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Salem Willows

Salem Chop Suey Sandwiches, A Sign of Summer Again

Chop suey sandwiches have marked the beginning of summer for generations of people who grew up on the North Shore of Massachusetts. Vendors once sold the beloved cheap treat throughout New England and as far south as Coney Island in New York.

They’ve been sold at the Salem Willows seaside park since the early 1900s. And then the last restaurant that sold them, Salem Lowe. closed its doors in 2022.

But like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the North Shore Chinese restaurant in Salem Willows Park reopened in 2023. The Salem News reported the happy development:

Meet the new Salem Lowe, bringing chop suey and pepper steak back this April under new ownership.

Salem Lowe, courtesy Google maps.

The chop suey sandwich is a cheap and filling concoction of roast pork or chicken, onions, celery and bean sprouts cooked in a thickened soy gravy and served on a hamburger bun. It is not to be confused with the Fall River chow mein sandwich, which lack bean sprouts and, often, meat. Chow mein noodles are an option on the chop suey sandwich, but required on the chow mein sandwich.

The Salem Lowe restaurant served the chop suey sandwich in bread rolled into a cone and wrapped in wax paper. According to the Roadfood blog, you had a choice of your sandwich in a take-out container or in a paper cone. “The cones are designed for eating while strolling, which is what you should do,” reported Roadfood.

“If there were a Nobel Prize for food stuffs, one would surely have been awarded to the culinary genius at Salem Lowe that created the chop suey sandwich,” wrote one reviewer on Yelp. “Forget radiology, penicillin and world peace: this deliciously salty sandwich has done more for humanity than those things combined.”

Chop Suey Sandwiches

Chinese immigrant cooks started restaurants and lunch wagons near mills, schools and amusement parks. They tailored their food to local tastes. Foods like chow mein and chop suey, with soft vegetables in a brown sauce, resembled Yankee cooking. Add bread and you had a cheap and filling Asian fusion food – also known as “cheap Chinese.”

Salem Willows Historic District

Salem Willows was an ideal location for the chop suey sandwich. It was developed around 1875, at the same time the Salem Willows resort community (now a historic district) was built. The park and the cottage district were named for the European white willow trees planted in 1801 along a walkway for smallpox patients at a nearby hospital.

Streetcars brought hordes of day trippers attracted by the beaches, the casino, the pavilion and the carousel. They flocked to Restaurant Row, where celebrated eateries served fresh seafood. One by one the eating places succumbed to fire and changing demographics.

Entrance to Salem Willows, courtesy Google Maps.

The last restaurant on Restaurant Row closed in the 1960s, but Salem Lowe still soldiered on with the chop suey sandwiches. (E.W. Hobbs also serves much- loved popcorn, but that’s a story for another day.) But owner David Yee said it’s time for him to retire.

An online exhibit of Salem food linked to Salem State University dates Salem Lowe from ca. 1912. The reasoning: the menu refers to itself as a ‘bill of fare,’ a term not used after 1914. Salem, notes the author, played an important role in the old China trade, which began in 1783. Yee told Boston.com his father had bought into the business in the 1960s.

Nostalgia

Today, Salem Willows still has the carousel and several arcades, one containing a few rides. Two small beaches are popular for watching July 4^th fireworks from Salem, Beverly and Marblehead.

The North Shore inspires a strong sense of nostalgia among those who grew up there. Some say you can’t call yourself a native if you haven’t had the chop suey sandwich at Salem Willows. Brunonia Barry captured that devotion in her novel the Lace Reader, in which the fictional detective eats chop suey sandwiches at least once a day.

Devotees flocked to Salem Lowe on Aug. 12, 2022, the Friday before its last weekend. The Salem News reported,

The window opened Friday to a line that was already more than 50 people deep. By 11:45 a.m., 60 were lined up. By 12:15 p.m., 82. Soon, the line nearly ran the length of the Willows strip, crossing ice cream windows and arcade entrances along the way.

Woodman’s, famous for its fried clams in nearby Essex, Mass., offers a recipe for making your own chop suey in The Woodmans Restaurant blog.

Photo: Salem Willows Historic District, By Fletcher6 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11752323.

This story about chop suey sandwiches was updated in 2023.

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Maurice Prendergast Paints New England at Play

The much-loved American artist Maurice Prendergast once wrote in his notebook,

Art is the great stimulus of life -I find it year by year more rich, more desirable, and more mysterious.

Revere Beach, ca. 1896. Private collection.

He found much richness outdoors in New England, especially during the summertime.

