Gedney House in Salem is believed to have been built as early as 1665. As originally built by shipwright Eleazer Gedney, the house had two stories with a gabled attic to the left and a parlor with lean-to roof to the right. Gedney, who was married to the sister of John Turner, builder of the House of Seven Gables, passed the house on to his descendants, who made alterations in 1712. The Gedney family later sold the home to Benjamin Cox, who added two town house ells to the building around 1800, thus converting it to a multi-family residence. In later years, the house served as a boarding house and tenement in what became an Italian-American neighborhood. In 1967, when the house was being prepared for demolition, it was acquired by Historic New England. Now an unfurnished house museum, the original wood structure of the building’s interior is left exposed to display to visitors its original seventeenth-century construction.