Old Town Hall Historic District

Derby Square and the streets around it form a small downtown Salem district of about five acres, made up of eighteen brick commercial buildings. Eleven date from the Federalist period and seven were added over the next fifty years. The area sits on the first developed stretch of Salem's waterfront, and its street pattern dates to the 1600s. In 1816 the heirs of Elias Haskett Derby, Benjamin Pickman, Jr. and John Derby, replaced his mansion with land given for a town hall and market house, on the condition that neighboring buildings be brick or stone. That condition gave the area unusual unity. The Old Town Hall is a Bulfinch-influenced building with a cupola and Palladian windows. Nearby are Low's Building, a Greek Revival church of 1826 with later Gothic towers, and the cast-iron-fronted Hale Building of 1874. Warehouses, small trades and civic institutions once clustered here, serving the port. The produce market still operates in the square.