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Portsmouth NH
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Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting
April 17, 1997 San Francisco
Session: Whose City Is It? Memory and Historical Space in America (1090)
Market Square in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, has been the symbolic center of the city for centuries. A flourishing hub of maritime commerce until the mid-nineteenth century, the small seaport of Portsmouth then increasingly developed a civic identity based on a sense of itself as a place with history. In Portsmouth, historic preservation has served as a material witness to public memory and collective identity. Recent scholars have analyzed the role of tradition, collective memory and patriotism in American culture.(1) As yet unexamined, however, is the re-creation--physical transformation through preservation, restoration and re-use--of an urban public landscape as an example of collective memory in process. This paper will explore the process by which the meaning of Portsmouth's Market Square was transformed through physical changes by expert planners and local citizens.
The site of New Hampshire's first settlement in 1623, Portsmouth quickly became the center of royal government under an oligarchy of merchant families. In the 1750s a state house for the colonial legislature was built opposite the North Meeting House, facing the Parade or public training ground. The governmental structure was later described as "a large building, unornamented, and not in the most frequented part of the Town." After 1799, when the population hovered near five thousand, the commercial center shifted from the waterfront to the old Parade. The next year the town chose the Parade site for a new Brick Market, arcaded with a public hall above. Thus the area became Market Square and attracted additional commercial building. Sweeping through the central part of Portsmouth, fires in 1802, 1806 and 1813 destroyed all the early structures except the state house and the North Church. To prevent future fires, burned-out streets were widened and new buildings were constructed in brick. Reconstructions following the devastating fires created Portsmouth's brick commercial district, which still retains its early-nineteenth century appearance. Market Square has been identified through the past two centuries with four institutions: civic, commercial, religious and educational. The buildings of these institutions make up Market Square. Today, two of the four structures are no longer in Market Square. A brief history of each institution and its building will provide a sense of Portsmouth's identity as manifest in the symbolic center of the city.(2)
When the two hundredth anniversary of the settlement of Portsmouth was celebrated in 1823, two hundred gentlemen dined in Jefferson Hall, above the Brick Market. The hall was used throughout the nineteenth century for a variety of purposes: elections, as the room where children of all parishes attended Sunday-school, and town meetings until the adoption of the city charter in 1849. The building, which gave Market Square its name, continued its dual function as market and meeting place for decades. Reminiscing about Portsmouth fifty years earlier, a turn-of-the-century leader described the scene. "Jefferson Market was the principal meat-market of the place, the entire lower floor being taken up by dealers." Vermont butchers who sold their wares "on Market Square,--pity the old, distinctive New England name 'The Parade' was ever changed to that!--would load up with salt, fish, molasses, sugar, and hayfield rum and start back again."
When the hall was subdivided into "City Rooms" in 1864, the building became, in effect, the city hall. During the 1870s the exterior was remodeled, and the market stalls were abolished. Thereafter, the entire structure was used as the city hall until the old high school was converted for municipal use in 1910. The building housing the old Brick Market and Jefferson Hall was finally replaced by a bank about 1912.(3)
The New Hampshire colonial state house, built in the late 1750s, was a wooden version of other New England capitol buildings. On the second floor were a council chamber on the eastern end, a chamber for the house of representatives in the center, and a court room on the western end. The first floor was one large unheated space, with turned columns to support the upper story. The legislature had voted that "the Parade, so called, by the North meeting-House in Portsmouth...is the most suitable and proper place to set the said House upon." While the building was still empty and unfinished, the house of representatives voted to "illuminate" the structure in celebration of the capture of Quebec. During the second phase of construction in the 1760s, the building was transformed into a symbolic presence in the town and province. The state house was the scene of many public gatherings before and during the Revolution. Grand processions marched from the Parade through the streets, accompanied by the ringing of bells, firing of cannon, and beating of drums when the Stamp Act was repealed and when New Hampshire ratified the federal Constitution. Public proclamations, including the Declaration of Independence and, a few years later, the peace treaty between the United States and Great Britain were read from the state house balcony which faced the Parade. Following the Revolution, slow deterioration rendered the structure "unsightly and inconvenient." In 1834, the Portsmouth town meeting resolved that the building, once the pride of the province, "ought to be removed." Two years later the eastern end of the building, the only fragment to survive, was moved a few blocks away and remodeled as a tenement. It was only after the state house was taken down from the center of the open space called Market Square that the square existed in its present proportions.(4)
