1 21 2 https://portsmouthexhibits.org/files/original/a0787a4aaba1e80a83fd28ae6285ca4f.mp4 ca417daf2873ed95128ccfd3cffd10db https://portsmouthexhibits.org/files/original/072f3a4727ad82e2255878e94b6cf169.JPG 4327f8e91683749c2bff3c2f63a2478d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cold War Portsmouth Subject The topic of the resource Cold War Portsmouth (N.H.) 1950s Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (U.S.) Pease Air Force Base Description An account of the resource The Cold War was a 45-year standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. In the years following WWII, the US and the USSR began building and testing atomic weapons and the threat of nuclear annihilation was never far from anyone’s mind. Thus began a nuclear stalemate that would last until the 1990s. <br /><br />Arguably, it was the 1950s that experienced the strongest impact of the standoff. America had just survived WWII and now had to watch an arms race escalate on their tv sets. Bomb shelters were built and school children practiced attack drills. Films turned atomically mutated creatures into horrifying monsters while the public vilified Hollywood actors accused of being communists. And the space race began. It was in 1957 that Sputnik was launched by the Russians and the US followed suit one year later with Explorer I and President Eisenhower signing a public order that created NASA. <br /><br />The major events that were happening on the global stage catalyzed change in Portsmouth. The 1950s were a time of rapid growth as the Seacoast Region was transformed by military expansion. <br /><br />Pease Air Force Base was built to house bomber jets capable of delivering nuclear bombs to the Soviet Union, and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard transitioned to the production of nuclear-powered, fully submersible submarines. Between 1950 and 1960, Portsmouth’s population increased by about 8,600 people to reach 26,900, which was larger than the current population of around 22,000. This era saw the birth of the “Baby Boomers” when World War II veterans had growing families. Transportation, mobility, and popular culture were transformed, and the vintage style now known as “Mid-century Modern” was new. Housing developments of colonial capes and ranch houses were built at the outer edges of the city. Highways bypassed the downtown to move an increasing number of automobiles on the roads. Businesses flourished and began to move out of town as well. <br /><br />This collection serves as historical documentation of Portsmouth's economic, social, and cultural life during the Cold War period. Historical photos and citizens' recollections were used to capture a snapshot of what life was like in Portsmouth during the Cold War - from where people lived, shopped, and ate to urban renewal and other social and cultural aspects of daily life. <br /><br />The items in this collection were created by Preservation Company (Kensington, NH) in collaboration with the City of Portsmouth's Community Development Department and the NH Division of Historic Resources as part of an agreement when the federal Paul A. Doble Army Reserve Center was transferred to the City for its adaptation and reuse as the new Senior Activity Center. <span>This historic and photo documentation mitigation effort was funded with Portsmouth Community Development Block Grant Funds.</span><br /><br />On May 18th, Portsmouth Public Library hosted a program in conjunction with Portsmouth's Community Development. The program included a screening of the Cold War video included in this collection, along with recollections shared by former and current Portsmouth citizens about life during the 1950s. You can view the recording of this program on the library's <a href="https://youtu.be/RHs81R8v6so" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">YouTube channel</a>. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource City of Portsmouth and Preservation Company Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Cold War Portsmouth Collection Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Portsmouth Public Library, Special Collections Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource © 2020, Materials prepared by Preservation Company for the City of Portsmouth, All rights reserved by the City of Portsmouth. View our <a href="https://portsmouthexhibits.org/copyright-information" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Terms of Use and Copyright Information</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF MP4 Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text MovingImage Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Metadata and Omeka entry by K. Czajkowski, May 2021 Moving Image A series of visual representations that, when shown in succession, impart an impression of motion. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 15 m 35 s Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cold War Portsmouth: A Snapshot of Life in the 1950s Video Subject The topic of the resource Cold War Portsmouth (N.H.) 1950s Pease Air Force Base Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Description An account of the resource This 16-minute video provides an overview of what life was like in Portsmouth, New Hampshire during the 1950s. The video was produced by Preservation Company for the City of Portsmouth in collaboration with the New Hampshire Division of Historic Resources and funded with Portsmouth Community Development Block Grant funds.<br /><br />Sources for the video include the Portsmouth Athenaeum, Strawbery Banke Museum, Portsmouth Public Library, and interviews with Sherm Pridham, Ted Connors, Valerie Cunningham, Sarah Bodge, Kevin MacLeod, S. Lorraine Boston, and Harold Whitehouse, Jr. <br /><br />This video is also available on the City of Portsmouth, New Hampshire's YouTube channel: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44THcW2Lh2s" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44THcW2Lh2s</a> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource City of Portsmouth and Preservation Company Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Portsmouth Public Library, Special Collections Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Community Development, City of Portsmouth Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource © 2020, Materials prepared by Preservation Company for the City of Portsmouth, All rights reserved by the City of Portsmouth View our <a href="https://portsmouthexhibits.org/copyright-information" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Terms of Use and Copyright Information</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP4 Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource MovingImage https://portsmouthexhibits.org/files/original/2c51124e27092e94685ebd2b22b2cb66.pdf bcba5f4ac71f021d4285b0269865d13d PDF Text Text Cold War Portsmouth – A Snapshot of Life in the 1950s Market Square as it appeared in the early ‘50s 2020 This photo reference book was created through an agreement between the NH State Historic Preservation Office and the City of Portsmouth as a result of the Paul A. Doble Army Reserve Center federal property transfer to the City for the City’s adaptive reuse as the Portsmouth Senior Activity Center. This effort was funded and managed by the City of Portsmouth’s Community Development Department (Community Development Block Grant) in partnership with the NH Division of Historic Resources. �Portsmouth NH Enters the Cold War What Happened? ..................................................................................... 