November is a great month to visit Salem, Mass. The hordes of tourists with their broomsticks and peaked hats have disappeared, the summer vacationers are long gone and the town becomes a wonderful, peaceful place for a group of Elderhostelers to gather for a week of lectures, museum visits and house tours.

We stayed at the delightful Hawthorne Hotel, designated an Historic Hotel of America, and located right on the Salem Common within easy walking distance of the Peabody Essex Museum, the waterfront and the McIntire historic district.

My husband and I arrived in Salem Sunday morning, before our Elderhostel began, so that we could visit the Stephen Phillips House, now owned by Historic New England and open only on the weekends in the off-season. Located on Chestnut Street, a broad avenue lined with the homes of wealthy Salem merchants built for the most part in the early 1800s, it has a curious history dating back to 1800 when Elizabeth Derby and her husband, Capt. Nathaniel West, built an elegant country house in nearby Danvers. A bitter divorce followed in 1806. West eventually inherited one-third of the estate, and in revenge, cut the four front rooms off the house, moved them by oxsled to Salem and created this gorgeous, three-story mansion with the help of noted Salem architect, Samuel McIntire.

In 1911, Anna Phillips bought the house and with her husband, Stephen (he of the Phillips Exeter and Phillips Andover academies) furnished it with Federal-era furniture, ship portraits, Chinese export porcelain and artifacts collected from all over the world. The carriage house holds three fantastic cars, two Pierce-Arrows (a 1924 touring car and a 1936 limousine) and my favorite, a fancy, 1929 Ford Model A Phaeton, painted dark green with a tan roof and yellow wheel spokes.

Our first three days were spent at the Peabody Essex Museum, which originated in 1799 when Salem sea captains and merchants began displaying their most exotic artifacts, brought back from ports in the Far East, in the grand meeting room of the East India Marine Society. Now a part of the museum, it is an enormous room, Federal-style, with tall, arched windows on opposite ends and four fireplaces. Many original, carved wooden figureheads are mounted on the walls, including one from the ship Western Belle, a woman in a white dress with blue trim holding up an ear of corn in her left hand, and one from the ship Indian Princess boasting a bare-breasted Indian maiden with long black hair and bare feet. Docents guided us through many of the museum galleries – we viewed beautiful items from 18th and 19th century Japan, China and India.

The Maritime Art galleries were fascinating. A huge model of the Queen Elizabeth I dominated one room – it originally graced the offices of the Cunard Line in New York City. One of my favorite items in this area was a painting by N. C. Wyeth – the original of the one my husband owns in his copy of “Trending into Maine,” by Kenneth Roberts. Entitled “They Took Their Wives With Them on Their Cruises,” it depicts a housewife in long dress and sun bonnet sitting placidly on the deck of a sailing ship, mending her husband’s shirts, while he stands in his blue uniform staring off to sea with his telescope.

One morning was devoted to exploring the Chinese house, Yin Yu Tang (Hall of Plentiful Shade), occupied by the Huang family for eight generations, the descendants of a wealthy pawnbroker. The house was close to being demolished when it was bought by the museum, taken apart bit by bit and shipped to Salem, where it was meticulously reconstructed. We approached the house through its courtyard, surrounded on all sides by high, white, window-less walls, and followed a red sandstone path that led to the only door into the house. Inside is another courtyard, open to the sky, with two decorative pools filled with water plants and fish. Located around the courtyard are the bedrooms, small squares whose only daylight enters through one screened window with louvers that could close for privacy or open for light and air. Narrow stairs at each end of the house led to the second story for more bedrooms. Evidence of daily life is everywhere – from the old bike leaning against a wall, to a toothbrush in a tin cup on a table, to the mottos on the wall such as “getting along,” “good health” and “be quiet.” The house offers a penetrating glimpse into domestic life in rural China.

A current exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum that will remain open until Feb. 24 is entitled, “Samuel McIntire: Carving an American Style.” Born in Salem in 1757. McIntire learned the building trade from his father, but went on to become an “architect who transformed his birthplace into the epitome of an elegant American town.” Favoring large, square buildings in the Federal style, he designed over 50 public buildings, churches and private residences, and then went on to decorate them with furniture, mantelpieces and ornamental windows and doorways. He is particularly known for his carved eagles, symbol of America’s strength and power, but also for his carved sheaves of wheat, fruit and vegetable baskets, cornucopias, Corinthian columns with acanthus leaves, draperies and urns. We saw eye-catching examples of his work when we visited the magnificent Gardner-Pingree House, built in 1804, later in the week.

Our final day in Salem included a rain-swept visit to the Salem Maritime National Historic Site run by the National Park Service down on the waterfront. We boarded the replica of the East Indiaman merchant ship, Friendship,” moored at Derby Wharf. The original was built in 1796 and is famous for its 15 voyages around the world, trading for such goods as pepper, spices, sugar, coffee and tea. Nearby was the 1819 Custom House, where permits to land cargo were issued and customs taxes collected. Still in the rain, we continued walking along the waterfront to the House of Seven Gables. Recently designated a National Historic Landmark, and built in 1668, it is considered one of the most important 17th- century houses in Salem. I had just finished reading this famous book by Nathaniel Hawthorne and was eager to see the house that plays such a vital role in the story. The gloom of the late afternoon, the fog and the rain all added to the atmosphere as we heard that Hawthorne, born in Salem in 1804, frequently visited the house where his cousin, Susannah Ingersoll, lived – a famous recluse who probably inspired the character of Hepzibah Pyncheon in the novel. Never mind that Caroline Emmerton, a local philanthropist who bought the house in 1908, and who saw it as a source of revenue for her settlement house, added the cent shop and the secret staircase, both of which figure prominently in the novel’s plot. T

he secret staircase was particularly intriguing, built into the side of the great center chimney, and most of our group managed to clamber up the narrow steps, clinging to the brick sides as we went. It was a wonderful finale to our week in this charming New England seaport.