History Time: Yesterday's Salem today

By Maggi Smith-Dalton, Globe Correspondent

The city of Salem.…  is unique among the cities of America in that it has retained for so long its old, Colonial flavor, for it is only within the last thirty years that great changes have taken place in its "personnel." Where once stood stately Colonial homes, are now seen large and imposing buildings in which the business of the city is transacted, while many manufacturing firms have established their plants here. The Salem of today differs widely from the Salem of thirty years ago.

The business blocks, of course, are grouped about the centre of the town, while stretching out on all sides are the residential portions. At the west is Chestnut street, one of the finest residential streets of the city, beautiful with its arching elms and its fine Colonial mansions, where now dwell many descendants of the old "merchant princes."

Derby street, which was once the heart of the town in the halcyon days of the East India trade, is now peopled by the humble dwellers of the tenement house, while at the wharves, instead of ships full of costly treasures, now lie black coal barges, and schooners laden with lumber. At the east is the old training field (the Common) now called Washington Square, surrounded on all sides by graceful elms. Around this are built some of the finest residences of the city….

South Salem lies along one side of the beautiful, landlocked harbor, shaped like a bowl, which in the pre-Revolutionary days, almost made Salem the capital of the State…

Salem is now the centre of business for all the adjoining towns, being connected with them by railway and trolley lines. The busy throngs on the streets are a daily proof of this. Then, too, the town is constantly visited by the interested tourist, who is attracted here by the old houses, its witchcraft reputation, its museums, and most of all, because it was the birthplace of Nathaniel Hawthorne….

In a 1905 article, from which this quote is taken, Mary H. Northend sketched a genteel picture of Salem at century's turn. Yet, the century just ending was arguably the most tumultuous and important in all of Salem and Essex County's long history, and drawing the genteel curtain aside reveals more fascinating views than one might expect.

Salem, at the turn of the century, was a place immersed in its past even as it tried to adjust to "great changes" ... in its "personnel." Ahead would lie a great physical disaster, the fire of 1914, from which Salem would be challenged to rise again. Ahead would lie more "changes in its personnel," and in its position as a "centre of business," cycles of boom and bust.

Salem in the Gilded Age, and at the turn of the century, faced its future with the comforting cloak of a mythologized glorious past clutched firmly around its shoulders.

It still clutches that cloak today.

Salem has always been a self-conscious place, understanding her role in the European settlement of America as not merely important, but formative. There has been many an interior struggle for the soul of Salem, as it were, in the hearts and minds of not only its citizens, but of those who have viewed her, whether as a casual visitor come to enjoy its sights and stories, or as a scholar attempting to analyze its contradictions and conduct.

In the next few weeks, we'll be metaphorically walking through 19th and early 20th century Salem and viewing the town through a historical lens. How did Salem present herself to the world during the crucible of that pivotal century? How did it sound, what would you see, why would you come? What does it all mean?

Grab your sunbonnet, and your walking stick, and let's find out.

Musician, educator and lecturer, Maggi Smith-Dalton is the president of the Salem History Society and author of “Stories and Shadows from Salem’s Past: Naumkeag Notations” (The History Press, 2010). She and her husband, Jim Dalton, are co-authoring a book on music in Salem's history and have recorded two new albums of 19th-century music for 2011. Reach her at http://singingstring.org. For information on joining the Salem History Society, go to http://salemhistorysociety.org.