2 Where Did We Work? ............................................................................ 5 Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Pease Air Force Base, Jobs and Professions, Industries, Portsmouth Harbor Waterfront And What Did We Do? ......................................................................... 14 Military Jobs, Military Service, US Army Reserves, National Guard, Ground Observer Corps, Public Safety Jobs, Downtown Businesses Who Were We? ....................................................................................... 19 Where Did We Live? ............................................................................. 21 Neighborhoods, Suburban Subdivisions, Portsmouth Housing Authority, Base Housing Where Did We Learn? ........................................................................... 29 How Did We Worship? ......................................................................... 32 Where Did We Shop? ............................................................................ 33 What Did We Do For Fun? ................................................................... 37 Dining Out, Recreation, Movies, Home Entertainment How Did We Get There?....................................................................... 48 Private Transportation: Highways, Cars – What Did We Drive?, Public Transportation, Parking, Tourism and Roadside Businesses Urban Renewal – What Did We Save and What Did We Lose? ..... 57 Aerial view from a postcard mailed in 1956 (Portsmouth Public Library postcard collection) Puddle Dock to Strawbery Banke, Phase II - The North End What Happened Next?.......................................................................... 61 Timeline................................................................................................... 63 Bibliography ........................................................................................... 66 © 2020, Materials prepared by Preservation Company for the City of Portsmouth, All rights reserved by the City of Portsmouth. ��What Happened? Portsmouth as we know it today came into being during the Cold War, a forty-year period of international tension and threat of nuclear war. The 1950s were a time of rapid change and growth as the Seacoast Region was transformed by military expansion. Pease Air Force Base was built to house bomber jets capable of delivering nuclear bombs to the Soviet Union, and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard transitioned to production of nuclear powered, fully submersible submarines. 1956 USGS map shows newly built highways and housing developments, with the new Air Force base left blank for reasons of national security Between 1950 and 1960, Portsmouth’s population increased by about 8,600 people to reach 26,900, which was larger than the current population of around 22,000. This era saw the birth of the “Baby Boomers” when World War II veterans had growing families. Transportation, mobility, and popular culture were transformed, and the vintage style now known as “Mid-century Modern” was new. Housing developments of colonial capes and ranch houses were built at the outer edges of the city. Highways bypassed the downtown to move increasing number of automobiles on the roads. Businesses flourished and began to move out of town as well. Page 2 �The Cold War was a state of political hostility between the U.S. and its Western allies and the U.S.S.R. and Soviet bloc countries, involving threats, propaganda, economic sanctions, and other measures short of open warfare. It began after WWII in the late 1940s and continued until the dissolution of the Soviet Union around 1990. The United States adopted a policy of containment and pledged assistance to any nation threatened by communism. The nuclear bomb, first deployed by the US against Japan in 1945, became the focus of the Arms Race. After the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in August 1949, both sides sought increasingly powerful weapons. National Security relied on air power and nuclear bombs for a threat of massive retaliation to deter the Soviet Union from using its own weapons. Although both sides did all they could to avoid an actual direct or “hot war” between them, for a time it seemed like the question was not if a real nuclear war would happen, but when. Page 3 As it had in World War II, when 32 submarines were launched in a single year, the Portsmouth area played a key role in national defense during the Cold War. The Air Force was key to delivering the bombs during this period before the Navy had nuclear missile carrying subs, and military strategy relied on air bases spread throughout the country. In 1951, plans for a base in Portsmouth were announced. News of Communist threat stops passersby in front of the Herald office The 300-acre local airport had been on Congress Street (Portsmouth Athenaeum) used as a military air base since World War II, and was surrounded by large tracts of sparsely populated, flat, open farmland near the Portsmouth and Newington line. The location was ideal because it had access by road, rail, and water. The Portsmouth air base was activated January 1, 1956, bringing Portsmouth a sharp rise in population and a shift in demographics. �Much has been written about Portsmouth during the Cold War and the role of its military bases. There is almost limitless historical information for research in the many published local histories and articles about Portsmouth, city directories, newspapers, pamphlets and magazines, school yearbooks and city annual reports, to name some of the sources that can be found online and in local libraries. Historic photographs and postcards illustrate the period. The Portsmouth Public Library, Strawbery Banke Museum, and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Historical Foundation have collections, and the Portsmouth Athenaeum has thousands of images by professional photographer Douglas Armsden and others. Some lifelong Portsmouth residents can still recall what life was like then. This snapshot of Portsmouth as it entered the Cold War in the 1950s attempts to capture the way we were and how things changed. “The coming of the Air Force Base was one of the most important events in recent history of Portsmouth because it changed everything so dramatically.” ~Sherm Pridham, longtime Portsmouth resident and Public Library director Graphic from the 1956 City of Portsmouth Annual Report The opening ceremonies on June 30, 1956 drew quite a crowd (National Archives) Page 4 �Where Did We Work? The US government was by far the largest employer in the region. By the late 1950s the Naval Shipyard and Air Force base each “Ten years after the war, Portsmouth was still a sub town, still a employed upwards of 7,000 people, both military personnel and