Portsmouth, Mass

Portsmouth, Mass
We spent the morning going around Portsmouth and had a great time. As we were walking the quaint old brick and cobblestone streets we came upon an elder hostel group tour and tagged along into the Athenaeum which was an old men’s club (mainly for ship captains and merchants of the town). This was three or four stories high and was a sort of library and social gathering place for the wealthy of the town.
Then we walked around the harbor and the old shops and buildings.
Once a thriving ship building port and still the home of a submarine base it was the hub used for the US Navy for many years. The town is bisected by rivers and you are constantly going over bridges to go from one area to the next. Like all towns it to had it’s great fires and that is why most of the present old buildings are of brick. That and the fact that many of the ships offloaded here and then took on bricks for ballast and left ballast here in the form of bricks. So brick making was very important to the commerce of any of the old port cities.
We next went on to Salem.
1 Portsmouth
2 Downstairs in the Athaeneum
3 Love is only One Way
4 Upstairs in the Antheaneum
5 A street scene