Simon Forrester House (1790)
In 1791, Capt. Simon Forrester acquired an unfinished house on Derby Street in Salem. The three-story hipped-roof house has been attributed to Samuel McIntire and the east parlor mantelpiece, carved by McIntire, is now in the Peabody Essex Museum. Forrester was a Irish born ship captain, brought to America by Capt. Daniel Hathorne, the grandfather of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Forrester is mentioned in The Scarlet Letter). Forrester married Capt. Hathorne’s daughter and became wealthy during the Revolutionary War. Many of the house‘s architectural details were removed or altered after the First World War, but more recently the house has been restored to a more original appearance.
I lived in the Simon Forrester House from 1997 to 2000, second floor,
watched and recorded the complete building of the replica ship
Friendship. My part of the house was charming even then, and
I thought of buying and restoring the house, installing traditional storm-shutters
like the nearby Hawkes House, but decided instead to leave it to others. Nice work, though. I quite appreciated the front garden and day lily beds at the time.
One of my paintings made from my front studio there, of the ship Rose, a tall ship featured in the movie Amistad, making a tourist visit tied-up at Central Wharf, with the harbor and distant Marblehead on a foggy late summer afternoon in 1997 or 1998, is hanging in the Gainesville Shambhala Buddhist Meditation Center in Gainesville, Florida.
Harold D. McKnight
Harvard ’93 ALM
My sister and her husband own the Simon Forrester house and I was a recent houseguest there….the interior is gorgeous….lovingly restored and the furnishings are elegant….a beautiful home with an incredible view.
Thank you for the information. One question is this home still standing?