Historic Houses
Daniel Bray House
1 Brown Street
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Listen now to the PEM Walks episode about this property! Behind-the-scenes audio storytelling that unlocks PEM’s historic houses.
The Daniel Bray House is less grand than others in PEM’s architecture collection, but the stories hidden in this modest home are no less impressive.
Exterior restoration in 2019 returned the structure to its original 1806 appearance and the house tells the story of gentrification and the displacement of Salem’s working class in the early 19th century. Surrounded by the homes of merchants and the sea captains, Bray worked in the maritime world, likely as a rigger, as listed on his father’s will. The house was built in 1766 by Daniel Bray’s father, Nathaniel. In 1806 Daniel Bray inherited the house and renovated it to the latest taste and it became quite elegant on the outside.
Only 13 years later, Bray’s view of the new Salem Common became completely blocked by the massive Andrew-Safford mansion, built only two feet away from his window. In a blatant show of gentrification, John Andrew built his mega mansion, completely blocking eastern light from coming into the original kitchen windows of Bray’s house.
By 1820, Daniel Bray and his little house was the only working class house left on the streetscape, surrounded on all sides by much larger and more expensive houses.
Photography by Dinah Cardin/PEM.
This close proximity put Daniel Bray smack in the middle of history. He just happened to be looking out of a rear window on this house just before dawn on an early April morning in 1830 and witnessed Richard Crowninshield breaking in through a rear window of PEM’s Gardner-Pingree House. These two houses shared a property line and the rear facades faced one another as they do today.
Andrew Safford House.
When Bray’s neighbor, the slumbering Joseph White, turned up dead later on in the morning, Bray became a material fact witness in the trial of the century, prosecuted by none other than Daniel Webster. Listeners to PEM Walks can learn more about that murder by listening to the Gardner-Pingree House PEM Walks episode.
In recent years, an extensive forensic study of the house turned up an overwhelming amount of evidence about how the building looked during Daniel Bray’s occupancy. When 20th century materials were peeled back, they revealed layers of paint that determined the building’s color scheme in 1806.
Consultants extracted more than 100 samples from original clapboards, window sashes and trim, corner boards and cornice moldings. These were examined under a polarized-light microscope. Consultants identified the original 1806 paint colors, including specific pigments, minerals, resins and oils used to make the paints.
The result is a deep rich chocolate brown with the window sashes and trim, and cornice elements in the frontice piece painted a medium orange.
Photography by Steven Mallory/PEM.
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