This Historic Home Is for Sale in America’s Spookiest Town
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20151/6The Joseph Story House at26 Winter Streetin Salem, Massachusetts, which is on the market for $2.65 million, is teeming with history. The Federal-style home was built for Joseph Story in 1811, which is the same year that President James Madison appointed the 32-year-old lawyer to the U.S. Supreme Court, making him the youngest justice to date.
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20152/6Story hosted distinguished guests like President Madison and the Marquis de Lafayette at the residence until he and his family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1829, where he helped develop the library and a merit-based method of teaching law at Harvard Law School.
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20153/6After purchasing the brick home in 1866, Dr. Amos Howe Johnson and his wife, Frances Benjamin Johnson, added a two-story structure on the north side of the property and created the main entry on Winter Street, moving the grand staircase there. Johnson is known as one of the first physicians to focus on the importance of mental health to overall well-being and to warn of the dangers of stress and exhaustion. He was also an advocate of preventive medicine, which was a new idea at the time.
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20154/6In 1920, the residence was transformed into an upscale boarding house called Barstow Manor. One of its residents was Pulitzer Prize–winning author Katherine Anne Porter, who lived there during the winter of 1927–28.
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20155/6In 1974, then-resident John Ward was successful in getting the home designated as a National Historic Landmark. The residence was also named to the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.
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20156/6The current owners, Neil and Martha Chayet, purchased the property in 2006 and embarked on a three-year restoration and renovation project. This included the installation of ageothermal energy system, which means the home is heated and cooled without burning any fossil fuels. The house is the only National Historic Landmark residence to receive a LEED Silver certification.
