One of the things that I like best about Salem is that I notice, or see, something new (really old) every day. It doesn’t matter how many times I have walked along a certain route, I’ll always spot something that I haven’t taken notice of before. I don’t have the same eye for the natural landscape, only the man-made one. Details emerge and stop me in my tracks. Yesterday’s late-afternoon run around Salem Common somehow turned into a more leisurely walk up Winter Street, a wide boulevard that has served as one of Salem’s major northerly access routes almost from its foundation: consequently it is lined with really lovely eighteenth- and nineteenth-century houses. I was looking for late-summer gardens, but as this is a main entrance corridor, most of the gardens are tucked away out back–and suddenly all I could see was doors, really beautiful doors, each one unique. Now I actually lived on Winter Street for a brief stretch of time between houses, but I never really noticed these doors before, and suddenly they had all my attention. So here’s a sampling, beginning (after a little orientation) with the stunning entrance of one my favorite houses on the street, a brick Greek Revival.

Detail of Sidney Perley’s 1905 map of Salem, Boston Public Library, and doors of Winter Street houses; the louvred door and front of one of my favorite Winter Street houses, built in 1827 and pictured on the right of the circa 1910 postcard of Winter Street.