His art featured familiar scenes of parks and beaches, holidays, festivals and picnics. But his paintings resembled delicate mosaics more than the representational art then popular in the United States.

Marblehead, ca. 1914-15. Courtesy of the Williams College Museum of Art.

Maurice Prendergast was one of the first American painters to paint in a manner inspired by the French Post-Impressionists like Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat and Paul Cezanne.

Maurice Prendergast

He and his twin sister Lucy were born in a subarctic trading post in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on Oct. 10, 1858. (Perhaps that’s why light and summer attracted him so.) The trading post failed and the family moved to Boston’s South End. He then left school at 14. Prendergast was apprenticed to a commercial artist who painted show cards – advertising point-of-sale displays. By the time he reached 24, he could support himself painting flat, colorful advertisements — much the way his art would look.

Boston, Snowy Day. ca. 1910. Private collection.

His brother Charles, an artist with whom he was close, said he always knew he wanted to be an artist and he didn’t let anything get in his way. Back then, one generally studied in Europe if one wanted to pursue art. The brothers in 1886 worked their way to England on a cattle boat.

Nantasket Beach, ca. 1896. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Maurice then saved enough money to go to Paris, where he studied for four years. He was exposed to James McNeill Whistler, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Edgar Degas and Claude Manet.

When he returned to Boston in 1895 he had some modest success. By 1897 he acquired patrons who sent him to Italy to work for several years. But he suffered from poor health, and he’d lost nearly all his hearing by the time he returned home.

Maine Beach, ca. 1913. Private collection.

Back in New England, he painted in watercolor on the coast in summer, then recast his work in oil in the winter. He especially liked Revere Beach, Marblehead, the South Boston Pier and the Boston Public Garden.

Salem Willows, ca. 1904. Terra Museum of American Art.

His naïve, cheerful paintings sold well, and he began to exhibit in New York to find a wider audience. But not everyone liked his work.

Autumn in New England, ca. 1913, Private collection.

The Eight

In 1908 he exhibited with a renegade group of artists called The Eight. One critic dismissed his paintings as ‘artistic tommy-rot, unadulterated slop, the show would be better if it were that of The Seven rather than The Eight.’ Another compared his work with ‘an explosion in a color factory.’

Merry Go Round Nahant, ca. 1901. Springfield Museum of Fine Arts.

Eventually he moved to New York City, where he often painted Central Park scenes. He continued to work in New England in the summers.

Low Tide at Beachmont, ca. 1905, Worcester Art Museum.

Maurice Prendergast died on Feb. 1, 1924.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Great Salem Fire of 1914 Burns Half the City Out of Their Homes

The Great Salem Fire of 1914 was one of the last great urban fires of the era. It followed the Portland, Maine, fire of 1866, the Chicago Fire of 1871, the Boston Fire of 1872 and the Chelsea, Mass., fire of 1906.

After the fire. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

After the Salem fire. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The conflagration cut a swath a half-mile wide and a mile-and-a-half long through the city. Miraculously, the fire killed only three people, but injured 60. Even more people died from the strain of losing their homes.

The firestorm gobbled up 1,376 buildings, leaving homeless 18,000 people – nearly half of Salem’s population. The conflagration destroyed so many businesses that 10,000 people lost their jobs.

Early Warnings

Salem had long been susceptible to fire, but the city’s growth after the turn of the century made it more so. Since 1905, an influx of immigrants swelled the population by 28 percent to 48,000. More than 5,000 newcomers arrived in the four years since 1910. They were Irish, Italian, Polish and French-Canadian immigrants come to work in the mills, the wharves and the tanneries. They jammed into neighborhoods like the French La Pointe.

Four years before the fire broke out, Selectman Franklin Wentworth warned it would happen. He wrote in a March 29, 1910 Salem Evening News article that the city was in danger of burning down. The city had too many combustible roofs, he argued.

No one, it seemed, paid any attention. Later, Wentworth became secretary of the National Board of Fire Underwriters.

The Great Salem Fire

Watching Their Homes Burn at the Great Salem Fire, June 25, 1914.

Salem was in the midst of a drought on the hot, windy day of June 25, 1914. Early in the afternoon the fire started at the Korn Leather Co. in Blubber Hollow, the leather manufacturing district. Rays of sunlight through a window may have set a pile of celluloid on fire. It caught barrels of a highly inflammable material used to make patent leather — acetone, amalacitate and alcohol.

