Salem’s 1925 Landmark: Inside the Haunted Hawthorne Hotel

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated October 30, 2026 · How we verify

Ask around Salem about the haunted Hawthorne Hotel and you will get stories before you get dates. The dates are worth having first. This red brick hotel on Washington Square West in Massachusetts opened in 1925, takes its name from the novelist and Salem native Nathaniel Hawthorne, and stands on ground that had already burned to the foundations once before anyone thought to build a hotel on it.

Quick orientation: the Hawthorne is a working hotel, not a museum or an attraction. It is a member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and U.S. News & World Report has ranked it the number one hotel in Salem. It has also been listed among the top allegedly haunted places in Massachusetts and in the country, which is a listing, not a finding.

The Franklin Building, and the Fire That Took It

The site has a longer history than the hotel does. The Franklin Building went up here in the early 1800s and became the headquarters of the Salem Marine Society. The sea captain Thomas Handasyd Perkins acquired it in 1838. Fire damaged the building twice in the middle of the century, and in 1860 it was razed to the ground by flames entirely.

The Marine Society ordered a reconstruction between 1863 and 1864. The Civil War was underway and the work required patience, which is a polite way of saying that materials, money and labor were all going somewhere else at the time.

Frank Poor and the Push for a Modern Salem Hotel

By 1923, prominent members of the Salem community had reached a consensus that the city needed a modern hotel to accommodate the growing number of business travelers arriving. The loudest voice in that conversation belonged to Frank Poor, a North Shore native and the founder of the Sylvania Lighting Company.

Construction began in 1924, and on July 23, 1925 the building was inaugurated and opened to the public as the Hotel Hawthorne. The Salem Marine Society did not lose its home in the process: its headquarters was rebuilt into the hotel itself. In the 1950s the property briefly renamed itself the Hawthorne Motor Hotel, a concession to the car travel boom, before reverting. It joined Historic Hotels of America in 1991.

What the Record Supports, and What It Does Not

Here is where honesty matters more than atmosphere. The documented record for the Hawthorne establishes that the hotel carries a reputation: it has been named on lists of the most allegedly haunted places in Massachusetts and nationally. What that record does not do is specify a single verified incident, a named apparition, a documented death on the premises, or a catalog of phenomena that can be traced to a source rather than to repetition.

Plenty of stories circulate in Salem, a city whose entire tourist economy runs on them. Treat anything you hear about particular room numbers or particular figures as unattributed local lore until someone shows you where it came from. The hotel’s genuine claim on a visitor’s attention is that it sits on a burned site, absorbed a two centuries old mariners’ institution into its structure, and has been continuously open since the summer of 1925.

Staying at the Hawthorne

This is one of the easier haunted locations in New England to experience, because you simply book a room. The hotel operates normally year round on Washington Square West, within walking distance of Salem’s historic core. October in Salem is a different proposition from the rest of the year in terms of price and availability, so reserve far ahead if you want the Halloween season. Go for the building and the city; let the ghost stories be whatever you find them to be.

Address: Washington Square West, Salem, Massachusetts

See Hawthorne Hotel for Yourself

Sources

• Hotel History – Hawthorne Hotel
• Archived copy
• 10 Top 'Haunted' Places You Can Visit in Massachusetts
• America's 25 Most Haunted Hotels – Where It's Always Halloween
• These are the Top Haunted Hotels in America
• Wikipedia: Hawthorne Hotel

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