I’m in the history business, so I rarely dwell on visions, unless they are in the rear-view mirror. But last week I happened to take two photographs while running around in downtown Salem, and when I looked at them later on my phone I realized that they represented two visions for Salem, at least to me. Here they are and then I’ll explain.
The first (top) one is a photograph of recent changes to Washington Street, the key north-south corridor in downtown Salem forever. Vehicle traffic has been limited to just one lane now, with parking alongside and an expanded sidewalk and hot-top bikelane. The present administration LOVES bike lanes and wants to install as many as possible anywhere and everywhere, even in this case at the expense of safety (how can an ambulance or fire truck possibly get through with one lane, especially during peak tourist time?), aesthetics, and congestion (look at all that parallel parking—that takes time–even for those who know how to do it!)
The second (bottom) photograph shows Salem’s 157th t-shirt shop, now installed in a very prominent building on the corner of Essex and North Streets, just across from the Witch/Corwin House. Just rows and rows and rows of t-shirts.
For me, the first photograph represents the City’s attempt to take back territory ceded to cars over the past century or so, in terms of both parking and driving. This is certainly a laudable goal with which I have no problem (except with the implementation—there’s just too much ugly concrete going in downtown in my opinion) but I think a corollary of that vision is one of a “15-minute city” in which residents can obtain all essential goods and services within a 15-minute walk or bike ride in any direction.The 15-minute city concept has been popular among planning professionals for the last decade after being introduced by Carlos Moreno, an urban studies and business professor at IAE Paris – Panthéon Sorbonne University. I actually think that Salem could be a 15-minute city, BECAUSE IT WAS, but not now—as that goal is completely incompatible with its current status as mecca for witchcraft tourism. I’m sorry, but I don’t think droopy or pointy witch hats are an essential good, nor palm readings an essential service. I live in downtown Salem, or right on the edge of it, and I know that I must drive to purchase shoes or go to the dry cleaner or the doctor. I’m not sure the concept of the 15-minute city is compatible with any city centered on tourism, unless it’s a big city, like Paris. But smaller cities have to make a choice, and to me, it seems like Salem has chosen tourists over residents. As evidence of that choice let me offer up another photograph that I took this past week, of the bump-out and bollards in front of the Ropes Mansion. Because of Hocus Pocus rather than history, this historic house is a popular walking tour and selfie destination, and unfortunately a car-on-pedestrian accident happened a few years ago. To accomodate and protect the crowds, the city expanded the sidewalk and installed many shiny black bollards, just another example of how Salem’s streetscape is being shaped not by the rhythms of daily life for its residents, but the demands of larger and larger crowds of tourists.
I’ve been thinking about the 15-minute city concept for quite a while, after discovering (actually being shown) an amazing map of downtown Salem in 1946 at the Salem State Archives and Special Collections. It’s a real estate map with a focus on businesses, incredibly detailed and revealing very clearly a 15-minute city in which everyone could buy or do anything within that radius. The variety of shops was just amazing: just place little witch hats on one part of one street on the sites of buildings that were formerly shoe shops, druggists, stores selling fruit, paint, rubber, hats, and draperies, dry cleaners, and “Topsy’s Chicken Coop,” and you have the visual history in a nutshell. The SSU Archives has tons of busy street scenes on their Flickr page but I thought I would feature some more focused street scenes from a newish and loose collection of “Salem Streets” images from the Phillips Library as I have become enraptured by them! So yes, even though I started and titled this post with “visions,” I have reverted to form and am looking back. I just can’t help it: the future is a bit scary.
The incredibly detailed Nirenstein Realty Map of the “Business Section of Salem,” 1946, Salem State Archives and Special Collections and Dockham’s Salem Business Chart, n.d., Phillips Library Broadsides, above.
Views of Central Street, 1880s-1932, from the Phillips Library Salem Streets collection:
Brown Street, c. 1910, Phillips Library Salem Streets Collection.
A very old shop on Mill Hill (Washington Street) before the Great Salem Fire of 1914, Phillips Library Salem Streets collection.
And the cutest cobbler shop ever on Broad Street (of course there was no comprehensive zoning before the 1930s either—so the home/work/shopping radius could be very small indeed). Phillips Library Digital Collections.
July 7th, 2025 at 6:07 am
The bollards in front of Ropes aren’t bad individually, but at that concentration are pretty horrendous! Looks like they’re afraid of a car bomb!
Why didn’t PEM and the City develop some sort of system of removable bollards or some such that could be installed for October but put in storage the rest of the year?
As for the 15-minute city, here in Montpellier I can get to an optometrist, various types of grocery shops and specialtists like butchers, a fishmonger, etc., and yes, a cleaner, all within a ten-minute walk. And if I need to to a supermarket, there’s a big full-service shopping mall right in the center city within a 20-minute walk or about the same as a combined tram ride/walk. I can’t believe you can’t even get to the cleaners without a drive and you live in a CITY! That’s nuts!
July 7th, 2025 at 6:14 am
I don’t know—these installations always surprise me! There’s not much of a public process. It also seems like for ever general shop that shutters its doors, two witch shops emerge in its place.
July 7th, 2025 at 6:36 am
Another
The City of Salem is adding one residential complex after another and yet fails to plan for the needs of its residents. Bring back the grocery, department, sports, health and shoe stores to our downtown. I love the 15-minute city concept.
July 7th, 2025 at 6:39 am
There is a lot of development! Makes your head spin.