Navy town, still a blue-collar town.” –Ted Connors, longtime civilians. Other businesses grew to meet demands of the expanding resident and Portsmouth mayor, 1964-67 population. Pay was not much different from today when adjusted for inflation. The federal minimum wage increased from 75¢ an hour to $1, worth about $8.50 in today’s dollars. Changes in the economy and the make-up of the population meant that the median family income in Portsmouth nearly doubled in one decade, from just under $2,200 a year (now worth about $20,000), which was below the national average, to over $5,700 ($49,000), which was just above average for the time. Portsmouth Naval Shipyard The shipyard was the largest single industry north of Boston at the end of World War II in 1945. Tens of thousands of people relied on it for a paycheck. Some families had three generations working at the yard, and many were “lifers.” Local and state businesspeople and politicians went to Washington, DC and successfully lobbied to keep the shipyard open after it was threatened with closure at the end of the war. Working in the Shipyard offices in 1951 (The Portsmouth Periscope, courtesy of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Historical Foundation) Page 5 Crane work at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard illustrated in The Portsmouth Periscope, 1951 (Courtesy of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Historical Foundation) �During the 1950s, the naval shipyard employed between 7,000-10,000 people depending on government contracts. Roughly half of them were from New Hampshire, including Portsmouth and surrounding towns. The rest lived in the Kittery area or commuted from Massachusetts. All stages of design and construction were done on base from start to finish. Jobs included engineer, draftsman, patternmaker, electrician, welder, pipe fitter, coppersmith, shipfitter, rigger, caulker, machinist, fireman, painter, and clerk. Women worked mainly in the shipyard offices. The submarine fleet was near full capacity after wartime build-up, so the focus shifted to service and repairs. One or two new subs were completed each year until the 1960s. The USS Albacore submarine, launched into the Piscataqua in 1953, is a well-known Portsmouth landmark now on dry land and open to the public as a museum. The Albacore was a prototype for modern submarines, with its cylindrical, teardrop-shaped hull, and was the first fully submersible sub, capable of operating entirely underwater. Construction took nearly three years and cost $20 million. 1955 and 1956 saw the completion of the Sailfish and the Salmon submarines. Both were conventionally powered submarines that ran on diesel fuel when on the surface and battery-powered electric motors when submerged. Longer distances under water were made possible by the advent of nuclear power in the 1950s. The first nuclear submarine built at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard was the Swordfish, launched in 1958. It was followed by the Seadragon, and, in 1960, the Thresher that became famous when it tragically sank during a test-dive three years later. When vessels were at the yard for repairs, their crews were on base in Kittery sometimes for months at a time, so sailors on shore leave were a common sight in downtown Portsmouth. “In uniform you was catered to and you was treated like gold.” “Downtown was loaded on a Friday and Saturday night with military.” ~Harold Whitehouse, Jr., Navy veteran and shipyard worker Shipyard work in 1957 (The Portsmouth Periscope, courtesy of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Historical Foundation) Page 6 �The Portsmouth Periscope spread for Armed Forces Day 1950 (Courtesy of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Historical Foundation) Page 7 �Pease Air Force Base Construction of the air base required a vast amount of resources. The campus itself encompassed 1,577 acres in Portsmouth and 2,680 acres in Newington. Land acquisition and the relocation of eighty families began in 1952. There was local controversy over the project; Newington residents were generally against it, but Portsmouth was more in favor because only about a half-dozen homes were lost, and the government built a new country club to replace the golf course it took over. The official groundbreaking took place on July 3, 1954 and the Strategic Air Command (SAC) base was activated two years later. In 1957, Pease Air Force Base was named for New Hampshire airman Captain Harl Pease, Jr., who died in World War II and received a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor. Map of Pease Air Force Base (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Contractors and laborers from throughout the region worked on the project, beginning with clearing and site work in 1952. The Army Corps of Engineers oversaw construction, and five different architectural firms were involved in designs. By the end of 1955, the base was functionally complete with shops, communications and administration buildings, dormitories and officers’ quarters, a sewage treatment plant, warehouses and a fire and crash station. Family housing and other services were added over the next several years. The runway at Pease covered 900 acres and was three miles long, straddling the Newington-Portsmouth line (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 8 �Today, most of the old buildings have been replaced by the Pease Development Authority, but the hanger, runway, taxiways and aprons of Pease International Airport and the interconnecting streets remain, as well as the Air National Guard facility. Rising above them, the landmark water tower dates from 1957. Work force at Pease included both civilian and enlisted personnel (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) 1954 Groundbreaking - Souvenir Program (Courtesy of Portsmouth Public Library) Military Police and press at the opening ceremony in 1956 (National Archives) Page 9 �A total of 1,050 officers, 5,650 enlisted personnel, and about 300 civilian employees worked at Pease by the end of the decade. A combat-ready force capable of long-range bombardment and nuclear strikes was the first line in the strategic nuclear deterrent. The jet bombers based at Pease were Boeing B-47 Stratojets, long-range strategic bombers capable of flying at high speed and altitude, with a four-man crew. There were some twenty-eight wings of B-47 bombers on bases spread out across the country. The 100th Bombardment Wing stationed in Portsmouth was initially comprised of three squadrons of fifteen aircraft each, a tactical hospital, and six support squadrons. The 100th Refueling Squadron had eighteen Boeing K-97 Stratojet tankers. In 1958, the 509th 100th patch 509th patch Bombardment Wing, which had been formed in 1944 with the mission of dropping the Atomic bomb on Japan, was transferred to Pease from New Mexico. This brought the total aircraft on the base to 125. In 1959 each wing gained a fourth squadron, and Pease was home to ninety B-47 bombers and forty tanker aircraft. The mission was to perform global strategic bombardment training and refueling missions. One third of the aircraft were on alert at any one time, fueled and armed. The