In 1712 Portsmouth's earliest congregation divided into the north and south parishes. The group that followed the minister to the new building became the North Congregational Church. The original structure on the Parade "was seventy feet long and three stories high, with two galleries and three tiers of windows set with diamond-shaped glass in leaden sashes. The pulpit occupied the middle of the western side." Although doors were on the north and south sides of the building, the main entrance was on the east, facing the Parade. Later a steeple above a tower mounted with a clock was added. While the state house was being dismantled in 1836, the adjacent religious structure was remodeled and "converted into a respectable looking meeting house of more modern style." During this renovation, the building was reoriented from the east to the north, facing the Athenaeum, and was transformed into a church. At this time, the three entrances were replaced by one entrance on the north side. When the doors to the North Church were altered, the Parade, the area where the militia used to drill that later became Market Square, also shifted and extended from the east to the north. In 1854 the old building was replaced by a new structure. Reflecting an urban design recommended by the Congregational church, the new building was designed by a Boston architectural firm. During the second half of the nineteenth century, frescoes in "trompe l'oeil" were painted in the interior, and a new organ and memorial windows were added. Since the demolition of the Brick Market and the old state house, the most prominent buildings in Market Square have been the 1854 North Church and the Athenaeum.(5)
Designed in 1804 as the headquarters of the New Hampshire Fire and Marine Insurance Company by local architect Bradbury Johnson, who had earlier designed the Brick Market across Market Square, the Athenaeum formed the centerpiece of a curving commercial row constructed after the fire of 1802. The finest craftsmen of the area worked on the building, and the structure became one of the mercantile focal points of the town. When the insurance company went out of business in 1823, it sold the property to the Portsmouth Athenaeum, a private proprietary library, which has continued to occupy all three floors up to the present day. It was designed as a social center for the study of literature, the arts and science, and has collected ancient volumes as well as modern books, paintings and memorabilia of historical association. From early on, the Portsmouth Athenaeum reading room has served as a meeting place for many of the most prominent men and, in recent years, women in town. The 1892 remodeling of the reading room is a well-documented example of a colonial revival redecoration for an historic public space. During the next few years, several of the Athenaeum's historical artifacts were also restored. "The redecoration thus visually linked the Athenaeum's turn-of-the-century proprietors to past heroes, events, and old families."(6)
Economic activity in Portsmouth has shifted over the decades from textile mills during the mid-nineteenth century to brewing in the late-nineteenth century and the Portsmouth naval shipyard since World War I. As the city's industrial development was overshadowed by other manufacturing centers in New England and the population became more diverse, Portsmouth evolved into a destination for genteel tourists seeking an authentic historical environment. Homecoming celebrations imbued with nostalgia naturally led, during the first decades of the twentieth century, to the preservation of the best colonial mansions by the city's leading families. At the same time, the automobile and, later, urban renewal radically altered the traditional character of the old city. Downtown Portsmouth in the 1950s and 1960s was a seedy, blue-collar, industrial city. In their cars, people went through, rather than lingered in, Market Square. Depressed real estate values of urban property were reinforced by locally administered federal programs, as better highway access to and from the city was provided. While shopping malls proliferated on the city's fringes during the 1970s, a plan to revitalize downtown Portsmouth. The beautification project transformed Market Square more than anything since the great fires of the early nineteenth century.
"The 1970s was the foundation for change for the next couple of decades. It was a yeasty, tumultuous time. It was full of accomplishment, and there was intense disagreement about where we were going and what we were becoming. That was both locally and even on a national level."