July 7th, 2025 at 7:14 am
I can remember the days when you could go downtown and buy almost anything. There was lots more public transportation then, and lots more parking. People would park, (Riley Plaza was huge and for residents, behind Empire two large lots etc.) and then walk all over downtown and do all their errands and shopping, not spend time looking for a place to park. I remember riding my bike all over the city in the 70’s and 80’s, but never where the bike lanes are now, they are in the places that were always filled with cars. Lots of streets to ride on back then, some no longer exist, there are buildings there now, St. Peter’s St is under the garage and the Museum. Other’s are now part of the pedestrian mall, Rust St., Essex St. and Central St. to name a few. Now all the other streets downtown are very busy. The new changes on Washington St. make it a nightmare to drive thru downtown, or to go there for anything.
July 7th, 2025 at 7:39 am
Thanks for your memories, Jane. It seemed to me that when I moved to Salem in the 1990s that there was a greater diversity of shops than there is now, although the narrative is definitely one of witchcraft tourism “saving” Salem.
July 7th, 2025 at 10:51 am
IMO, once a town (or city) starts getting a lot of cafes, restaurants, bars, ice cream places, etc. that also have outdoor seating areas with patio umbrellas (a couple such areas can be seen in the top photo)…then it usually means any kind of interesting, unique, local atmosphere that may once have existed is now gone in favor of tourist hordes and money-making. One tourist area looks like another.
July 7th, 2025 at 1:07 pm
There is that effect, for sure.
July 7th, 2025 at 10:58 am
I loved seeing the 1946 map of downtown Salem. That was when as a kid I often walked down Essex Street where everything was within an easy fifteen minute walk. I remember so fondly Almy’s and Webbers–wonderful Department stores, and Reid and Hughes and Grants and Woolworth’s and Himmell’s Drug Store and The Rubber Store and Eaton’;s Drug Store and the Paramount, Empire and Plaza movie houses. Moustakis’s ice for candy and ice cream. The bus station was handy. There was an A&P and a hardware store where I used to go with my Dad on Saturday mornings (and developed a life-long love of hardware stores!) Salem was a great place to grow up! I treasure those memories. We still go to Salem once a year, mostly for photo ops because I write a mystery series based in Salem (Witch City Mysteries-Kensingon Publishers) Shameless self promotion–but my books are not about witches. They’re about Salem!
July 7th, 2025 at 1:07 pm
Feel free to promote all you want! Especially as you offer up such great memories.
July 7th, 2025 at 11:39 am
Your description can fit any place that is “loved to death.” Part of my upbringing was in Yosemite, and there was one master plan after another to eliminate car traffic in the valley. As far as I know they’re still wrestling with the issue. Salem will likely also continue to adjust its plans as the powers that be change priorities
July 7th, 2025 at 1:06 pm
I think I would prefer publicly-aired plans even if there was a succession of them, Robert: it seems like just reactions to me.
July 7th, 2025 at 12:09 pm
Wants to install bike lanes anywhere and everywhere? I wish that were true, I cycle to work at Salem State everyday and I know of no plans for bike lanes on the busiest sections of Congress or Lafayette downtown, or Bridge Street (in the neck), or Loring Avenue (which sees large numbers of cyclists and scooters when school is in session).
July 7th, 2025 at 1:04 pm
Thanks for your comments, Chris. It seems like bike lines are a big priority for this administration but I have to admit that I don’t see Salem as a cyclist so it’s good to have your perspective. I do walk to SSU from my house on Chestnut so I think I have a pedestrian’s view, but that’s about it.
July 10th, 2025 at 1:18 pm
We live very close to you and bike lanes would change our kids lives. When they were little kids, they would ride down Broad Street sidewalk to the YMCA for swim or camp, but now that they are teens, they have lost that freedom due to the high speed car traffic on the streets. Saltonstall middle schoolers made a big effort to get bike lanes on Lafayette, but the immediate push back against bike lanes killed that conversation.
July 10th, 2025 at 2:09 pm
Certainly understand your dilemma as the same thing happened with my stepson, Rachel, but there are bike lanes on Lafayette plus the multipurpose path that runs parallel along Canal? I walk that path all the time.
July 10th, 2025 at 11:00 am
If, when I bought in 2001, I knew what Salem would become in 2025, I would have gone somewhere else.
July 10th, 2025 at 12:59 pm
I am almost there myself, Joanne. And that is very sad for me to say: as I’ve made my home here, I work here, obviously I’m very invested in Salem. It would be one thing if residents had any say in tourism or development matters, but we don’t. We’re disenfranchised.
July 10th, 2025 at 2:36 pm
If you want to save our city from out of control tourism and stop the craziness that seems to be happening here. I have a possible solution. Get out and vote this fall. Unless we change the politics in this city nothing is going to change.
July 10th, 2025 at 8:24 pm
I always vote, but not many of our fellow residents do—28% at the last mayoral election!
October 12th, 2025 at 7:17 pm
In re: the tiny cobbler shop photo. I grew up at 28 Albion ST, which was a tiny 50 x 100 foot lot. There was a small rise in the back yard, facing Nichols Street where there was a tiny shop that produced wooden counters for the shoe industry. Counters were somehow attached to the leather body of a shoe, and provided a solid base into which a rubber heel could be nailed.
Thank you for jogging my memory to remembering something I’d forgotten for 60+ years.
Cheers,
Glenn McDonald