NYT feature on the house that inspired Hawthorne's House of the 7 Gables
SALEM, Mass. — You needn’t have read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel “The House of the Seven Gables” to appreciate the fine Salem house of the same name that was recently designated a National Historic Landmark.
The house has many attributes: important history, a picturesque site overlooking the Salem harbor, proximity to Hawthorne’s birthplace and an interior filled with 17th- , 18th- and 19th-century antiques.
In the book, an 1851 romance, Hawthorne begins, “Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns, stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables facing towards various points of the compass and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst.” He then proceeds to make the house, “a specimen of the best and stateliest architecture,” a character in the novel....
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The house has many attributes: important history, a picturesque site overlooking the Salem harbor, proximity to Hawthorne’s birthplace and an interior filled with 17th- , 18th- and 19th-century antiques.
In the book, an 1851 romance, Hawthorne begins, “Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns, stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables facing towards various points of the compass and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst.” He then proceeds to make the house, “a specimen of the best and stateliest architecture,” a character in the novel....