squadrons never saw combat, but there were casualties in several crashes during training. The impact was felt all the way downtown when a jet crashed on takeoff killing four men one April night in 1958. Servicing a K-97 Stratotanker (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) The front gate of Pease Air Force Base now the entrance to the Pease Tradeport was guarded 24/7 (1957 City Annual Report) Page 10 �Jobs and Professions City directories recorded the employment of every working Portsmouth resident and show that outside the military bases, people worked at a full range of jobs in the community. As of 1950, nearly all people worked locally, and local positions were held by residents. Few people commuted farther than the shipyard in Kittery, though some drove to factories in places like Dover and Exeter or to the University of New Hampshire in Durham. Transportation jobs included highway patrolman, toll collector, car dealer, gas station attendant, mechanic, truck driver, bus driver, cab driver and highway worker, as well as railroad worker and conductor. Builders, architects, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and painters were local all lived in town. Downtown businesses employed storekeepers and clerks, grocers, bakers, butchers, fish and lobster dealers and restaurant cooks. According to directory listings the doctors, dentists, pharmacists, insurance agents and even the local radio announcers were local. The population census reported as many as a quarter of married women worked outside the home, as nurse, bookkeeper, waitress, teacher, bank teller, librarian, stenographer, telephone operator, store clerk or shoe factory worker. Of the thirty or so physicians listed in the city directory in the 1950s, only one was a woman. Many local teenagers had afternoon and weekend jobs as soon as they were old enough. The wartime practice of ending the high school day at 1:00 pm continued for some time. Page 11 When milk and dairy products were home delivered, Badger Farms had hundreds of milk trucks and routes throughout the region. The Portsmouth creamery was on Bow Street across from the Seacoast Repertory Theatre (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) �Industries Factories had always been located along the railroad corridor and Islington Street, and it wasn’t until the mid-1960s that businesses relocated to new industrial parks on the outskirts of town, such as along Banfield Road. The railroad tracks south of the North Mill Pond were the site of lumberyards, freight houses, and the Portsmouth Foundry. As the Morley Company transitioned to new products, sections of the Button Factory on Islington Street were sold off for new uses. The New Hampshire Technical Institute, founded as a post-war training program for veterans, was located there for a time. (1964 City Annual Report) The Continental Shoe factory where many residents worked is now a brick storage building on the corner of McDonough and Cabot streets. One of the first businesses in the Lafayette Road/Banfield Road area was the gravel pit of the Iafolla Construction Company on Peverly Hill Road (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) The Frank Jones Brewery, much reduced in size, shut down in 1950, and the old buildings became warehouses and garages. They have just recently been rehabilitated into apartments, shops and restaurants on Brewery Lane. Page 12 �Portsmouth Harbor The Piscataqua shoreline has been an active port since the seventeenth century. Walker’s coal wharf stood at the northern edge of Prescott Park near Memorial Bridge and remained in business even after suffering the loss of its “coal pocket” storage structure in a massive fire in 1951. At the time, there were six coal dealers in the city, and many homes and businesses were still heated with coal. The coal-burning Portsmouth Power Station at the end of Daniel Street, now 1 Harbor Place, was run by Public Service Company of New Hampshire during this period, and the Schiller Station, built in 1949 just upriver on the Newington line, was also coal-fired. The oil “tank farms” along the river stored heating oil, gasoline, and then jet fuel for Pease. Other shipments received in the harbor were gypsum ore for the National Gypsum Company, the gypsum wall board factory below the I95 bridge on Freeman’s Point. Outgoing cargo included rolls of wire and cable produced just upriver in Newington at the Simplex plant, more recently Tyco International. Beginning in 1953, as many as 500 people worked there making cable for the first trans-Atlantic telephone system that was laid in 1955-56, replacing radio and telegraph for long distance communication. The Portsmouth scrap metal pile dominated the Piscataqua shoreline from 1957 until 2014. Ships carried the scrap collected there to steel factories across the globe for recycling. The increasing numbers of cars on the road and modern appliances in homes meant there was a growing supply of scrap metal. Since the war years, the Puddle Dock area, now the site of Strawbery Banke Museum, had been known for its junkyards, which may have been considered eyesores but contained a valuable commodity since recycling was an important part of the wartime economy. The interstate highways built during this period required ice-free conditions, and Granite State Minerals opened on the former Consolidated Coal Company wharf on Market Street in 1959 to store and ship large piles of salt. The New Hampshire Port Authority was created in the 1950s to improve the harbor and docking facilities. Tugboats played a critical role in piloting increasingly larger ships up the river. One of the Piscataqua’s iconic tugboats passes the National Gypsum plant and the Port of New Hampshire. The I-95 bridge, missing in the background of this view, was still over a decade in the future (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 13 �And What Did We Do? Military Jobs Military Service Military service was very much a part of life in this period when many had recently returned from war and other families had suffered casualties. The draft was still in place to fill vacancies not filled by volunteer enlistees. Young men finishing high school were faced with a choice. The Selective Service Act meant that they could be drafted unless enrolled in college or a training programs or working in a defense manufacturing job like at the shipyard. Volunteers could choose the branch they wished to serve, but if drafted, the choice was four years in the Army, with up to two years active duty, or six in the Army Reserves. Nationwide during the Korean War, 1950-53, 1.3 million men volunteered and another 1.5 million were drafted. US Army Reserves The newly remodeled Portsmouth Senior Center on Cottage Street was once the Paul A. Doble US Army Reserve Center, built in 1958. Many new facilities were built after the Reserve Forces Act of 1955 proposed nearly doubling the size of reserve forces trained to rapidly deploy in support of regular army ranks in times of conflict. Standard designs included training space, classrooms, and labs for about 300 reservists. The New York firm that designed the buildings used Modernist designs intended to be friendly and