From our interview with Micah and Ty Hapworth, shown above.

Ty: Our house was built in 1844 by a master mason here in Salem. His claim to fame is that he built the church around the corner, the East Church, which later became the Salem Witch Museum. It’s a beautiful old Gothic Revival church.

Micah: There’s a really active historic preservation group here in Salem, so we have a lot of information on the history of our home.

Ty: We’re the sixth family who’s owned it. A lot of these older sea captain mansions and larger homes have, over the years, been converted into condominiums or apartments. This one has stayed [a single-family home]. It’s been a family home for the last 181 years. That’s something we try to honor. It’s not a mansion, it’s not a showpiece for anybody. It’s a beautiful home that was lovingly built, and it’s always housed families. We’re just the latest in that line.

In the early 1900s, it was home to a family that had a doctor’s office in the house, in the room that is now my study. The house fell into disrepair in the 1970s. Then it was bought in the early 1980s by the Clark family. They owned a home decor and paint business in town, and they redid the house. They did a great job making sure everything was historically appropriate. They really honored its history and kept as much as they could and re-created the rest.

Micah: Back in 2014, we moved to Salem from Boston. Our son was 2, and our daughter was on the way. We lived on the edge of town. Ty was pursuing his MBA, and mornings were his time to himself, so he would go running downtown. He would take photographs as he ran. He started an Instagram account, @HelloSalem, and he would come home and show me these awesome photos of the city’s architecture, and we just absolutely fell in love with Salem and all of its history and character. We started dreaming about moving downtown but never actively pursued it.

Then we were walking around one day and noticed this house was for sale and was having an open house. I remember saying to Ty, “Let’s just go inside. Maybe you’ll get some cool photos out of it that you could post on Instagram.” So we toured the house, and we were like, wow, this is a dream. But financially it was a stretch.

Then we had a lightbulb moment. The third floor was a guest suite, with a bedroom and living area. And this was at the time when Airbnb was really taking off, so we started thinking about setting up the third floor as an Airbnb. We crunched the numbers to see what kind of money we would have to make off a rental unit to be able to afford the house. And we made it work. We put in an offer, and after a brief negotiation they accepted, and here we are. We still run the Airbnb on the third floor, and the income from it helps us maintain our home.

We were lucky that the house was in good shape when we moved in. Very intentional preservation work had been done, but there were some areas where you could see that that work was now 40 years old.

Three of the four exterior walls—the front and the two sides—had already been repointed. The first year we lived here, we had to have the back wall repointed. That was a big job. And the basement was disgusting. We needed it to be a space where we could actually store things. There had been some leaks, so we waterproofed it, and we replaced the bulkhead doors. And we repointed and painted the basement walls. We also bricked over the driveway, planted trees out front, and replaced rotted soffits. We hand-painted all the shutters. They’ll still need to be replaced at some point, but we got a few more years out of them. And right now, we’re in the process of repointing all four of our chimneys.

We expect we’ll be replacing the roof soon. Our roof has seven skylights, and we’ll have to replace them, too. And we’re so fortunate to have old windows, but there’s a lot of rot we’re going to have to address at some point, and we’ll also have to get new storm windows. So much of having an old house is saving up for these really expensive, big projects, and tackling them one at a time.

Ty: Early on, we were afraid to make changes to the inside. We respected the house and everything that had been done to preserve it. But we also wanted to make it our own. We wanted it to be usable for a family. Our son is in junior high, our daughter is in sixth grade, and we have a dog and a cat. We wanted a home that could go from a place where our kids hang out with their friends, to a place for family movie nights, to a place for big gatherings. Micah’s an interior designer, and she’s organized the house to be functional but also beautiful. There are no rooms that are just for show.

A big impetus for making a lot of the interior changes was that in 2023, we were part of an annual house tour called Christmas In Salem, which benefits the nonprofit Historic Salem, Inc. That was a kick we needed to do some design updates, like wallpapering the dining room. And Micah hand-painted the kitchen cabinets. Now, Micah is the chairperson of the Christmas In Salem tours.

Micah: Yes, in addition to falling in love with Salem’s history and architecture, we also fell in love with the community, and we’ve both gotten really heavily involved. Ty is on the city council. I’m involved in our kids’ schools, and I’m president of the Salem Common Neighborhood Association. We love living here, and we love giving back to the community.