It has been very exciting to see all things blossoming in sweet Salem. The flowers in local gardens are in full bloom, restaurants are reopening with some very unique outdoor dining, and local retail businesses are getting back into the swing of things. It’s a great time to plan a day-cation!
We want to thank everyone for bearing with us in our first week of opening our gardens and grounds to you! Things have certainly not been business as usual as we have worked with guidelines to safely open our historic site while working with state and local guidelines. After a review of the updated Phase II guidelines from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, advanced reservations are NOT currently required to visit our gardens. We want to thank the Division of Labor Standards for their prompt and courteous support with this question.
- Gardens are open daily 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
- Enter our site through the garden gate on Turner Street.
- Follow our posted rules included wearing face coverings and maintaining social distance.
- Limit your household group to six people.
- Sanitize your hands on entry and exit.
- One-way traffic through the site can be accomplished with our fabulous audio tour. Stop one is at the head of the gardens. You’ll see a sign for downloading your instructions.
- There is a donation station at the exit. You can donate cash, use our DipJar for a credit card payment, or scan the QR code to donate online. Your donations are crucial for us to keep our doors open this season.
- There is no interior access to any of our buildings at this time.
We are depending on YOU to help keep our doors open this season. If you visit our site, please make a $10 donation. Become a member. Support us with a donation. “Business as usual” for us means hundreds of visitors support our work to be a welcoming, thriving historic site. Without these visitors, we hope you can help us to keep our history and stories alive.
Salem’s small businesses need you, too! Plan your day-cation with a visit to salem.org. Check out all things fun with Creative North Shore. Whether you are a history buff or shopping nut, you can build a fun itinerary and help our community. If you aren’t local to Salem, please do the same where you live. We’ve all worked hard to provide safe-as-possible experiences in our many businesses.
We know that our usual lineup of lectures, seaside yoga, and hands-on history events will be near impossible this year. We do look forward to providing you with some great virtual programming – stay tuned for details!
Our staff has been hard at work with a variety of projects at The House of the Seven Gables. Besides reopening our site and ongoing preservation work we have been able to:
- Work through a backlog of oral histories that have been digitally collected since 2010. Our staff is transcribing these histories, organizing folders and images, and finalizing these important primary sources.
- Keep up with weeding and maintenance in the historic gardens.
- Painting the fences that surrounded the museum campus.
- Repair and replace clapboarding on our historic structures.
- Repaint floors in the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion.
- Restock and sort our first aid and disaster kits.
- Research and report on our historic structures.
- Create themed tours to share even more of our stories with our visitors.
- And more!