Chestnut Street is widely considered one of the finest Federal-era streetscapes in America, and the American Institute of Architects named it one of the most beautiful streets in the country. The double row of brick mansions running three blocks were built between roughly 1800 and 1830 for Salem's merchant class at the height of the East Indies trade, and they remain intact, privately owned, and mostly unchanged in exterior appearance.
The houses are not open to the public, but the street is worth walking for the architecture alone — the proportions, the fanlights, the matched setbacks, and the elms that once arched over the entire length. The architect Samuel McIntire, Salem's master builder, designed many of them; his work defines the Salem Federal style. A quiet Sunday morning walk here, away from the witch-trial crowds on Essex Street, reveals a very different and equally compelling side of the city.