approachable. Construction of the Doble Reserve Center, named for a Portsmouth serviceman killed in France in 1944, was authorized in 1956 and cost $275,000. It served an infantry regiment, public information detachment, finance disbursement section, and chemical and ordnance companies. Military Parade on Pleasant Street in 1952 (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum). Portsmouth was a military town through and through, and servicemen in uniforms often received specials and discounts at local restaurants and stores to show appreciation. Page 14 �National Guard The US Army National Guard, with its dual mission to serve both state and federal governments, has been located in the Portsmouth Readiness Center on McGee Drive since 1958. That building replaced the long-time armory that stood on Parrott Street, which was the Portsmouth Recreation Center from 1963 until 2006 when it was taken down for the new library. Federal funding for Cold War armories like Portsmouth’s was authorized by the National Defense Facilities Act of 1949, since larger buildings and grounds were needed for weekend training and assemblies of companies that had doubled in size. The Portsmouth Readiness Center was home to Battery C 197th Field Artillery, re-designated in 1959 as Headquarters Battalion, 3rd Howitzer Battalion, 197th Artillery Regiment. Ground Observer Corps WWII veterans of a North end family, 1961 (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 15 Before modern radar stations were in place in the late 50s, human observers were key to spotting enemy aircraft. From 1952 to 1958, Operation Skywatch of the US Air Force Civil Defense Service involved volunteers of all ages at coastal observation posts. Training to identify commercial and military aircraft included the use of scale models, which launched a popular hobby craze. By 1953 as many as 475 people were involved in the local program. Two posts, one in Rye and one at the Portsmouth Plains, were manned 12 hours a day, but no enemy plane was ever spotted. �Public Safety Jobs In 1952, the Portsmouth Police Station in the old county jail on Penhallow Street was remodeled, and eight new patrolmen were hired to help with increasing traffic. The police station served as an Air Raid Warning Relay Station. Duck and Cover Drills were promoted by President Truman’s Federal Civil Defense Administration Program and were performed at the elementary schools. Most people, however, initially knew little about what the actual results of a nuclear attack would be. The fire department had about twenty regulars and 30-45 “call men” during this period. The first two-way radio Trucks of the Central Fire Station on Court Street system had been installed on display in the 1953 City Annual Report in 1948. A new 750-gallon pumper truck was purchased by the City in 1950, and a triple combination pumper in 1956. Fire and ambulance answered about 1,100-1,200 calls a year during this period, compared to around 4,500 requests for services now. A major fire in 1956 destroyed the top two floors of the Jarvis Block (17-27 Congress Street). Pease Air Force Base had its own police department and a fire station that is still active, recently renovated by the city in 2018. A new ambulance with an emergency generator cost $6,500 in 1954. Portsmouth Hospital was built in 1962-64 as an addition to the Cottage Hospital complex that now houses Portsmouth’s City Hall. It had three operating rooms, two delivery rooms and one hundred beds. City Hall during this period was located on Daniel Street in what was previously the nineteenth-century high school building. Air Raid Instructions from the 1961 Portsmouth City Directory Page 16 �mayor in 1952-55, who was in the real estate and insurance business with his brothers. The first medical buildings for doctors and dentists were built as they abandoned home offices and house calls. Banks needed parking, so new lots were built on blocks newly cleared of old buildings, such as the Portsmouth Savings Bank (presently TD Bank) on State Street, a brick Colonial Revival style building erected in 1953. A few years later a much more modern-looking First National Bank was built next door. Market Square in 1955 (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) The old Customs House on Pleasant Street held the Portsmouth Post Office, as well as the Navy and Air Force recruiting offices, until the McIntyre Federal Building opened in 1967. The Rockingham County Courthouse was on State Street until 1967, when it was demolished to make a parking lot, after the county offices were relocated. As Downtown Portsmouth strove to keep up with the modern times, several mid-century business blocks were erected on the sites of nineteenth-century buildings. The former IRS building at 600 State was built in 1952. The block at 220-226 State Street, built ca. 1954, housed the telephone company, Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce, and several law firms. The Hobbs Building, 161-165 Court Street, was designed by local architect Lucien Geoffrion and built by E.L. Paterson for the Hobbs Insurance Company. The real estate business boomed, and with increased automobile and home ownership came the need for more insurance agents, like Theodore R. Butler, The Portsmouth Herald newspaper offices (from Seacoastonline.com) Page 17 �Downtown Busines District Middle class families moved toward the suburbs in the 1950s, but they still worked and conducted business downtown. Professional offices and banks were concentrated around Market Square and on Congress and State streets. The Portsmouth Herald was in the Hartford Building, 82-86 Congress Street, during this period. It was run by Justin D. Hartford, a former Naval aviator who returned to Portsmouth in 1938 to take over for his father, Fernando W. Hartford. First National Bank on State Street was one of the new modern buildings constructed in the 1950s (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) 1957 Chamber of Commerce advertisement from the Portsmouth City Directory Page 18 �Who Were We? Portsmouth’s population grew during the World War II years and continued in the 1950s. It was New Hampshire’s fourth largest city at the time, compared to seventh largest in 2020. Most of the population growth was due to the new air base. The coming of the Air Force brought greater diversity and mobility. The students at the junior and senior high schools felt the change the most due to the influx of new transfers as the families of officers and airmen were transferred to and from Pease from all over the country. Portsmouth’s population had long included a mix of immigrant groups, mostly European. There were established families that had come in the nineteenth century, and new arrivals continued in the early twentieth, with wartime workers moving to town during World War II. The 1950 census reported over 1,600 residents who were foreign-born. They were Irish, English, Scottish, French Canadian, Italian, and Greek, as well as Children pose on the steps of the North Church Parish House on Middle Street in 1958 (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Russian Jews, Poles, and other Eastern Europeans. There were ten immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America and thirty-one from Asia. From 8.5% of the population in 1950, the number of foreign-born residents shrank to 6.5% in 1960, but 17.4% had a foreign-born parent. Many immigrants became twentiethcentury business owners and leaders. 