earlgreytea68 | Salem Motor Tour--Part 2 (Reply)

I started to post this tour forever ago, then Semagic took this weird fit and wouldn't let me post any pictures. So I'm trying this again...

23. Custom House

Nathaniel Hawthorne once worked here. No, wait, in the words of the 1937 book author, “Nathaniel Hawthorne once dreamed over his ledgers” here. Built in 1819, it stands right next door to the Richard Derby House at the head of Derby Wharf

Somewhat melancholically, the 1937 book describes Derby Wharf as a place “that once beckoned home the vessels of the Derby family but which now points only to a harbor empty of ships.” So things seem to have improved for Derby Wharf since 1937, since there’s at least a ship there. (Salem’s actually in a bit of a boom time right now, both because of tourism and because it’s a popular place for city workers to find slightly more space at slightly better prices.)

A little bit about the architecture of the Custom House, because I know you would be disappointed if I didn’t tell you about its gambrels and pediments: “The Palladian window above the Ionic, balustraded portico, the round-headed first-floor windows, the balustraded parapet, and the cupola are the outstanding architectural features.” And: “Surmounting the parapet rail is a carved eagle."

24. Hawthorne’s Birthplace

Soooooo…this doesn’t seem to exist anymore. THE AUTHOR OF THE 1937 BOOK WOULD WEEP, I TELL YOU. But we drove all around looking for it, and the address the book gives is now this empty lot:

Sad. Maybe it was moved somewhere? Seems weird that it would be torn down sometime between 1937 and 2010. I mean, as the 1937 book makes clear, Hawthorne enjoyed quite a reputation by 1937, it seems like his birthplace would be protected. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s now over near the House of the Seven Gables or something.

Anyway, if you could have seen the house, it would have looked like this: gambrel-roofed, “built before the witchcraft year, 1692.” Hawthorne was born in the house in 1804, “in the left-hand chamber of the second story.” Yes. He’s that specific. And, in fact, here is his entire description of his love, Nathanial Hawthorne: “In the shadows of the old house he spent a shy, solitary boyhood. Though he was city port surveyor in 1846, he was a mystic and a recluse by nature and entirely unfitted by an abnormal sensitiveness for his duties at the Custom House. [Poor Nathaniel Hawthorne! Can you imagine they tried to make his great writerly self WORK for a living?!] He realized that actualities must be insisted on in America, but his genius reached its full fruition only when he turned to romantic fiction. [As happens with many of us great writerly selves.] Three volumes of short stories, besides ‘The Scarlet Letter,’ ‘The House of the Seven Gables,’ ‘The Blithedale Romance,’ and ‘The Marble Faun,’ are works of major significance. He created one of the best sustained prose styles in American literature.”

And there you have it. If Hawthorne had also had a shoe fetish, he would have been the 1937 book author’s perfect man, I think.

25. Forest River Park

It “overlooks the harbor and sea.”

Indeed.

In 1937, three acres of Forest River Park were “devoted” to the Pioneers’ Village. And look! They still are!

In 1937, it was 25 cents to get in here. Not so much today.

To me, it looked like this place was abandoned. I mean, doesn’t it look like a mess in there?

However, a scarf tied to a fence as a beacon for us showed us where the buildings of the Pioneers’ Village are.

According to the 1937 book, the Pioneers’ Village is “an accurate reproduction of typical units of a Puritan community of about 1630, ranging from dugouts and primitive cabins to the ‘Governor’s Fayre House’ with its huge central chimney and vast fireplace.”

And there you have it: Salem by car in 2010, described as of 1937.