The Witch House of Salem
Salem, Massachusetts, United States
The only standing structure in Salem with direct ties to the 1692 trials, the home of judge Jonathan Corwin, kept as the honest center of the witch-city.
The Corwin House on Essex Street is the building that actually touched the trials: Jonathan Corwin, one of the judges of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, lived here, and the house is the only standing structure in Salem with a direct connection to the 1692 events. It is operated as a museum of seventeenth-century domestic life and the trials' real history, and its awkward name is part of the story: the "Witch House" name honors the accused, not the judge, and the site's own interpretation is careful with the difference.
In a city whose public witch imagery is mostly commerce, the house is where the history is kept straight: the politics, the panic, the nineteen dead. It earns its place in the landscape by being the real thing.
Visiting
310 Essex St, Salem; museum with admission, open seasonally. See the Witch House site.
Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Salem_Witch_House_II.jpg), CC BY-SA.
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Visitor stories