Meetinghouse Green Historic District

Meeting House Green in Ipswich, Massachusetts, is a district of about 15 acres built around a steep, rocky green and along North Main Street. It includes thirty houses, three churches and the town library, with roughly half the buildings from the eighteenth century and half from the nineteenth. Styles range from early Georgian and Federal to Greek Revival, Italianate, Second Empire, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival. The green was set aside for public use in 1634, a year after the town's founding. In the seventeenth century it held a meeting house, jail, fort, town pound and stocks. Later a post office, probate court, female seminary, hotel and shops surrounded it. A granite Civil War obelisk erected in 1871 stands on the hillside. The green is also linked to the 1687 protest led by Dr. John Wise against taxation under Sir Edmund Andros. Today the area is mainly residential and well maintained, with churches and the library nearby.