Scale House

Located behind the Custom House is a small brick building that served as the Scale House from when it was built in 1829 until the Custom House closed in 1935. The entire complex—Custom House, Scale House, and Public Stores—was eventually transferred to the National Park Service for inclusion in Salem Maritime National Historic Site, which opened in 1938.

As the name implies, the Scale House is where scales where stored that were used to weigh a ship’s cargo. Whenever a merchant ship returned from trading with a foreign country, customs workers would set up scales at the wharf and weigh the cargo as it was unloaded, a task that could take up to a month. Import taxes were determined by the weight or volume of various products, and these taxes were paid inside the Custom House. Even back in the late 1700s and early 1800s, a tax of $50,000 on a ship’s cargo was not uncommon, and it wasn’t unheard of for $100,000 to be collected. Before the federal income tax was established in 1913, taxes on imported goods made up 97 percent of federal revenue, and in the early 1800s, as much as 7 percent of the total was collected in Salem.

Today the Scale House is open whenever the Custom House is open. Inside is a collection of scales typical of those used by customs officials. A short audio presentation on the process of weighing cargo is started with the push of a button. A visit takes just a few minutes of your time.