In 1873, Alexander Graham Bell took up residence in the Sanders Homestead on Essex Street in Salem. The house was home to the grandmother of Bell’s deaf pupil George Sanders, whose father, Thomas Sanders, became an investor in Bell’s telephone system. Until 1876, Bell used a room in the Sanders House to conduct the experiments which led to his development of the telephone. The house was later torn down and in 1898 a Y.M.C.A. building was completed on the site. Designed by architect Walter J. Paine of Beverly, it combines elements of the Beaux-Arts and Colonial Revival styles. The building originally had an elaborate fourth-story loggia, since removed. The Y.M.C.A. Building also houses the North Shore Children’s Museum.