I walked down this street yesterday afternoon, and it's fun to see how little has changed. It's paved now, but still amazingly wide (for a one-way street)!

But that doesn't include the cost, even if it's only opportunity cost, of collecting and fixing the pictures. I see the pictures LOC puts up on Flickr, and what you do with them is unreal. I don't imagine the big ones you get are any better than the ones they post. Must be a lot of work involved in making them look like they were taken yesterday.

[The only "collecting" we do is downloading the image files from the LOC website. Then I adjust them in Photoshop. - Dave]

I notice a variety of "outside" ads, ever-changing, some with "dancing baloney" to catch the eye, but they are well contained within strictly defined spaces. I regard this as a very reasonable price for a free and very rewarding web site. Please continue along your current path.

The trees appear to be elms, not chestnuts. Perhaps the street was named after the trees that dominated here in the 17th or 18th century.

The tree wrapping was probably to slow the climb of gypsy moths, first released in the U.S. at Medford, Massachusetts in the late 1800s.

I can remember taking a tour of Salem, my big interest being all the Salem Witch Trials stuff. The first stop on the tour was this street, which was home to all the captains, both sea and commerce back in the 1840s. Turning the corner and not expecting what I saw, is the one thing I can remember. You don’t expect a beautiful street like this one in the same town that has a witch museum in an old church.

It has not changed in all those years.

Under the spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stands, etc. etc. Nice poem, look it up. Thats about all I know about chestnuts, except they are delicious boiled or baked, in turkey stuffing or alone, freshly roasted, on the streets of NYC in the winter. Good day.

Lou Judson wrote: "I will continue to remind you that you should not put up with this and no matter how rich it makes you it reflects badly on your entire operation. You need to exercise a bit of editorial control before you lose some of us out here!"

Take it from someone who knows, no one ever got rich - or even adequately paid in most cases - for hosting ads on their sites. We do it because it can defray a bit of the cost of running the website, and I suspect that Dave's costs are infinitely greater than mine on my little blog.

I too object to one of the ads that sometimes runs on this site - the one for the "electronic cigarette" but that's because I'm down on cigarettes, real and electronic. But I'm not going to demand that Dave drops advertising because of I object to it. Others might not, and more importantly when the choice is between having the ads and not having the blog (or not having as many posts in the blog) I'll suffer through the advertising.

[Hosting for this site runs around $3,300 a year; ad revenue is in the five figures. - Dave]

I SEE WHERE A COUPLE OF THEM HAVE LANDED DOWN BELOW.
Yikes!

The person who is allergic to moving images and "obnoxious ads" needs to be reminded that this is a FREE site that doesn't cost him a thing. I also don't see anything that could in any way be described as violent. Where is this ad containing fire?

One thing I did notice was that way up at the top it says "May contain nuts." Truer words were never printed.

Dave, these photos are wonderful and if I haven't done so already, I want to thank you for a job well done.

Great Colonial era hipped roof homes here. Many historic buildings in Massachusetts have been preserved. I hope that these are among them.

This picture reminds me a lot of the photos of Samuel Chamberlain. He made shots of New England for the Travelers Insurance Company calendars for many years from the 1930s through the 50s, and made many wonderful images of Salem. He was a big fan of Samuel McIntyre, a Salem woodcarver and architect. McIntyre designed many of the finest houses on Chestnut Street, but he also specialized in magnificent wooden fences with elaborate details, as well as the elaborately carved moldings and fireplaces in the houses. Chestnut Street is one of the most magnificent streets in America.

When I was a kid in the early 1950s the stumps of the last remaining chestnut trees were still visible in the woods. They were the true kings of the forest. One hollowed out stump could hold three or four little kids hiding out.

The white house at the end of the street is still there, as are many of these same houses!

I am terribly allergic to advertising, and moving images on my computer screen while trying to read or examine an image make me sick and angry. THIS page has a really offensive movie ad with fire and violence (I can't look at it long enough to read the name, and won't try) and this makes me leave the page very quickly.

I will continue to remind you that you should not put up with this and no matter how rich it makes you it reflects badly on your entire operation. You need to exercise a bit of editorial control before you lose some of us out here!

Lou Judson 415-883-XXXX

Wondering also what those bands were for. Thing that confused me was that not all of the trees were wrapped. I even thought the trees might have been marked for removal because of their encroachment to the street.

WITHIN 40 YEARS THESE AMERICAN CHESTNUT TREES ALONG WITH ALL THE OTHER AMERICAN CHESTNUT TREES ACCOUNTING FOR APPROXIMATELY 25 PERCENT OF OUR HARDWOOD FORESTS WOULD BE GONE, KILLED OFF BY THE ASIAN CHESNUT BLIGHT.THEY WERE A BEAUTIFUL TREE SOMETIMES ATTAINING 100 FEET IN HIGHT AND STRAIGHT AND STRONG AS OAK.THE (MAST) NUTS FED A HUGE POPULATION OF DEER AND OTHER FOREST CREATURES.

These and 4 billion other American chestnuts were killed by the blight that was spreading across the tree's native range at the time this photo was taken. But the good news is there's a way to bring them back! The American Chestnut Foundation is working to make their return a reality. http://www.acf.org/

Note the burlap bands, similar to those we currently use to trap gypsy moth caterpillars. I wonder what the blight was in 1906. Also, not a car in sight - beautiful.

I doubt anyone whose ever picked chestnuts before would ever want to walk down that street barefooted.