Tucked behind the Peabody Essex Museum on Charter Street, the Pickman House is the First Period structure you see here in Salem. This house sits within the cluster of properties that form the Charter Street Historic District and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The Massachusetts Historical Commission calls it a rare surviving example of 17th-century architecture.
Samuel Pickman, a mariner, acquired the land to build this house in 1657, but the exact build date is disputed: no published dendrochronology study has been done. Three dates are offered — an early 1671 from an unpublished dendrochronology cited by architectural conservator Steven Mallory; 1665, the date the Peabody Essex Museum gives and features in Mallory's interview; and a later proposal of 1680. Whatever the precise year, the house is thought to have stood during the Salem witch trials of 1692 and 1693.
In more recent stewardship, Historic Salem, Inc. restored the house in 1969, and the Peabody Essex Museum purchased it in 1983. Notice the Peabody Essex Museum just behind, and the Charter Street Historic District gathering these layered dates.