Salem Heritage Days August 1-12

The House of the Seven Gables will be offering free programs on our site and reduced admission for Senior and Families for Salem residents.

Residents of Salem (proof of residency required) will receive 20% off Senior and Family Admission (children under 18).

In addition, The Gables is offering several free activities throughout Salem Heritage Days:

Wednesday, Aug. 1 from 1pm-4pm, Take a break from the summer heat. Enjoy free story time at The Gables (children 7 and under). We have an assortment of new and classical stories.

Thursday, Aug. 2 from 1pm-4pm, Experience 17th Century games on our beautiful seaside lawn.

Friday, Aug. 3 from 1pm-4pm, Come watch the lost art of lace-making in Hooper Hathaway Great Room.

Saturday, Aug. 4 from 1pm-4pm, Free exhibit of five ship models, past and present, with a demonstration of re-rigging a brig of the 19th century in the Hooper Hathaway Great Room.

Sunday, Aug. 5 from 1pm-4pm, Free exhibit of five ship models, past and present, with a demonstration of re-rigging a brig of the 19th century in the Hooper Hathaway Great Room.

Wednesday, Aug. 8 from 1pm-4pm, Take a break from the summer heat. Enjoy free story time at The Gables (children 7 and under). We have an assortment of new and classical stories.

Thursday, Aug. 9  from 1pm-4pm, Experience 17th Century games on our beautiful seaside lawn.

Friday, Aug. 10 from 1pm-4pm, Come watch the lost art of lace-making in Hooper Hathaway Great Room.

Saturday, Aug. 11 from 1pm-4pm, A short slide show of sailing ships abandoned in the Falkland Islands 150 years ago and still intact. Show runs continuously.

Sunday, Aug. 12 from 1pm-4pm, A short slide show of sailing ships abandoned in the Falkland Islands 150 years ago and still intact. Show runs continuously.

There are loads of other programs throughout the city for Salem Heritage Days and also the kickoff of the Salem Maritime Festival which starts on Saturday, August 4th.

For more information on all the events please visit the City of Salem's website.

Another celebrity sighting at The Gables!

Lorna Luft, daughter of Judy Garland and producer, Sid Luft, made a brief appearance at The House of the Seven Gables yesterday, July 26th! She had been touring Salem and made a stop at The Gables with a guide dog in training from the organization Guide Dogs of The Desert. She is a spokesperson for the group and also raises puppies for the organization. Guide Dogs of The Desert provides independence and mobility to blind persons with special needs through the use of guide dogs.

Ms. Luft has many theatrical and musical credits and has appeared in several television shows and films, most notably Grease 2 and Where the Boys Are '84.

Here is a photo in the Gables' garden of Ms. Luft (left), the guide dog in training and Executive Director, Anita Blackaby:

We hope she enjoyed her visit with us! We were thrilled to have her on site!

Benefits for Essex and Sufflolk county residents at The Gables

Now is the time for all residents of Essex County to come and enjoy the grounds of The House of the Seven Gables for free! Just bring your I.D. and take your time to stroll through the seaside gardens, enjoy the views and feel free to visit the Museum Store. There are new arrivals in the store all the time!


The garden is most definitely in its full summer splendor! This photo was taken just moments ago at The Gables:

As another benefit, all residents of Essex and Suffolk county are offered a buy-one-get-one-free admission perk for the months of July and August! Please bring your I.D. and bring a friend, bring a picnic and spend the day at The House of the Seven Gables!

You can easily reach the Gables by MBTA train from Boston's North Station, by car and also by the Boston Harbor Cruise's Salem/Boston Ferry.  We are just a short walk from the ferry landing in Salem!

We are open daily from 10am to 7pm. For more information please call 978-744-0991, ext 116.

7 Lectures at 7 Gables Lecture Series continues this week

Megan Marshall will be presenting her lecture entitled Sophia Peabody and her Sisters at The House of the Seven Gables on July 18, 2012 at 7:00 p.m. Marshall is the winner of the Francis Parkman Prize and Pulitzer finalist for her book, The Peabody Sisters, Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism.

[Copies of the book will be available for sale and for Marshall to sign at the the lecture.]

In her upcoming lecture at The Gables, Marshall will speak on the formative years of Salem's best known sisterhood, whose youngest member, Sophia Peabody, grew up to marry native son Nathaniel Hawthorne. Marshall will also speak about the relationships among the sisters and their suitors, who also included the politician and educator Horace Mann. The Peabody and Hawthorne families together made Salem one of the most significant sites, along with Boston and Concord, of America's nineteenth-century renaissance in arts and letters.