1950 Wedding group in the North End (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 19 �Portsmouth had long had a larger Black community than any other New Hampshire city. The census of 1950 identified 1.1% of Portsmouth’s population as “non-white,” far more than other cities at around 0.3%. The 1960 census was the first with racial “selfidentification,” when people were asked, rather than classified by the census taker. 4.5% of Portsmouth residents were nonwhite and included about 1,000 Blacks and 150 others. Kids from the Haven School neighborhood in 1952 (Courtesy of Portsmouth Public Library) (Portsmouth Public Library) Portsmouth’s age and history as a working port city produced a mix of families from all backgrounds scattered over several neighborhoods, so there was no one area where minorities lived. Segregation was not explicit as it was in the South, but many still felt an undercurrent of racism, and some businesses were segregated. North End family in their living room, 1958 (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) From local interest in the Civil Rights Movement, a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) formed in January 1958. Meetings were held at the home of founding president Thomas Cobbs in the North End. The group addressed local concerns over discrimination and contributed to efforts to enforce Civil Rights voting laws in the South. After the Rockingham Hotel was integrated, meetings were held there. In the 1960s, the Seacoast Council on Religion and Race (SCORR), formed by people from various churches in the region, held events to inform area residents about the racial crisis in the South and raised money to aid Dr. King’s work. The number of long-time local families with roots in the Colonial period that were still in town was relatively small, though names like Langdon, Wentworth, Cutts, Ladd, Pickering and others were represented. Most residents were New Hampshire-born, but there had been a major influx of people from throughout New England during the wartime boom. Statistics about mobility during the post-World War II period are telling. In 1950, 84.6% of the population reported living in the same house as in 1940. By 1960, fully a third had moved into their current home within the past two years, and fewer than half were New Hampshire natives. Page 20 �Where Did We Live? Neighborhoods Portsmouth residential neighborhoods at the beginning of the 1950s had been relatively unchanged for decades, aside from the several wartime housing developments. A large proportion of homes were rented; just over half were owneroccupied according to the population census. “The neighborhoods were key to what was going on in Portsmouth, and involvement and closeness was just accepted, the part of how things worked.” ~Sherm Pridham The oldest neighborhoods, just to the north and south of the downtown, were home to working class families, including some of the most recently arrived immigrant groups. The eighteenth and early nineteenth century houses had been divided into duplexes and apartments, and there were more than twenty-five rooming and boarding houses. Marcy Street at Gardner, looking north, in the 1950s (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 21 South of downtown near the waterfront, the “Puddle Dock” neighborhood, now represented in Strawbery Banke Museum, was a close-knit, ethnically diverse, blue-collar neighborhood until relocated from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century buildings by urban renewal in the early 1960s. The residents were a mix of first and second-generation immigrant families from Ireland, Canada, Italy, Poland, and Russia. Black families lived in Puddle Dock and elsewhere; there was no discrete Black neighborhood. Jewish families had settled in the area in the early 1900s. Many of the old wooden buildings were owned by absentee landlords who did minimal maintenance to keep their taxes down, and local businesses included several junkyards with piles of scrap metal. This was the first area selected for urban renewal, and it was officially designated as “blighted” by a federal study in 1955, beginning years of deliberation over what was to become of the neighborhood. �There were small “mom and pop” stores in all neighborhoods, in houses or small commercial buildings. The Abbott Store at Strawbery Banke Museum depicts one of these during the World War II years, just before Mrs. Abbott retired in 1950. It was one of several shops in the Puddle Dock neighborhood. In the North End were Paola’s and Paganelli’s Italian markets. Some small neighborhood shops remain today, like the Middle Street Market (once the Pennywise Supermarket), the nearby Bread Box, and the Cabot Street Market. The South End, along the riverfront on either side of the South Mill Pond, is now Portsmouth’s oldest intact neighborhood with closely spaced houses from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From the boat docks on the shore, the Marconi family has been lobstering since Marcy Street at Charles Street in the South End, 1955 (Portsmouth Housing Authority Study) the 1930s, and Sanders Lobster Company dates from the 1950s. A waterfront location was much less desirable than it is now, and one reason was because of the terrible low tide odor in those days before sewage treatment, when garbage was often thrown in the water to be taken out with the tide (and enjoyed by the local rats). There is almost nothing left of the North End due to urban renewal clearing north of Hanover Street in the early 1970s. This was Portsmouth’s “Little Italy,” as the population was about 90% Italian, although it was truly a melting pot with families of Greek, Russian, Polish, French-Canadian, Chinese, and African American origins as well. In the 1950s, the area was similar in density and scale to the surviving South End and Puddle Dock, with closely spaced buildings and mixed uses. The wooden buildings, many dating back to the eighteenth century, were characterized by cheap asphalt shingle or asbestos siding. North End buildings shown here just before demolition in 1970 had seen few changes since the 1950s (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 22 �The West End along Islington and McDonough streets near the industrial and railroad corridor had a mix of single and multi-family homes, mostly built in the nineteenth century. Across the North Mill Pond, the large, later nineteenth-century Creek Neighborhood was connected via Bartlett Street and had families of Irish, English, and Canadian origins in single-family homes. The largest and most recently built homes were west and south of the downtown, where streets had developed along the early 1900s streetcar lines. Large Victorian and Colonial Revival single-family homes concentrated on Middle Street were owned by the families of local businesspeople and professionals. Some of the wealthiest local families also had summer cottages in places