Old Town Hall Historic District

The Old Town Hall Historic District includes eleven brick buildings of the Federalist period (1780-1830) and seven which were built within the next fifty years. Together they represent the best remaining small area of early commercial buildings in downtown Salem. This compact area extends from the southeast corner of Washington and Essex Streets, along Essex Street to in- clude the building east of Derby Square and both sides of the Square to Front Street including the buildings on either side of the southern end of Derby Square. The district also includes numbers 6 through 34 Front Street as well as 125 through 145 washington Street.

IThe Old Town Hall was built in 1816 and is an excellent example of a Bulfinch-influenced, Federal period public building./ Five bays wide and eleven bays deep, it is a brick structure with a pitched roof. The main facades, which are on the gable ends and face north and south, are pedimented, accented by a wooden cornice with modillions and ornamented by fanlights.A small cupola is centered on the ridgepole. A belt course runs between the first and second floors. All the doorways and windows have rounded tops, with simple fanlights over the first floor windows which are recessed in narrow arches. MAs the Hall was originally built to be a market house as well as meetinghouse, it is possible that these first floor recessed window areas were once open to the street.

On the south facade three entrances in the first, third and fifth bays are reached by a flight of granite steps; at the north end the center entrance is at street level. Above both north and south central entrances are Palladian windows. The large square brick building at 231 Essex Street (Low's Building) dominates the junction of Essex and Washington Streets.

The Old Iown Hall Historic District is bounded by Washington Street, Front Street, Essex Street and Derby Square which has pedestrian accesses to Essex and Front Streets. The street pattern is an early one- Washington Street was laid out, four rods wide, in 1629; Essex Street, which intersects it, is believed to have been originally an Indian path along the ridge of Salem peninsula; Front Street was one of the ancient ways along the waterfront and was called a highway as early as 1682. The Historic District is built on a gentle slope of land running down to what was formerly the South River, now completely filled in. ASalem historians agree that this section of the South River shore was the first developed waterfront area of Salem and remained dominant until the early 19th century.

In the period prior to the advent of the railroad, the life of a coastal city such as Salem owed its development to its port. Accordingly, many of the important political and social events of Federalist Salem occurred in the Old Town Hall Historic District/ Derby Square, in the center of which the Town Hall now stands, was the site of the mansion built in 1784 by Elias Haskett Derby. Derby!s heirs, Benjamin Pickman, Jr. and John Derby, demolished the mansion and gave 16,500 square feet in the center of their inherited propertycto thetinhabitants of Salem, on which to construct a town hall/market house. This building was constructed in 1816.

A condition of the gift was thatconly buildings.of brick or stone could be erected on land contiguous to the Town Hall, an early example of city planning which afforded great unity to the area.