OLDNBPT

Walking tours

Walk the old town

Eleven self-guided loops, each a mile or two along the streets and back to where you began. Every stop has a script to read aloud, drawn from the old town histories and naming its sources, and links to its house or place page, lost buildings included.

  1. 01 · Downtown · 23 stops · 1 mi · about 70 minState Street and Market SquareA short loop up one side of State Street and down the other, from the old market place by the river to the Dalton House and back. This was Fish Street when the town was founded, the street where the shops, the tavern, the banks and the first library all stood, and the brick blocks you walk past are the rebuilding after the Great Fire of 1811.Start and finish: Market Square, at the foot of State Street
  2. 02 · Downtown · 29 stops · 1.2 mi · about 85 minGreen Street, Brown Square and Pleasant StreetA short downtown loop from the Bartlett Mall down Green Street, the street of merchants' houses laid out in 1782, to Brown Square and City Hall, then along Pleasant Street past the Unitarian church, the site of the cotton mills and the shoe factories, and back up State Street to High Street. About a mile and a quarter, mostly level, with a gentle climb at the end.Start and finish: Bartlett Mall, in front of the courthouse
  3. 03 · High Street · 28 stops · 1.7 mi · about 95 minHigh Street: Down Along and the RidgeA walk along the finest half mile of High Street, from State Street down to March's Hill and back up the short block of Fruit Street: the three-storey square houses of the sea captains and merchants, the Cushing House, the old Academy, the house where Caleb Cushing died and the hill where the town watched for British ships in 1813. For most of this stretch the street itself was the town line, Newburyport on one side and Newbury on the other, until 1851. About a mile and three quarters, on sidewalks, with one short climb.Start and finish: High Street at State Street
  4. 04 · South of State Street · 36 stops · 1.5 mi · about 110 minFederal, Spring and Middle StreetsA loop through the close-packed streets just south of State Street, where the shipmasters and merchants of the 1790s built their brick and clapboard houses a block back from the wharves. The walk takes in the Old South meeting house of 1756, the birthplace of William Lloyd Garrison, the houses of the Johnson shipbuilding family and of Colonel Edward Wigglesworth, and the church where Frederick Douglass spoke in 1841; about a mile and a half, mostly level, with thirty-six stops.Start and finish: Middle Street at State Street
  5. 05 · Waterfront · 19 stops · 1.1 mi · about 65 minThe Water Street WaterfrontA short, level loop from the old Market House down Water Street and back: the Custom House, the sites of the wharves where the molasses, the hemp and the coal came in, the two range lights that steered ships up the harbor, the ground where a Continental frigate was built, and the lanes behind. About a mile; nothing steeper than Elbow Alley.Start and finish: The Firehouse, Market Square
  6. 06 · South End · 8 stops · 1 mi · about 40 minJoppa: The Oldest HousesA short, level loop of about a mile through the streets below Federal Street, where the first shipwrights and fishermen of the water side built their houses. Six of the eight stops are standing houses, most of them older than the town of Newburyport itself; the other two are a cotton mill of 1842 and the site of the biggest shipyard of the old South End, at the line where Joppa begins.Start and finish: Federal Street at Water Street
  7. 07 · South End · 10 stops · 1.4 mi · about 55 minJoppa: The Fishing VillageA level loop through the South End below Bromfield Street, the part of town the histories call Joppa: along Water Street past the old landings, a shipyard that built only schooners, and the point where the clam shacks stood, then back through the streets behind, past the Methodist meeting house of 1825, the South End's own library, and the sites of a comb factory and the long ropewalks. About a mile and a half; nothing is steep.Start and finish: Hale Flake Yard, Water Street
  8. 08 · Waterfront · 9 stops · 1.5 mi · about 55 minAlong the River: The North End ShipyardsA level loop up Merrimac Street from Cashman Park to the foot of Ashland Street and back, past the old Towle silver factory and the sites of the shipyards where Newburyport's clipper ships, Civil War gunboats and the last square-rigger built in Massachusetts went down the ways. Nothing of the yards is left but the street names and the river; the walk is about a mile and a half.Start and finish: Cashman Park, Merrimac Street
  9. 09 · Rail trail · 12 stops · 1.8 mi · about 65 minThe Rail Trail: Mills, Ropewalks and Old HillA loop of about a mile and three quarters that starts where the old Eastern Railroad came off its bridge, follows Merrimac Street past the sites of a steam cotton mill, an iron foundry and the Caldwell rum distillery, climbs Strong Street to the house of Lord Dexter's wood-carver, and then takes the rail trail itself, past the ground where John Tracy spun rope and the Quakers buried their dead, under High Street to the edge of the Old Hill Burying Ground.Start and finish: The rail trail at Merrimac Street, by the river
  10. 10 · History · 12 stops · 1.7 mi · about 65 minNewburyport in the Civil WarA loop through the centre of town, from the Grand Army building on State Street up to Caleb Cushing's house on High Street and back by Federal Street, the waterfront and Market Square, following the city through the war of 1861 to 1865: the company that left in the sleet the day after Lincoln's call, the men who did not come back from Antietam, the Underground Railroad station on Federal Street, the birthplace of the abolitionist who came home in triumph in 1865, and the church where the city mourned the president. About a mile and three quarters.Start and finish: 57 State Street, the Grand Army Building
  11. 11 · History · 5 stops · 1.8 mi · about 55 minChurchyards and Burying GroundsA short loop of about a mile and three quarters through the four places where Newburyport buried its dead: the churchyard of St. Paul's, the hilltop burying ground behind the Frog Pond, the town's "New Hill" of 1800, and the garden cemetery of 1842 on the old turnpike. Five stops, a few long legs, and the best epitaphs in town.Start and finish: St. Paul’s Church, 166 High Street