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Field Trip to Salem by Teresa Sapienza
I walked through that heavy wooden door of the Gardner-Pin- gree house and saw the elaborate décor and the staircase that curved upward towards a towering 3-story house. John Gardner, Jr., who was
a well-known Salem merchant, built the house in 1804-1805. The house features an array of ornate fabrics, especially in the bedrooms where the beds and windows are draped with a bluish, white fabric in one room and lavish cream- colored fabrics with white lace in another. Some of the decorations in the house really show that John Gardner Jr. was in fact a merchant because throughout the house are
vases, that line the replace in the living room, from China and fabrics and ower wallpaper from Eng- land. The entire house was aw- lessly planned and executed right down to the perfectly laid bricks that constructed the outside of
the house. Even the molding in the house featured owerpots and the staircase had an ocean wave design that you could only see from the rst oor because as you walked up it disappeared below you.
It still astonishes me that during the early 1800’s, such a
house could be built. I guess that
if you had money, like today, any- thing is possible. This house shows how the colonists took many of the aspects of their lives from other countries. The architecture of this house is a very European design,
with the decorations coming from as far as China. We can also see that Salem, which was a town that is located on what once was a very important harbor, had merchants like John Gardner who struck it rich and wanted to show that off. Salem just like most other towns in America had a very wealthy mer- chant class that helped to create a steady economy in America.
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2008/2009
A Runner’s World by Brittany Divirgilio