Neighborhood Overviews
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NEIGHBORHOOD OVERVIEWS (Sources: The following text is largely quoted from Leslie Donovan and Kim Withers Brengle, “A Preservation Plan for the City of Gloucester, Massachusetts,” 1990. Supplemental information was added from the Gloucester Development Team’s Land Marks; Architecture and Preservation in Gloucester, 1979; an unpublished manuscript, “Artists’ Communities in Gloucester, 1750-1948,” by Wendy Frontiero, 1998; and comments from the Gloucester Archives Committee.) CENTRAL GLOUCESTER Central Gloucester is roughly bounded by the Inner Harbor, the Annisquam River, and Route 128. This commercial and civic center of the City of Gloucester, located west of the inner harbor, is the nucleus of the Central Gloucester neighborhood and the City. The central business district runs along Main and Rogers Streets and is characterized by two- to four-story masonry structures. Immediately to the west is the civic center, which is composed of the City’s public buildings, by far the largest group of substantial buildings in Gloucester. The greatest concentration of industrial buildings is also found in Central Gloucester, located along the waterfront, near the commercial areas, and along Maplewood Avenue. Central Gloucester is extremely densely developed compared to the rest of Gloucester. Residential buildings are typically single-family and multi-family structures of wood-frame construction. A fishing colony established by the Dorchester Company at Stage Fort lasted only from 1623- 1626. It was not until the late 1630s that Cape Ann attracted a large enough number of permanent settlers to warrant incorporation as a town in 1642 under the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The name of the new town may have come from the recent birth of a new Duke of Gloucester. Joining the earliest residents soon after the town’s incorporation was a group of about twenty families led by the Reverend Richard Blynman, from the Plymouth Colony. Apparently discouraged by past attempts at establishing a profitable fishing industry, these settlers mainly engaged in farming. In 1642, a meetinghouse was erected at The Green, now the intersection of Ashland Place and Washington Street near Grant Circle on Route 128. The area around The Green was easily accessible for both farming and fishing, and it became an early core of settlement. As a relatively sheltered area with level acres of land, it was more suitable for farming than some of Gloucester’s more rocky sections. Its location near the Annisquam River, however, provided important water connections to West Gloucester and Annisquam. A canal between the Annisquam River and Gloucester Harbor (known as The Cut; ca. 1643) allowed for more convenient water passage from The Green to Massachusettts Bay, and for a quicker water route to the larger ports of Boston and Salem. As the Town Parish, The Green was the core of settlement and served all of Gloucester until the Second Parish was split off in West Gloucester in 1713. Early on, the Green contained about Gloucester Survey Update Plan – Final Report, February 2012 page 9-1 Neighborhood Overviews one-third of Gloucester’s residents. Houses radiated north along Washington Street and up Wheeler’s Point. After the turn of the 18th century, coastal trade and a small fishery gained precedence over farming, and Gloucester was transformed from a subsistence town to a commercial center. The most dramatic result of the shift was the development of the Harbor Village as the main focus of the town. By the middle of the 18th century, about 70 vessels were sailing from Gloucester. New families from outside were attracted to the town, and Gloucester developed a class of well- to-do merchants; owners of fishing, trading, and lumber businesses; and successful artisans and tradesmen. A new meetinghouse was built at the Harbor in 1738 and became the new First Parish in 1742. The Town Parish at The Green was then renumbered the Fourth Parish (a Third Parish had been established in the northern villages in 1728) and was more or less left to the older generation of merchants, farmers, and fishermen. With this transfer of religious preeminence, the Harbor was permanently established as Gloucester’s civic and economic center. Middle Street, laid out in 1737 as Cornhill Street, was the most fashionable residential address for Gloucester’s wealthy families during this period. After 1750, as residents prospered, a number of larger houses were built along the street. During the Revolutionary War, fishing and trade came to a virtual standstill, but privateering flourished. After the war, ship building and foreign trade returned to the Harbor. Middle Street resumed its pre-war status as the center of important social, political, and religious activity, and was lined with imposing residences, churches, and a few taverns. The Harbor experienced a second period of stagnation during the War of 1812, however, caused by British raids on American