Every October, Tom Saltsman transforms his Pleasant Street driveway and garage into something extraordinary.
From a 20-foot-tall Egyptian snake goddess to a massive grunting gorilla and a spooky forest troll, Saltsman’s larger-than-life Halloween creations have become legendary across the North Shore and beyond.
Part art installation, part architectural marvel, each elaborate production draws crowds eager to see what the Marblehead architect has dreamed up next.
“A lot of my background is art,” said Saltsman, co-founder of SaltsmanBrenzel, a design and construction firm based in Boston’s South End. “I use this opportunity to be able to express myself and build something without any direction. It can just be entirely my interest and something I want to do.”
The tradition began about 20 years ago with a haunted hallway at the Coffin-Gerry School, where Saltsman’s children were enrolled. Since then, his creations have grown increasingly ambitious, but he has never abandoned their do-it-yourself roots.
Working nights and weekends, Saltsman brings his visions to life with help from a dedicated group of volunteers.
“It does require an extra pair of hands often,” he said. “Some years less than [or] more than others. This year there’s a lot of hands on. I have kind of a core group of people who help… It’s a vision which you can’t kind of hand off. I have to do most everything in terms of designing everything and lay out.”
The productions require more than creative vision and construction skills. They also demand patience from family and neighbors, who have watched the annual spectacle attract long lines of visitors and occasionally snarl neighborhood traffic.
Saltsman credits his wife, Brooke Trivas, an artist and architect herself, with helping make the tradition possible.
”We met in undergrad school and graduate school, which were both arts and architecture schools, so we both have this interest in self expression. She totally supports me in all of that. Does it eat up our October and September? Yes, it does. There’s not a lot of apple picking that goes on in our house, so it’s a little bit overwhelming. But you know, she is very supportive and often heavily involved in the process.”
Saltsman, who counts sculpture, bonsai and fine woodworking among his pursuits, has also embraced the technological advances that have made increasingly sophisticated Halloween displays possible.
Over the past decade, the explosion of online tutorials, 3D printing and accessible animatronics technology has opened new possibilities for ambitious do-it-yourself creators.
“When you wind the clock back maybe eight years ago, YouTube would have a couple of things on animatronics,” Saltsman said. “Now, that world has exploded.People are making their own things with 3D printers and there’s all kinds of incredible creative things going on that you can see out there.”
Choosing a favorite creation isn’t easy for Saltsman, though a few stand out for their impact and the sheer effort required to build them.
“I really loved the impact that the gorilla had,” Saltsman said. “I think as far as a walk-through experience, the troll and the ship were pretty good. I like that there were things about both of those that were a daunting amount of work. My God, when I did the ship, back then I felt like I could work until 10:30 at night. That doesn’t seem to be happening now.”
As Halloween approaches, anticipation is building for the latest transformation of Saltsman’s Pleasant Street property.
But the architect is keeping this year’s theme tightly under wraps.
“Maybe I’m just renovating the garage. There’s just a tarp up over it. Maybe I’m just fixing the roof,” he teased.
The Current will have more details on this year’s Halloween spectacle in the coming weeks.
