If These Walls Could Talk: A Fireside Chat with Historian Jim McAllister

Join local historian Jim McAllister for a cozy and convivial afternoon of local history. Jim will regale us with the human stories of Samuel McIntire's stately Salem mansions.

The Gardner-Pingree House on Essex Street, the height of Federalist elegance, was once the scene of a grisly murder. President James Monroe spent several nights at the Derby Street home of his Secretary of the Navy, Benjamin Crowninshield. A performance by an armless man at Washington Hall in Town House Square left the audience speechless. The Peirce-Nichols house on Federal Street was “bad mojo” for husband-hunting women. The surprise ending to an 1813 gala for U.S. Navy bigwigs at Hamilton Hall didn’t exactly turn out as planned.

These interesting but seemingly unrelated facts, excerpted from an upcoming lecture by local historian and raconteur Jim McAllister, do have a common denominator. All of the aforementioned mansions and function halls were designed by, or at least attributed to, the great Salem architect-carver, Samuel McIntire. The intent of his lecture, says McAllister, is twofold: to share some of his favorite Salem stories and to remind people that every building, including the dozen or so treasured ’McIntires’ he will reference in his talk, has served at some point in the past as as a stage upon which human dramas - both good and bad - are played out.