 The district contains a number of architecturally significant works of Samuel McIntire, a builder and woodworker who had a house and workshop at 31 Summer Street, and who designed and built a number of these houses, and others that display the profits made in the Old China Trade by Salem's merchants.The district is a subset of a larger locally designated McIntire Historic District.The first of the great brick Federal houses to be constructed was the Thomas Saunders House at number 39 Chestnut, built in 1805 and later remodeled by Arthur Little (1893).