Why Norfolk’s buildings look the way they look

SALISBURY — There is a reason there are so many impressive buildings in nearby Norfolk.

Some 45 of them were designed by Alfredo S.G. Taylor, a versatile architect whose distinctive style is formally noted by the existence of the Alfredo S.G. Taylor Thematic Group on the National Register of Historic Places.

Ann Havemeyer, director of the Norfolk Library, told an overflow crowd all about the Taylor influence at Salisbury Town Hall Saturday, Feb. 20.

Havemeyer was speaking as part of the Era of Elegance series of talks sponsored by the Scoville Memorial Library and the Salisbury Association.

Taylor was born in Italy in 1872, to an American mother and English father. He graduated Harvard in 1894 and then attended the Columbia University architecture school.

He met Amelia “Minna” Scranton, and married her in 1896. The clerical gentleman officiating, as it turned out, was a summer resident of Norfolk.

In those days, young architects were drawn to Paris — specifically, to the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Taylor and Minna spent five years in Paris, returning to the U.S. in 1902.

Norfolk had become a fashionable resort, valued for the fresh air and clean water, Havemeyer said. There was a building boom, with hotels and other accommodations. 

The town was prosperous and up-to-date.

“By 1900 it was one of the rare small towns with electricity and telephone service,” Havemeyer said.

Taylor designed several homes for wealthy clients, including Moss Hill for his mother-in-law.

“It was considered quite modern,” Havemeyer said, and reflected the forceful personality of the client — a woman who was active in women’s suffrage and who liked to climb in the Swiss Alps.

Taylor designed a home reminiscent of a Swiss chalet for a Mrs. Haddock, a widow with a daughter who became ill with scarlet fever and was only 4 feet tall.

The Haddock women were eccentric extroverts — Mrs. Haddock dressed exclusively in purple, her daughter only in pink.

“And they wore all their jewelry, all the time.”

People in town joked that there were three means of communication in Norfolk — telephone, telegraph and “Tell a Haddock.”

Taylor also designed the Catholic church in Norfolk, in the Spanish style.

Havemeyer said that Norfolk in the late 19th century had a substantial Irish population, many of whom were the stonemasons and other skilled laborers Taylor relied on.

The existing church was “an undistinguished wooden box,” Havemeyer said.

Taylor gave them “something that looked like it was from the Basque region of Spain.”

“It is now an unfortunate shade of pink,” Havemeyer continued.

Taylor designed houses, business venues, summer camps, even garages during his career. 

After 1940, he entered into “an active retirement,” with an emphasis on tennis, even in the rain.

He died in 1947, at the age of 74.

Taylor’s legacy shows “what a good time he and his clients had” creating architecture based “not upon reason but upon romance.”