Looking back, A. Robert Thoresen, director of the Portsmouth Planning Department from 1971 through 1977, sees the 1970s as a watershed decade for Portsmouth. As the visionary city planner, Thoresen was particularly responsible for the revitalization of Market Square and the downtown.(7)
Downtown Portsmouth had a rich, though obscured, architectural vocabulary in 1972. The urban core, as it was being overtaken by the automobile, was increasingly dominated by asphalt, aluminum storefronts and neon signs. Business closures were sapping the vitality out of the downtown economy. Thoresen's concern with "visual pollution" and the desire to improve the aesthetics of this traditional streetscape led him to institute a visual environment program in order to create an integrated development which would enhance "the special character of the downtown area of the City."(8) With funding and sponsorship coming from public and private sources, the Portsmouth Planning Department provided free design assistance to any businessman--the majority of these stores were owned and operated by men--who wanted to consider visual changes to the facade of his establishment or office. A team of experts, including the planning director, an architect, and a local museum director, redesigned some thirty or forty storefronts. At the same time, these visual authorities installed markers at historic sites throughout downtown. With the public-sector as catalyst, individuals in the private-sector were spurred on to invest in storefronts. Serving as a primary vehicle for attitudinal change, the visual environment program thus raised citizens' consciousness about the importance of considering aesthetics in the townscape as a feature of improving the quality of community life. Design experts from the public and private sectors focused attention, through the visual environment, on downtown as the embodiment of a vibrant sense of place.
By 1970 efforts to modify total demolition through federal urban renewal in Portsmouth had resulted in the designation of two neighborhoods in the south and north ends of the city as historic districts. Strawbery Banke Museum, in the old Puddle Dock section, is one of the few outdoor urban history sites in the country. The Hill is an enclave of old houses saved by a private group of newcomers to Portsmouth from the leveling which occurred throughout the North End. Both of these projects reveal conflicting visions for the city as preservation clashed with the twin ideals of clearance and new construction. During the summer and fall of 1974, city officials held extensive discussions on the philosophical and conceptual basis for historic districting in a community, the establishment of additional historic districts, and specific strategies for improving public awareness of historic Portsmouth. Historic districting is a mechanism that designates areas of a city rather than individual historic landmarks for municipal protection. As a grouping of historic buildings, this zoning concept creates an urban streetscape which constitutes a significant community resource.
The crystallizing event in the cultural shift toward the need for historic preservation applied widely throughout the urban core occurred on a Friday in September 1974. That day two banks requested municipal approval for the demolition of buildings in the downtown in order to create parking lots. That weekend city planner A. Robert Thoresen and city attorney Peter Loughlin drafted an historic district ordinance, which was approved by the City Council the following week. The banks took advantage of a legal technicality by tearing down the buildings immediately. In response, Thoresen proposed that the Planning Board form an Ad Hoc Committee on Historic Districting, representing a cross-section of community interests, which would refine his draft of a comprehensive historic district ordinance. Recognizing the city's rich historic fabric, the committee recommended the enactment of a new regulation, based on an architectural review process, which would protect structures in most of the central business district. As it preserved the community's built environment, the committee also sought to devise an ordinance that would encourage economic rejuvenation of the downtown by increasing tourism. In May 1977 the Portsmouth City Council formally approved the committee's comprehensive historic district ordinance, which has played a vital role in the city's planning and development policies. The nascent municipal commitment to historic preservation, evidenced by the visual environment program and the historic district ordinance, gradually fostered heightened resident consciousness of historic resources and participation in the restoration of the downtown. Planning director Thoresen remembers that "the most difficult and tumultuous time was when we had to deal with the issue of historic districting between 1975 and 1977."(9) Underlying this contentious debate was a conflict between newcomers and natives, between those with the financial means and the desire to change the city's old structures back to some historic image and those who preferred to maintain the landscape in which they had grown up as they remembered it. At the same time, the expanded flexibility of federal programs designed to augment the urban development process and the increasing national vogue for rehabilitation and conservation instead of new construction also created an ideal climate for historic preservation.(10)
