Emerson–Franklin Poole House

The Emerson–Franklin Poole House is a historic house at 23 Salem Street in Wakefield, Massachusetts. Built about 1795, it was in the 19th century home to Franklin Poole, a locally prominent landscape artist. Some of its walls are adorned with the murals drawn by Rufus Porter. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.^[1]

The Emerson–Poole House stands in a residential area northeast of Wakefield's downtown area, on the north side of Salem Street between Main and Pleasant Streets. It is a 2+1⁄2-story wood-frame structure, five bays wide, with a side gable roof, clapboard siding, and two asymmetrically placed chimneys. The main facade is also slightly asymmetrical. A mid-19th-century porch with modest vernacular Italianate features extends across the full width of the front, and additions project to the side and rear of the original structure.^[2]

The house was built about 1795 by Elias Emerson, who sold it to Timothy Poole, a house painter. It was the birthplace in 1808 and home of locally prominent painter Franklin Poole, who captured many historically significant scenes of Wakefield in the mid-19th century. The house is also important for the murals of Rufus Porter, an important itinerant muralist, painted on its walls, and as a well-preserved local example of Federal period architecture.^[2]

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Wakefield, Massachusetts
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Middlesex County, Massachusetts

• Emerson–Franklin Poole House off the market: murals to remain untouched

• Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Wakefield, Massachusetts
• Federal architecture in Massachusetts
• Houses completed in 1795

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