Summers have been about old Salem photographs for the past several years. I go up to the Phillips Library to research something, order up a few old photograph albums to give myself a break, and then just dive in to another world, another Salem. Last year I really had to restrict myself as I was still wrting chapters for our forthcoming book Salem’s Centuries; this year the book is essentially done so I’m just looking for a few images to illustrate it, or so I tell myself. Really, I just like to look at old photographs. Last week I looked through the three albums of Miss Lilly S. Abbott, a librarian at the Salem Public Library, who began her tenure in 1925 and rose through the positions of assistant, children’s librarian, reference librarian, acting director and assistant director over her 47 years at the library. She was obviously a committed collector and curator of photographs, choosing very important images for her albums, and labeling them on the front or back. She supplied photographs to the Salem Evening News, and also to the Salem Cultural Council’s exhibition of “Salem Streets and People” in 1971. Some of her photos I had seen before, but many were new to me. I sharpened up a few photographs below, but most of her photos were very clear and had been processed from lantern slides very effectively. Unlike a lot of Salem photographers and photography collectors, she was obviously more focused on Salem streets and people than on structures: most of her album photos feature downtown, and she obviously loved the Willows too.
Here are some of my favorites: first, a group of photos of downtown Salem—some are dated, most are not, but I think they’re from about 1900-1920, beginning with this great photo of Ash Street in 1900. Urban Renewal wiped Ash Street out, and now it only has one house!
Ash Street, Crombie Street, Essex Street, Norman Street, North Street and Bridge, Washington Street.
Here’s a few of Derby Street, including the Philadelphia wharf—-I was very excited to see this as it was built by the man who lived in my house. Plus, David Little on his “Little Steamer,” Salem’s first automobile! (Miss Abbott seems to have been very interested in transportation).
On to the Willows: including interior and exterior shots of the famous Brown’s Flying Horses carousel, in situ in Salem until 1945.
Some odds and ends: the only photos of famed Chestnut Street in Miss Abbott’s albums are very different: a car driving west, which to us will look like the wrong way, as it is one-way the other way now, and the day after the fire that destroyed Samuel McIntire’s Second Church in 1903. I’ve never seen this. Then there’s the Tontine building on Warren Street, destroyed by the Great Salem Fire in 1914, and a great photo of the Gedney House on High Street before its acquisition and restoration by Historic New England. Finally, Old Home Week, always a BIG celebration in Salem, in 1909. I’m grateful to Miss Abbott for preserving these wonderful images of Salem streets and people.
Town House Square, 1909.
Lily S. Abbott Photographic Albums (PHA 113). Couresy of Miss Abbott and the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum, Rowley, Massachusetts. Miss Abbott donated the albums to the Essex Institute in Salem in 1981 in memory of her brother, William.