With a massive financial investment from federal Community Development Block Grants, A. Robert Thoresen implemented his plan to recapture Market Square from the automobile. Local merchants resisted change. Downtown business owners were ambivalent about the proposed changes to Market Square because they were terrified that this transformation would exacerbate the trend toward economic disinvestment. While the planners sought to create a pedestrian town center, automobile-related issues remained of central concern to residents and merchants. Jeremy Waldron, a leading local attorney and one of the originators of Strawbery Banke Museum, compared Portsmouth to nearby Newburyport, Massachusetts, arguing for a study of the traffic flow. Newburyport's Market Square was being preserved and rehabilitated with federal urban renewal funds.(11) The proposed facelift of Portsmouth's downtown, however, sought to avoid the aesthetic uniformity which had occurred with the recent Newburyport project. Instead of the homogenous look created by architects hired to design renovations for all of downtown Newburyport at once, the Portsmouth restoration would involve multiple private actors as well as public funds and leadership. Because the Portsmouth project was initiated and implemented by the public sector, planners were concerned with altering the public aspect of Market Square. Traffic was redirected, brick sidewalks were widened, and street furniture and trees were added.(12)
The designer of the Market Square improvement, Craig Halvorson, a young landscape architect from Boston, identifies Market Square as one of the "terrific town centers of New England." The unique features of Portsmouth, according to Halvorson, are the density of the buildings, narrow streets, and interesting views and vistas. With North Church as the natural focal point, the improvement project sought to create vitality. The restoration would (re-)create a sense of place by emphasizing the character of the town. Rather than planting trees to hide buildings, the design acknowledged the contextual landscape by featuring significant historic structures.(13)
At 7:30 am on Thursday, September 23, 1976, a one-day experiment to translate into three-dimensional form the conceptual plans for the renovation of Market Square took effect. City crews marked off additional pedestrian areas with rubber traffic cones. Because of the expanded pedestrian space in front of North Church and the Athenaeum, three streets would merge into three lanes moving down the square's main thoroughfare. The experiment, according to the local newspaper, was fiercely debated on street corners and in coffee shops. "Most observers of the trial run conceded the downtown core needs some facelifting. How far it should go in an inevitable tradeoff between foot and wheeled traffic and parking space seems more the issue ultimately to be faced." In a shift from its earlier position, the newspaper itself supported the plan. The "experimental mockup...proved, to the satisfaction of many observers anyway, that the various elements making up downtown can be changed and remain compatible."(14) During the fall of 1976 and the spring of 1977, public hearings were held to explore the issue of upgrading and beautifying Market Square to make it a more attractive place to visit and shop.
A young cadre of local politicians and municipal employees--collectively and derisively called "the kiddy corps"--aggressively worked to lead the citizenry toward their progressive vision for the community.(15) Downtown merchants, like former mayor and local Greyhound bus agent Andrew Jarvis, were generally in favor of the proposed improvements to Market Square. While they could not accept some of the specifics of the plan, relating to traffic and parking, they believed some change in the urban core was needed. A few businessmen and residents maintained that the public had not participated nearly enough in the decision-making process. Morris Foye, owner of the building adjacent to the Athenaeum, "said that this plan has been a mystery to everyone except the Planning Department."(16) Worrying publicly over issues such as the potential for unsafe bricks and the problem of handling the luggage of bus passengers, Foye continued his attack on the proposed changes. During the midst of the (re-)construction of Market Square, however, Foye was heard to mutter that August 1977 had been the most successful month in the history of his store.(17) Mildred McLaughlin, another native and business owner, was also opposed to the plan. Rather than seeing a dirty, unattractive, disorganized, auto-centered downtown, McLaughlin argued that Market Square was already vibrant, "a highway of jubilation and life (not gloom and doom), for meeting and coming together with living people from other areas of the city."(18) Both opponents and proponents of the beautification project articulated a vision for Market Square as the center of Portsmouth's vitality. Those who resisted the "improvements" feared that the changes would exacerbate the local economic conditions. Commercial stagnation would develop into widespread economic failure. Many of Portsmouth's 28,000 citizens supported the rejuvenation of Market Square as the heart of the city's cultural and commercial life. Hundreds of residents participated in meetings to discuss the development scheme for the city center as well as to consider long-range goals for downtown. Monika Aring, a newcomer to Portsmouth, noted the symbolic importance of Market Square, saying, "I happen to think it's our outdoor living room."(19)
During the spring of 1978, a group of marketing students from the University of New Hampshire interviewed merchants, employees, pedestrians, and customers to explore the needs and wants of people from the city's downtown. The project was structured around assumptions implicit to the capitalist system. While many of the survey respondents held a negative image of Market Square as a messy place with empty buildings, a large percentage of people thought of Portsmouth as quaint and historical. This suggested, according to the students, that the potential of the downtown lay in its "promoting itself as a non-sterile, more personal type of place than a mall. There is some segment of the community which appreciates the look and sense of tradition that a renovated and attractive looking downtown Portsmouth could offer."(20) Many people gave renovation as their suggestion for improving downtown. A re-developed Market Square would sell itself as the city's symbolic historic core which would provide the consumer with the ultimate satisfying shopping experience.