ships. During the second quarter of the 19th century, Gloucester Harbor resumed its economic growth and dominance. Commercial fishing rose as a major base of the local economy. Most of the fishing industry was concentrated around the Harbor in the downtown area, in East Gloucester, and in Rocky Neck. After the arrival of the Boston-to-Gloucester railroad in 1847, the fishing industry in Gloucester experienced rapid prosperity, which continued throughout the 19th century. The waterfront, which by the last quarter of the 19th century had moved outward from Front (now Main) Street to Rogers Street, was the scene of most of the food preparation, as well as industries related to fishing and fish products, such as the production of oils, medicines, soaps, oil cloth, anchors, paint, and boxes. The success of the fishing industry produced an expansion of Gloucester’s entire economy, including commercial businesses and other industries. By 1872, a dense network of streets was laid out along the waterfront in the Harbor Village, and most lots were already developed. The downtown area continued to be both convenient and fashionable for building in the late 19th century. Lower-income immigrants took over some of the pre-boom buildings of Georgian and Federal architecture, and a few new areas of development were exploited specifically to house these workers. Many of the nouveau riche of the fisheries built elaborate, modern homes in this neighborhood, clustered along undeveloped Gloucester Survey Update Plan – Final Report, February 2012 page 9-2 Neighborhood Overviews areas of old streets like Prospect and Washington, or on new streets such as Dale Avenue and Chestnut and Marchant Streets. After 1875, however, when the Harbor Village was nearly full, large-scale development moved out to surrounding downtown neighborhoods such as Portuguese Hill, Burnham Field and Trask Oaks, Oak Grove, and Beacon Hill. Dense residential infill in these surrounding new neighborhoods were built mainly for workers’ housing, in the Italianate and Queen Anne styles, with scatterings of larger and more expensive homes. EAST GLOUCESTER Located on the opposite side of the Inner Harbor, this largely residential neighborhood has several identifiable sub-areas. Rocky Neck is a peninsula that extends into the Inner Harbor from its eastern shore. Eastern Point is located at the southern tip of the East Gloucester peninsula, and along the Atlantic side are Bass Rocks, Good Harbor Beach, and Brier Neck. The spine of the East Gloucester neighborhood is East Main Street, which is lined by a mixture of commercial, industrial, and residential structures, and which functions as the business center. East Gloucester was originally an outlying village much like Annisquam and Lanesville, and it remained rural for its first two centuries of growth. Several land grants were made in this area in the 17th century, but most of the owners lived downtown, and their holdings were worked by tenant farmers. Large-scale development was initiated by a 1667 town regulation permitting a 660-foot-wide cut of cordwood along the shoreline, and was revived with a 1704 decision to lay out a road (now East Main Street) from the Head of the Harbor to Niles Beach. The earliest documentation of roads in the district (the 1831 map) shows Haskell Street, Mount Pleasant Avenue, East Main Street only to East Gloucester Square, and Highland Street. These roads probably date back much farther, acting as the basic thoroughfares to the 17th century farms. By 1728, about 15 families were scattered along the peninsula. Although farming and cattle-raising were important activities at the top of the peninsula’s ridge and at its southern tip, the major industry of East Gloucester has historically been fishing. It was from an East Gloucester wharf in 1713 that Captain Andrew Robinson launched what legend claims is the world’s first schooner, and it was from an East Gloucester wharf in 1830 that John Fletcher Wonson made the first halibut trip to Georges Bank. In 1849, Captain John Wonson began a ferry service from Duncan’s Point (downtown) to the Town Landing at East Gloucester Square, a convenience that was shortly followed by a stagecoach land service, which in turn was followed much later in the century by the electric trolley. By about 1860, as reported in Garland’s Eastern Point, East Gloucester’s population of about 1,000 occupied approximately 130 homes, “snug clapboard houses strung along the harbor road, bunched in the village around the Square” (p. 74). Secondary industries at that time included such businesses as Procter and Perkins nurseries, blacksmiths Collins and Clark, Henry Wonson’s Union Store, and Patch’s ice and ballast business. The great fisheries that built East Gloucester included Samuel Wonson & Sons, William H. Wonson & Son, John F. Wonson & Co., William Parsons 2d & Co., William Parkhurst, E. Sayward Co., Reed & Gamage, and Gloucester Survey Update Plan – Final Report, February 2012 page 9-3 Neighborhood Overviews Gorton-Pew.