like Rye and Kittery Point. “The Lafayette School was considered the rich part of the city – people who lived in Lafayette were rich!” ~Harold Whitehouse, Jr. North End neighborhood, looking south, showing houses along Maplewood Avenue, Raynes Avenue, and Vaughn Street that were demolished in the 1970s. Industrial buildings had already replaced earlier houses along Vaughn Street, at upper left. (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 23 �Suburban Subdivisions The first suburban neighborhoods were built during wartime to house the families of shipyard workers. The homes built in Pannaway Manor by the Defense Homes Corporation were sold to World War II veterans and others for around $5,000, though Black families were excluded by restrictions in the original deeds. Atlantic Heights, developed in 1918, had privately-owned small homes since the 1920s and included many rental properties. Wentworth Acres, later Mariner’s Village and now Osprey Landing, had 800 apartments, rented to New Ranch houses in Elwyn Park (1955 City Annual Report) qualified married servicemen and veterans. These locations were more isolated than today because Market Street extension wasn’t built until the 1970s, and they had their own neighborhood stores, shops, and schools. Portsmouth still had a housing shortage, as returning service members were eager to establish new families. When the air base was proposed, the shipyard commandant requested the region be designated as “Critical” due to the shortage of housing that would occur. At the same time, housing construction was spurred by federal legislation including the G.I. Bill and Federal Housing Act by which veterans were eligible for guaranteed, lowcost loans. Furniture display at Margeson’s department store downtown showed the contemporary midcentury style of interior decoration, 1956 (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) In 1948, Portsmouth had issued building permits for seventy-five new houses. Twenty-nine property owners constructed new garages for their automobiles. During the next decade, each year saw construction of between thirty and seventy new homes, plus 1954 furniture ad from The Portsmouth Herald Page 24 �twenty to forty garages. Portsmouth appointed its first permanent City Planner to manage the growth in 1953. Whole new neighborhoods were built on the outskirts of the city. The developers were mostly Portsmouth businesspeople and contractors who bought up tracts of land and laid out curvilinear streets and cul-de-sacs. Minimum setbacks, lot size, and square footage were designed to meet Federal Housing Authority requirements, and the deeds allowed only single-family homes with a garage for two cars. There were no deed restrictions on who could own a home. The largest new neighborhood, Elwyn Park, was laid out in a series of connecting subdivisions between 1946 and 1960, for a total of 368 house lots on streets named for all the US Presidents (whose names weren’t already in use). The initial developer was John Golter, builder of the “Golterville” neighborhood near Pannaway Manor. Erminio A. Ricci, an Italian from Portsmouth’s North End, continued the project. He was a mason by trade and started a building supply company near the railroad tracks that continues today as Ricci Lumber and Ace Hardware Store. The earliest houses were capes, followed by ranches and then split-levels as construction continued into the 1970s. Aerial view looking north on Route 1, with the Elwyn Park neighborhood at right (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Maple Haven off Ocean Road near Route 1 was built 1954-60 by contractor Joseph Lamothe of Rye. The three-bedroom homes there sold for $13,800 and up (1955 City Annual Report) Page 25 Portsmouth followed national trends, with wealthier families moving to the suburbs rather than settling in the older neighborhoods. With some of the most upscale homes around, at $17,900 for a four-bedroom house, Elwyn Park was popular with business owners and Air Force officers. �Other Ricci developments were Sunset Road (1950) and the jewel streets (Diamond, Ruby, etc.) off Woodbury Avenue (1960-64). In the mid-1950s, Ricci built Sheffield and Hampshire roads with contractor F.E. Paterson whose family ran E.L. Paterson & Sons contractors and Patco millwork. Harry Winebaum, a Russian Jewish immigrant whose news agency was on Congress Street, developed Bersum Gardens on Leslie Drive near the Route 1 Bypass in 1955-56. Maple Haven offered homes at the southern edge of the city that were more affordable, but “in the middle of nowhere,” several miles from downtown. The first mobile home park, Hillcrest Trailer Court, is nearby. An early convenience store at Lafayette and Elwyn roads (now site of Cumberland Farms), was built over the objections of Elwyn Park homeowners who wanted the area to remain residential (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Homes of the period had birch cabinets, Formica countertops, tiled bathrooms, and hardwood floors. Household appliances were sold by the oil and gas dealers, the electric company and even tire dealers. G.E. introduced the colored appliances that we identify as “retro” today in 1954. Atherton’s Furniture ad in a 1955 edition of The Portsmouth Herald Page 26 �Portsmouth Housing Authority The city’s first public housing at Gosling Meadows was built to house families dislocated by urban renewal projects downtown, as well as veterans and service members. The rural site on the Newington town line was far from downtown but close to the new air base and accessible by city bus. The project’s “garden apartment” design incorporated open space, sidewalks, courtyards, and landscaping. The 124unit project finished in 1959 is still the largest public housing site, with the most family units, in the city. The Portsmouth Housing Authority opened its first senior housing a few years later at Woodbury Manor. Plan and photograph of Gosling Meadows, Portsmouth’s first public housing project, located on the Newington town line at the northern edge of the city (1960 City Annual Report) Page 27 �Base Housing On base, Pease was a self-contained community with a population of 10,000-12,000 people including officers, airmen, and their families. They had their own commissary store, bank, post office, library, pharmacy, medical center and dental clinic, dry cleaner, barber shop and beauty parlor, cafeteria and snack bar, chapels, a school, and even on-base daycare for $2 a day. There were dormitories and a mess hall for unmarried men, a bowling alley, sportsman’s club, gymnasium, hobby shop, and even a movie theater. The base had a golf course and its own sports teams, known as the Vikings. The airmen’s dormitory, one of thirteen 300-man dormitories on base (National Archives) Inspection of base housing construction (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Families lived on streets of matching semi-detached duplexes and quadruplexes in a modernistic ranch form. Construction of base housing began in 1957 and took several years to complete. In all, there were over a thousand units in two, three and four-bedroom configurations and twelve single-family homes for officers. These buildings, like others