Tag Archives: Derby Wharf

A Cooper’s Shop for Sale

Wow, I don’t think I’ve posted on Salem real estate for quite some time! I’ve just been so serious, but actually there’s not much point: generally as soon as something comes on the market it is snapped right up. I’m sure that will be the case with this little house too, but I’ve also admired it, so I ran over this weekend for the open house. It’s a little two-story shop on Kosciusko Street, overlooking Derby Wharf and the entire Salem Maritime National Historic Site. Two stories, open-floor plan on both floors with a little bedroom and bathroom carved out of the second floor (as well as a “galley” full bathroom on the first), no parking, not much yard: very simple and very atmospheric.

As you can see, there’s been quite a few twentieth-century alterations to this building, especially its fenestration. The plaque report by Historic Salem, Inc. asserts that it is an eighteenth-century structure moved to this site about 1870. The MACRIS inventory calls it “colonial inspired!” Both reports also suggest that it might be an ell that was previously attached to the adjacent building at 159 Derby Street. I’m not sure how this precise 1701 date, so proudly proclaimed, came about. A photograph from the 1930s features an exterior that looks quite different: this can be found at the amazing house history of 159 Derby, now the home of the Salem Arts Association, researched by art historian Franny Zawadski. I was thrilled to learn that both houses were owned by the Salem chapter of the Ukrainian Workingmen’s Association, an organization about which I intend to find out a lot more.

The Shop on the far right above, and on the 1874 Salem Atlas.

I think there’s a bit of Colonial Revivalish embellishment here but it’s fine with me: someone wanted this little old building to look like a ye old cooper shop and it does! It also looks like minimal maintenance to me: a condo alternative with a very tight basement (the advantage of being moved to this spot, I imagine). Since I haven’t written a real estate post in some time, I think I should address the location a bit more. Anyone moving to greater downtown Salem at this point has to consider the impact of tourism, as our City seems hell-bent on driving that engine as much and as far as possible. If you complain about tourism now, you’re going to get a “well, you moved to Salem so you knew what you were getting” sentiment, which I don’t think is fair if you located here twenty years or more ago when Haunted Happenings was much less intense in terms of length and traffic volume of both feet and vehicles. But if you move to Salem now, you better know what you will face (especially if you don’t have a parking place). I think this location has the benefit of being in the zone but protected by the expanse of the Salem Maritime park: I was in this vicinity during the most crowded weekends last month and there were far fewer people here than in the center of the city. I just don’t think the majority of Salem tourists are interested in “history” and this cooper’s shop is in the thick of it.

First and second floors looking out on the Custom House and Derby Wharf (it was kind of dreary outside yesterday but I think the weather just enhanced the coziness).


Snowbomb

A brief intermission from #saveSalemshistory for some snow pictures, because it was a pretty big storm, or “bomb cyclone”! Back to the Phillips in a few days: remember the big PEM forum is on January 11th @ 6 pm in the museum’s Morse Auditorium. 

So we survived the year’s first big snowstorm, officially designated Grayson and categorized as a “bomb cyclone” by meteorologists because of the coincidence of a steep, explosive drop in atmospheric pressure. It snowed all day and gusty winds gave the streets of Salem a blizzard-like appearance at times, but that was not as scary as the flooding that occurred on the coast and in several low-lying areas reclaimed from rivers and ponds. The Willows looked positively apocalyptic at high tide midway during the storm, and the storm surge covered Derby Wharf for a while. The sea captains who built my street 200 years ago clearly chose high ground for a reason (well, multiple reasons really), so it was a much less dramatic scene out my window for most of they day, and in the late afternoon I emerged for a quick walk and a much longer stint of shoveling.

Snowcyclone 6

Snowcylone 10

Snowcyclone 5

Snowcyclone 4

Snow cylone2

Snowcyclone 3

Snowcyclone

Snowcylone 8Chestnut and Essex Streets above; below, a panorama of Derby Wharf at high tide which was passed around by a bunch of architects yesterday, but I think can be attributed to ©Kirt Rieder. Beautiful but scary!

Snow cyclone7


Spectral Visions on Derby Wharf

All summer and fall the Salem Maritime National Historic Site is featuring a virtual exhibition called “The Augmented Landscape” which brings eight spectral sculpture assemblages–visible only through a smartphone equipped with the layar app–to Derby Wharf. It’s a more artistic form of Pokémon Go, with global and topical themes and layered connectivity. Everyone in Salem is missing the site’s major attraction—the Friendship–and while this exhibition/experience is not a replacement, it is certainly a distraction! The creations are the work of four artists commissioned by Boston Cyberarts: John Craig Freeman, Kristin Lucas, Will Pappenheimer and Tamiko Thiel. Thiel’s “GardenAnthropocene” imposes a vivid and chilling vision on a familiar place, a “dystopian science fiction future for the landscape as we enter the Anthropocene, a new geologic time period created by human activity……[in which] native plans grow and mutate in response to the earth’s changing conditions, adding to their evolving climate and altering the landscape as we know it”. This doesn’t sound–or look–good!

Spectral Collage

Spectral Garden GardenAnthropocene

Thiel’s other installation, “TreasuresOfSheRem” focuses more on the past than the present, featuring the coins and commodities that Salem traders brought to the East to exchange for tea, spices, porcelain and other exotic goods. Poppies, yes, but somehow I didn’t know that sea cucumbers were so important to the China Trade……

Spectral Money

Spectral Treasures 2

Spectral Treasures TreasuresOfSheRem

More familiar cod hover over the wharf in Will Pappenheimer’s “Ascension of Cod” and privateers clash, visualized through a “virtual ball of classic galleon type ship masts obtained from disassembled ship models accessed from shared 3D model websites”. I think I was supposed to conjure this up (and that’s what it feels like) in front of the Derby House rather than by Pedrick’s storehouse—I couldn’t quite master the geographical aspect of these installations and ended up with strange things in strange places (but maybe that’s the point?)

Spectral Cod

Spectral PrivateersAscension of Cod and Privateers

My favorite installation is Kristin Lucas’s “Elephant in the Room”, referencing the Crowninshield Elephant that landed in Salem in 1796. He looked funny in the Derby Garden and a bit better in front of the Custom House, but never really in his element. Lucas’s “Goodbyes” also stressed out-of-element images, representing departure, which (on the other hand) is of course quite appropriate for a port. For me, the most literal of the virtual installations are John Craig Freeman’s “Virtual China” and “Virtual Russia”, which project images of Wuhan and St. Petersburg onto Salem’s port[al], emphasizing global connectivity, past and present.

Spectral Goodbye

Spectral people

Specral China

Spectral RussiaGoodbyes, Virtual China and Virtual Russia


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