A year before, another group of scholars had studied public opinion in Portsmouth to explore the various views toward change in the community. One of the major themes of the citizen discussion was the potentially serious gap between the perception about community issues by some advocates of historic preservation and those who regarded preservation as a demand imposed upon the ordinary residents by an elite social element. Although Portsmouth would not be a model of broad citizen participation, the process of exploring community change itself allowed citizens to actively assert and implement their values in the (re-)creation of community. The reconstruction of the past could produce a plastic environment devoid of genuine community, however.(21)
Cautioning against turning the downtown area into a museum, landscape architect Craig Halvorson emphasized that "In none of these schemes [for Market Square] are we trying to do anything cute."(22) He noted that the dignity of the city's architecture led to straightforward designs. In 1977 writer Calvin Trillin travelled down the Atlantic Coast visiting renovated urban downtowns, which he deftly criticized for their bourgeois uniformity. He compared Portsmouth to Portland, Newburyport, and Quincy Market in Boston. While he acknowledged the fortuitous apathy rampant in Portsmouth during the 1950s, Trillin noted that the young, forward-looking city council of the mid-1970s often looked back to the past. "Portsmouth planners hope to retain the town's historic character without becoming cute or overpreserved," Trillin observed. "The fact that the buildings for such an undertaking still exist may be testimony to the ultimate efficacy of lethargy."(23)
Recently scholars have identified historic preservation as a tool used by social elites to create postmodern sites where advanced consumer capitalism flourishes. Political leaders rely on tight planning controls and strict architectural guidelines in order to produce historical representations, such as Boston's Quincy Market and South Street Seaport in New York, that are adapted to the uses of consumer society. These streetscapes are nostalgic leisure experiences through which tourist/shoppers are entertained. Because it is inherently just a representation of the past, these scholars assert, historic preservation creates non-places that thrive as spectacles of consumption and probe the boundaries of reality.(24)
In Portsmouth during the 1970s, local government--through progressive politicians, expert
planners, and architects--altered public policy. Aesthetic changes to the built environment would
be an alternative to the economically stagnant, auto-dominated downtown. Rather than creating
some postmodern site of consumption as scholars would contend, municipal leaders and citizens
shaped a vibrant cityscape in Portsmouth. When the edges of the streets of Market Square were
literally taken, the pedestrian space was widened and emphasized. The historic public meeting
place was recaptured from the automobile. Through the contentious process of physical
transformation, historic preservation became the pervasive ethic in the community's identity.
Change in the urban core meant not re-creation or even re-use but rather restoration of old
architecture, streetscapes and functions. Today, Market Square's original dual use continues.
Shopping coincides and co-exists with lively public meetings and roaring motorcycles. In this era
of privatized and commodified public space, community in Portsmouth is still based on
locality.(25)Market Square reifies the community's historical consciousness.
ENDNOTES
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.