Contemporary newspaper reports quoted a state official describing what happened. He said the fire started in a shed filled with sheepskin and three barrels filled with highly flammable substances. He didn’t know how the flames originated, but once they did they spread to the barrels and the sheepskins, then up the open elevator well to the third floor. There the floor had been saturated with the flammable substance.

Salem fire at its height. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

The first alarm went off at 1:37 p.m. The fire spread so quickly a general alarmsounded four minutes later, and terrified Korn workers had to run for their lives from the burning building.

The block to the east caught immediately. So did the factories to the west. The fire crossed the street and consumed a factory and half a block of brick buildings. It swept down Boston Street and quickly doomed the entire district. Fire alarm boxes were pulled right and left as the fire swept through Salem.

Destruction

Historic Lafayette Street, one of the most beautiful in the city, was ravaged. A change in wind direction spared Chestnut Street and the McIntire Historic District. Ninety percent of Salem’s historic structures escaped the inferno.

The city’s entire French neighborhood was destroyed, including the newly built St. Joseph’s Church. Salem’s Franco-American population dropped to 5,000 from 15,000 after the fire.

Fire apparatus used to put out the Salem fire.

Fire apparatus sent by rail from Boston used to put out the Salem fire. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

Firefighters from 21 cities and towns came to help. The Boston Fire Department sent fire apparatus by rail car. Hingham firefighters soaked rugs and clothing in salt water, then laid them on roofs to prevent the fire from spreading. Ten homes were dynamited to stop the fire in its path.

Kittens and Ice

Many of the firefighters were overcome by the intense heat, and lay down in puddles for relief.

Some people panicked and ran into their burning homes, only to retrieve items of little value. One woman seized a small piece of ice, another a pillow and a gallon of oil. A washerwoman saved a new broom. A man saved a watermelon.

A woman gave her husband two hatboxes to take to a safe place. One had his two best suits, the other two kittens. He joined a throng at the docks and decided he could only carry one hatbox, so he threw the one with the kittens into the harbor. He later found he’d thrown out his suits and saved the kittens.

Families sought refuge in public spaces, bringing what household goods they could save to the Salem Common, the Salem Willows, Forest River Park, and the Broad Street Cemetery.

Finally the Salem fire was out, 13 hours after it began. It continued to smolder, though. Three weeks later, Pickering’s coal pile and Ropes’s hay were still burning. Gone were factories, churches, homes, barns, schools, bridges, wharves, coal piles and shops.

The ruined city became an instant tourist attraction. It is estimated 1 million people came to see the smoldering ruins the next day.

Recovery

Even before firefighters extinguished the Salem fire, National Guardsmen handed out cookies and milk.

Fearing civil unrest, Gov. David Walsh had called up 1,700 militiamen. They were ordered to shoot looters on sight, but the only disturbance involved a resident reentering a guarded area.

The National Guard set up emergency aid stations during the fire. The Salem Armory became relief headquarters and clearinghouse for fire victims.

Salem fire victims get fed

Tent cities sprang up at Bertram Field at the high school, Forest River Park and Camp Sherry near the Willows. Food and clothing was distributed. The first business to reopen was a tent barbershop on Boston Street. Guardsmen handed out food, issuing about 6,000 rations a day in breadlines by the tent cities.

Aftermath

Within a year of the Salem fire, the city issued 353 permits for buildings in the burned-over district. Most were one and two-family dwellings. Salem adopted a new building code requiring fireproof construction, widened streets and planted hundreds of shade trees.

Asbestos manufacturer Johns-Manville took full advantage of the Salem fire, running an ad under a photo of the Naumkeag Steam Cotton Co. that proclaimed:

Unharmed in the Midst of the Great Salem Fire because Roofed with J-M Asbestos Roofing

“The Roll of Honor”

Flying sparks and burning embers were literally showered upon the roof of this raw cotton storehouse of the Naumkeag Steam Cotton Co., located in the midst of the recently flame-swept area of Salem, Mass.

Buildings all around it were burned to the ground, as the photograph shows.

Yet this building was absolutely unharmed because protected by J-M Asbestos Roofing.

Salem never rebuilt its manufacturing base to its previous size. The city changed into a college and tourist town and a bedroom community swallowed up by metropolitan Boston.

According to legend, the ghost of Giles Corey, Salem witch trial victim, haunted the graveyard on the night before the fire.

To see 150 images of the fire at the Peabody-Essex Museum’s Phillips Library Digital Collections, click here.

With thanks to Streets of Salem and The Salem Fire by Arthur B. Jones. This story about the Salem fire was updated in 2022.

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