Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1039010
NSHOREMAG.COM 82 OCTOBER 2018 PHOTOGRAPHS BY KATIE NOBLE / I N -D E P T H / Hawthorne's imagination simmered for nearly a decade before he sat down to write his fourth novel, where in a preface he expressed his intention: "namely, that the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones...." After Susanna died, the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion, as it is also known, remained va- cant until her adopted son, Horace Connolly, gained possession, but his financial misfor- tunes forced him to sell it at auction to pay off his debts. Urged by the looming possibility that it might be torn down and its storied past lost forever, Henry and Elizabeth Upton acquired the house in 1883 after a four-year vacancy. Hawthorne's legacy was blooming, and the Uptons saw another method of preservation: Offer their home as a museum by charging a small fee. As interest grew, they capitalized on Salem's ignoble past—the witch hysteria of 1692. ey flipped the perception of witches from fearsome spirits to kitschy creatures who flew on broomsticks and may or may not be friendly. Other icons of witches were inscribed on porcelain and glass cups as takeaway souvenirs. It was the final owner, Caroline Emmerton, who bought the "gaunt old house" in 1908 with a vision of repurposing its usefulness in the community. A social activist, she believed e Gables would make a suitable headquar- ters for a settlement house, with a built-in means of funding its own work while preserv- ing its architectural integrity and literary associations. She declared: "If, as is generally conceded, the settlements do the best Ameri- canization work, should not this settlement excel whose home is the ancient House of Seven Gables, the foundations of which were laid by the first immigrants who came here long ago, strangers in a strange land?" Emmerton chose Joseph Chandler, a renowned revival architect, to remove earlier modifications and restore the building to the way it looked in 1720. Chandler's plan was to gut the exterior down to its beams, and then rebuild to its original proportions. He restructured some interiors, but maintained the integrity of the original spaces. Today, a visitor is guided from the cramped, dark wood-paneled kitchen The house has many artifacts from the 18th and 19th centuries.