High Street Historic District

High Street in Ipswich, Massachusetts, dates to the town's founding in 1633 and served as its main residential and commercial street. The historic district covers about 26 acres running along the side of Town Hill and includes the 1634 Burial Ground with its 17th and 18th century slate gravestones. Most of the key buildings are two-story, end-gable, timber or wood-frame clapboarded houses, with dates ranging from the 1630s-1650s to the 1800s and a Queen Anne house of the 1880s-90s. Many once housed taverns, stores and craftsmen's shops, including cabinetmakers, and two ordinaries, the White Horse Inn and the Perkins Inn, operated here by the mid-17th century. In 1832 Benjamin Fewkes worked on the first stocking frames built in the United States in a shop behind a High Street house, beginning the town's hosiery industry. After Central Street opened in 1871, traffic shifted and High Street became purely residential. The result is a harmonious streetscape with an 18th century quality.