Megan Marshall has published numerous essays and reviews in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Slate Online, The New York Times Book Review, The London Review of Books, The New Republic, The Boston Review, and elsewhere. She is also the recipient of many fellowships and serves on the Board of Directors of the Copyright Clearance Center, the Executive Board of the Society of American Historians, and the Advisory Board of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society.

Marshall is completing a second biography, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2013.  For the occasion of Margaret Fuller's bicentennial in May, 2010, Marshall curated an exhibition of rare books, manuscripts, and artwork at the Massachusetts Historical Society titled "A More Interior Revolution": Elizabeth Peabody, Margaret Fuller, and the Women of the American Renaissance.

A graduate of Harvard/Radcliffe College, where she received the Harvard Monthly Award for the most promising student writer and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Marshall studied writing with poets Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Fitzgerald.  In 2007 she was awarded the Radcliffe Alumnae Recognition Award for a graduate of the college who “by the quality of her life and spirit exemplifies what the liberal arts education hopes to achieve.”   That same year she joined the faculty of the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College where she currently teaches narrative nonfiction writing and the art of archival research in the MFA program.  She was voted Outstanding Teacher of the Year by the Graduate Student Association in 2012.

For information, please contact: (978) 744-0991, ext. 105, or email:  anuncio@7gables.org. Admission to the lecture:  $10 Members, $15 Non-Members. To purchase tickets, please contact (978) 744-0991, ext. 104.

Summertime at The Gables and The Museum Store

The Gables is happy that summer is upon us and that our visitors are enjoying our newly designed exhibits and the gorgeous seaside gardens in their full summer glory.

Of course, part of the visitor experience at The Gables is perusing the many gifts and souvenirs available at our wonderful Museum Store. There are always new arrivals to surprise and delight our visitors, regular patrons, neighbors and even the employees of The Gables! I know this blogger has bought many a gift at The Museum Store!

In celebration of our mascot, Dusty the cat, The Museum Store has some new cute pieces available:

Everything you might need for summertime pastimes from board games, to beach bags to book marks, take some time to peruse the goodies - there is a little something for all ages:

Sophia Peabody and her Sisters, lecture four in the Seven Lectures at Seven Gables lecture series

Megan Marshall will be presenting her lecture entitled Sophia Peabody and her Sisters at The House of the Seven Gables on July 18, 2012 at 7:00 p.m. Marshall is the winner of the Francis Parkman Prize and a Pulitzer finalist for her book, The Peabody Sisters, Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism.

This lecture marks lecture 4 in The House of the Seven Gables' lecture series Seven Lectures at Seven Gables: Strong Women of the Gables. Marshall will speak on the formative years of Salem's best known sisterhood, whose youngest member, Sophia Peabody, grew up to marry native son Nathaniel Hawthorne. Marshall will also speak about the relationships among the sisters and their suitors, who also included the politician and educator Horace Mann. The Peabody and Hawthorne families together made Salem one of the most significant sites, along with Boston and Concord, of America's nineteenth-century renaissance in arts and letters.

Megan Marshall has published numerous essays and reviews in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Slate Online, The New York Times Book Review, The London Review of Books, The New Republic, The Boston Review, and elsewhere. She is also the recipient of many fellowships and serves on the Board of Directors of the Copyright Clearance Center, the Executive Board of the Society of American Historians, and the Advisory Board of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society.

Marshall is completing a second biography, Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2013.  For the occasion of Margaret Fuller's bicentennial in May, 2010, Marshall curated an exhibition of rare books, manuscripts, and artwork at the Massachusetts Historical Society titled "A More Interior Revolution": Elizabeth Peabody, Margaret Fuller, and the Women of the American Renaissance.

A graduate of Harvard/Radcliffe College, where she received the Harvard Monthly Award for the most promising student writer and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Marshall studied writing with poets Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Fitzgerald.  In 2007 she was awarded the Radcliffe Alumnae Recognition Award for a graduate of the college who “by the quality of her life and spirit exemplifies what the liberal arts education hopes to achieve.”   That same year she joined the faculty of the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College where she currently teaches narrative nonfiction writing and the art of archival research in the MFA program.  She was voted Outstanding Teacher of the Year by the Graduate Student Association in 2012.

For information, please contact: (978) 744-0991, ext. 105, or email:  anuncio@7gables.org. Admission to the lecture:  $10 Members, $15 Non-Members. To purchase tickets, please contact (978) 744-0991, ext. 104.