This report is an appendix to the Physical investigation of the Single Sister’ House and dedicated to a particular topic of the research: color and decoration of the interior walls, which is extremely important for the restoration design. This research was done in September 2004 and has to be considered as a preliminary physical investigation of the general principles of the interior decoration. The material that was found cannot support the entire building restoration, but can be used for a fragmental (partial) restoration of the Single Sisters’ House interior space.

The parts of the wooden baseboard were detached from the walls in several rooms. Some of them were fastened with cut nails with machine made hats, some of them used 20^th century round nails. Interior walls were painted with oil paint in the 20^th century, so the surface behind the bases is now the only object that can be effectively used for paint analyses of the 18-19^th centuries time period.

Several layers of a water-based paint were found behind the wooden bases. The most common color was white. Yellow (the initial), peach (early 19^th century) and light gray (19^th century) color layers were also found.

At the bottom of the walls the very original (1786) drawn baseboards were found consisting a gray color stripe along a floor. It is not possible to determine how tall the drawn baseboards were, because the floor levels were changed in almost all the rooms. Only at the original lending of the Main stair the height of the drawn baseboard was determined to be 5" in height. A 3/8" wide black (dark gray) line was drawn on the top of the gray stripe. The black line plays a role of a border between two color environments and at the same time imitates a top molding of an imitated baseboard.

The drawn gray baseboard was not only a decorative interior detail. Mainly it served to camouflage possible dirt from shoes and from water during washing a floor or a stair.

The dark red line above the floor was discovered on the West part of the North wall in the second time period South stair hall. It was drawn during the third quarter of the 19^th century, after demolition of the original South stair.

Other layers in the researched places did not have drawn baseboards, i.e. a white or a light color of plastered walls touched the floorboards.

The reconstruction of the finish for the rooms is shown below.

Drawn baseboard was not an unusual decorative element in the interiors of the 18^th-19^th centuries. Attached genre-paintings of that time illustrate the dark baseboards, drawn baseboards and entire lack of them.

Wood baseboards were installed in the Single Sisters’ house interiors in the second half of the 19th century. It means that before the middle of the 19^th century no baseboards were applied to the interior walls. Furthermore, the present research can draw another conclusion: in Salem’s cultural environment all houses that were built before the mid of the 19^th century did not have wood baseboards.

Another important discovery during this research concludes the pine floor and oak stair details were not finished originally. Some of the pine details of the Main stair were whitewashed with water based paint by 1840s.

Suggested additional research:

Igor Kiselev October 19, 2004

07.27.2003