Images Related to the Turner-Ingersoll House, aka "The House of the Seven Gables"
Images Related to the Turner-Ingersoll House, aka "The House of the Seven Gables"
Postcard c. 1900; Garden View of The House of the Seven Gables
The Turner-Ingersoll House, 54 Turner St., Salem, aka "The House of the Seven Gables" Photograph of the House of the Seven Gables with tulips in bloom. (photography by Dan Popp)
House of the Turner-Ingersoll House, aka "The House of the Seven Gables" in Salem from the garden View of the House of the Seven Gables from the garden (photography by Dan Popp)
The Shop Bell at the House of the Seven Gables Historic Site (courtesy of Shakespeare and Company)
An architectural rendering of the facade of the Turner-Ingersoll House aka The House of the Seven Gables (courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA)
Illustration of the Turner-Ingersoll House aka "The House of the Seven Gables" in Rosalind Ashe'sLiterary Houses, published by Facts on File, Inc., New York, 1982. illustrations by Roy Coombs (courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA)
Postcard (1905) of the Turner-Ingersoll House aka "The House of the Seven Gables"--with only three gables When Caroline Emmerton purchased the house at 54 Turner St., it had lost all but three of its gables.
In his lecture on September 14, 2000, Dr. John L. Idol, Jr. noted that Caroline Emmerton
"sat about restoring the house, engaging an
architect, Joseph Edward Chandler, to help
her. He was familiar with Colonial
architecture and led her to the discovery
of the position of three of the missing
gables. They were replaced. Unhappily, for
them, as things turned out, they went ahead
with the construction of a seventh gable,
since, by tradition, the house had sported
a seventh one. Further study of the
building revealed the presence of another
original gable, the authentic seventh....
Despite the evidence before her that
Hawthorne's knowledge of the old house was
superficial at best, Emmerton pushed ahead
with her efforts to transform it into the
house that Hawthorne had moved from Turner
Street into the pages of his romance. She
remodeled the house to give it the
requisite number of gables, choosing to
keep the one at back rather than to build
an authentic seventh over the front
entrance, setting up a cent-shop, and
furnishing the house in such a manner as to
be able to say that a certain room was
Phoebe's, that a particular window was the
one Clifford had stood at as he gazed upon
the street below. As far as possible, life
was following art, although she was puzzled
to find that Hawthorne had made no apparent
use of the secret passage way that the
Turner-Ingersoll house has."
(with special thanks to Dr. John L. Idol Jr.)
Illustration of a deteriorated Turner-Ingersoll House aka "The House of the Seven Gables" by Roy Coombs This illustration appears in Rosalind Ashe's Literary Houses, published by Facts on File, Inc., New York, 1982.
Depiction of Col. Pyncheon's Mansion by Roy Coombs in Literary Houses - Ten Famous Houses in Fiction edited by Rosalind Ashe (Facts on File, 1982) (courtesy of Facts On File, Inc)
Depiction of the Floor Plan of the House of the Seven Gables by Roy Coombs in Literary Houses - Ten Famous Houses in Fiction edited by Rosalind Ashe (courtesy of Facts On File, Inc)
Postcard, probably c. 1900, of the Jonathan Corwin House, called the "Old Witch House," 310 1/2 Essex St. at North St. in Salem, MA Jonathan Corwin, a Salem merchant, purchased the house from Nathaniel Davenport of Boston in 1675. Davenport had never finished the construction of the house, so Corwin had the work completed. Corwin was living here in 1692 when he and John Hathorne served as the magistrates of Salem Town, issuing warrants for the arrest of those accused of witchcraft, and on the Court of Oyer and Terminer that sentenced accused witches to death. There is a tradition that some of the accused "witches" of the Salem hysteria were examined in the lower front room on the right, and today the house is know as the "Witch House." The house was unfinished when Corwin purchased it, but when completed, it had a central chimney plan, projecting two-story front central porch, peaked gables, and a rear lean-to. Around 1746 Sarah Corwin, the widow of Jonathan Corwin's grandson, George, enlarged and remodeled the house in the Georgian Colonial style. The house was further altered between 1856 and 1885 when George P. Farrington, the owner, added a drugstore to the front. In 1945 Historic Salem purchased the property, saving it from being demolished, and had it restored. (special thanks to Margaret B. Moore)
