessman, contracted with Samuel McIntire, the renowned Salem architect, to design and build a summer house at his farm on Andover Street in what was then part of Danvers.
McIntire designed Derby’s summer house and built it on his farm in July 1794. That farm, where Routes 114 and 128 now intersect, encompassed the hilltop on which the summer house was built. It is now the site of the Northshore Mall.
There it remained until 1901, when it was moved four miles overland from its original site to its present location at Glen Magna Farms.
According to reports of the time, it was towed by horse teams the entire distance over wooden rails without any damage — except for the loss of one of the two wooden statues (the Milkmaid) which had adorned the roof and disappeared during the move.
A duplicate was carved in 1924 and placed on what was by now the McIntire Tea house, along with the other statue (The Reaper). The original Reaper fell in a storm in 1981 and it too was reproduced.
By 1892 Glen Magna Farms belonged to Ellen Peabody Endicott, Joseph Peabody’s grandfather, who in 1893 hired the Boston firm of Little, Browne and Moore to expand the mansion to its present classic colonial revival form.
Among the many improvements she made before her death in 1926, she brought the Derby Summer House to Glen Magna in 1901.
Over the years, the family did, indeed, use it as a tea house.
On hot summer afternoons, they would climb the steep, narrow stairway to the second floor where they would open the eight large, vaulted windows to the cool breezes that always seemed to be blowing.
Through the rear window, they could enjoy views of the walled rose garden — now badly in need of repair; through the right window they could see the pergola, the main garden and great house; and through the front window, they could stand in marvel of the giant weeping beech tree while servants carried trays of tea up that steep, narrow stairway.
Nothing the Salem News could find detailed the slow deterioration of Glen Magna Farms but, by the 2000s, it was becoming obvious.
At about that time, Tom Page, a former Marine who is also a teacher at Salem State University and owner of the historic Page House in downtown Danvers, was elected president of the Danvers Historical Society. He had a deep commitment to the history of Danvers.
In the words of David McKenna, current Historical Society president, “The Historical Society was in dire straits at the time … it was unattended, nobody went to the meetings … Tom had been a trustee, vice president, then he was elected president and made it a player.”
McKenna said Page was one of the most fortunate things that happened to the Society at the time.
“He had a direct line between the Historical Society and the town,” and he was able to continue the life of the Society rather than allowing it to disappear, McKenna said.
About that time, things began to happen, and the town secured two, $50,000 grants from the Massachusetts Historical Commission.
The Tea House was in sad condition: It was infested with squirrels, had holes all along the eaves, a lot of water damage, badly worn and missing siding, beams and framework rotted away.
The first grant was directed at making the building weather-tight: They replaced the roof, repaired the rotted and missing frame and replaced the siding.
The second $50,000 grant was directed primarily toward restoring the badly weathered rooftop statues of the Reaper and the Milkmaid.
As the severely damaged originals were in permanent storage and their replacements, also carved wood, were rotted, bug-eaten and simply missing parts and pieces, they had to be replaced.
Replacing the reaper and milkmaid statues cost most of the second $50,000 grant.
And since the replacement statues, though hand-carved, were still not not totally accurate reproductions, the Historical Society decided to call in Skylight Studios, Inc., a Woburn firm with a worldwide reputation, which specializes in replacing badly damaged statuary with weather- and insect- and animal-proof polymer replicas that are as close as possible to the originals.
The new statues were made from molds of the earlier statues, and now stand proudly above the tea house where they are expected to stand undamaged and sparkling white for decades to come.
The six windows on the third floor were, before the restorations, nearly impossible to open. They operated on a rope, weight and pulley counterbalance system that was frequently used around the turn of the 19th century, and had to be overhauled.
The rope and weights were no problem, but the pulleys were carved from wood and were no longer available. Window Woman of New England, a firm that specializes in restoring antique windows, took on the job, meticulously carving each of at least 16 pulleys.
Overall, it cost $100,000 to restore the exterior and the interior of the McIntire Tea House to the condition it is today, but the interior still needs refinishing, and the the Danvers Historical Society is still looking for someone to donate money to do the work.
At the end of the day, McKenna noted that the members of the Danvers Historical Society are “an extraordinary group of people” who have succeeded in doing a “terribly important job — becoming a member of the community. One of the great metrics of their success is that I can go home with a beer Koozie that says ‘Danvers Historical Society’ on it.”
