Pickering Foundation

The Pickering House in Salem is one of the oldest surviving buildings in Salem and New England, and it remains a living museum still owned by the original family through the Pickering Foundation. Built in 1660 by John Pickering, a carpenter from Coventry, England, and his wife Elizabeth, it began as a two-room farmhouse on land that once ran down to the North River, covering today’s Chestnut Street and McIntire District.

Over roughly 350 years, successive generations of John Pickerings added wings, gables and Gothic peaks, raised ceilings and built the house’s distinctive fence. The family’s best-known member, Timothy Pickering, led 300 men on April 19, 1775, served as Washington’s Quartermaster General and was the only person to hold three cabinet posts: Secretary of State, Postmaster General and Secretary of War, overseeing construction of the USS Constitution.

What to Know

• The house was home to a single family for more than three and a half centuries.
• The Pickering Foundation also offers function and meeting space.
• Family members still serve as officers of the foundation, alongside an executive director and archivist.