Newburyport Historic District

Newburyport's historic district covers about 750 acres at the mouth of the Merrimack River, roughly 40 miles north of Boston. Most of the city's residents live within it. It holds about 2,500 contributing structures built before 1930 and some 200 later ones, arranged as dense neighborhoods of wood-frame houses north and south of a commercial core of brick row buildings linked to maritime trade. The street grid, framed by High, Marlboro, Water, Merrimac and Ashland Streets, took shape in the seventeenth century and was largely complete by 1870. Architecture ranges from First Period farmhouses and waterfront dwellings of about 1650 to 1725, through high-style Georgian houses and brick mansions of the later eighteenth century, to Greek Revival, Italianate and Queen Anne buildings of the nineteenth century. Federal Period architecture predominates, including the large houses along the High Street ridge. The Fire of 1811 destroyed many early buildings near Market Square, but significant examples survive elsewhere in the district.