on bases throughout the country, were demolished in the 1990s-early 2000s, when they were not quite fifty years old. The only evidence of this neighborhood complex now remaining is in the layout of curving, interconnecting streets between International and Corporate drives on Pease Tradeport. Page 28 �Where Did We Learn? Neighborhoods were defined by their elementary schools, of which there were eight in 1950 and ten by 1960, plus the parochial school. They were spread throughout the city, with a half-mile to a mile and a half radius around each one. Students walked to and from school and went home or to a relative’s house for lunch, a break an hour and a half long. No elementary pupil of today studies in a classroom from the 1950s in Portsmouth, since those buildings are either gone or have been converted to new uses. The three current elementary schools—New Franklin School, Little Harbour School, and Dondero School—date from 1960 and after. The Farragut School on High Street in the North End was demolished around 1970 with urban renewal. The Haven School on South School Street, attended by children from Puddle Dock and the South End, became condominiums in the 1970s. At the west edge of downtown, the former Whipple School is an apartment building on the corner of State and Summer streets. Generations of Catholic students attended St. Patrick’s School, which stood on Austin Street from 1887 to 2020. The Lafayette School at the junction of South and Middle streets is now senior apartments, as is the Atlantic Heights School. The Wentworth school, attended by Wentworth Acres children The old Lafayette School on Lafayette Road served the neighborhood Middle Street and the West End (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 29 A 1957 Classroom (1957 Portsmouth High School Yearbook) �from 1942, was demolished in 2010. The Sherburne School, built for Pannaway Manor in 1941-42, has housed Robert J. Lister Academy since 1992. The New Franklin School, built in 1919 at the edge of the Creek Neighborhood, was destroyed in a 1981 fire, but the addition built in 1967 is at the core of the existing modern building. Brackett Elementary School on the air base opened by 1959 for 780 students, and a second school was built a few years later, but both were demolished in the early 2000s. In 1959, the City acquired land at the edge of Elwyn Park for a school to serve the growing population of the new subdivisions south of the city. The Dondero School was completed in 1960, named in memory of Mary Dondero, mayor from 1945-1947 and longtime city-council member, who died that year. The newest of Portsmouth’s schools, Little Harbour School, opened in 1969. Haven School cheerleaders at a basketball game in 1956 (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) 1955 Haven School baseball team (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Class of 1957 leaves the old High School on Islington Street, which was later converted to the Keefe House elderly housing. This was the last Senior Class to graduate in this building, as the new high school building opened later that year. (Portsmouth High School Yearbook) Page 30 �Students walked to the junior high school and high school also, except those from the most distant neighborhoods, like the Heights and the Acres. Students could take a city bus but had to live more than 1.3 miles from the school before the fare was free. From 1903 to 1957, Portsmouth High School was located on Islington Street in what is now the Keefe House elderly housing apartments. At that time, the public library was right next door at the corner of Islington and Middle streets, now the Discover Portsmouth Center. The building was remodeled in 1954 to plans by architect Maurice Witmer, who also designed the Home for Aged Women, more recently the former Senior Center on Parrot Avenue. Portsmouth Junior High School was the next stop after neighborhood elementary schools, bringing all the city’s schoolchildren together. 1953 Portsmouth High School Cheerleaders (Portsmouth High School Yearbook) Ight In 1953, there were 700 high school students, about 750 in the junior high school, roughly 1,700 elementary students, and 378 in kindergarten for a total of over 3,500. As Pease was being built, an influx of 1,500 new students was anticipated for a 40% increase. Newly constructed Portsmouth High School as shown in 1956 City Annual Report Page 31 In 1955-56, a new state of the art high school was constructed for $3,000,000. Sited on the far southern edge of the urban area, near the Lafayette Road/Route 1 Bypass interchange, it was accessible to Pease and the expanding outlying neighborhoods. It opened in 1957, and the track and sports fields were completed soon after. The high school soon needed even more space, and a twelveroom addition was built when the school was only five years old. By 1961, the high school itself had more than 1,500 students and the total student population was 5,870, Construction of the Portsmouth High School in 1955 over twice as many as (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) there are now. �How Did We Worship? Church communities were an important part of 1950s family life. With diversity came new houses of worship. In a decade, ten new churches were established for a total of twenty-five, about the same number as today. The automobile allowed more flexibility, but historically churches were located near the downtown or in residential neighborhoods that supported them. The oldest congregations, in the heart of the city, expanded in this period as well. St. John’s Episcopal built a Parish House in 1953. Temple Israel on State Street held Hebrew school in the neighboring building before the community center was added in the 1960s. The Congregational North Church in Market Square joined the United Church of Christ in 1957. The Unitarian and Universalist churches merged into today’s South Church after the latter group lost its church to fire in 1947. The Universalist Church site on Pleasant Street was sold to the First National grocery chain, and a supermarket was built in 1951, despite some local opposition. The chapel at Pease Air Force Base (National Archives) In Haymarket Square, the Middle Street Baptist Church moved to a new building in 1956. It was designed by local Colonial Revival architect Maurice Witmer, and the historic Peirce Mansion was moved back and remodeled as the vestry. The Court Street Christian Church relocated to Middle Street in 1954 and became the Central Baptist Church, which was in that location for fifty-five years. When the People’s Baptist Church on Pearl Street celebrated its fifty-ninth anniversary in 1952, the guest speakers included Martin Luther King, Jr., then a doctoral student at Boston University, who gave a speech titled “Going Forward by Going Backward.” The building was sold in 1984 but has been preserved and used as a restaurant and rental space. To serve the large Catholic population, two new parishes were added north and south of the downtown in addition to the central Immaculate Conception Church on Summer Street. St. James Church was built in 1958-59 near the Elwyn Park neighborhood on Lafayette Road, where it stood for fifty-nine years. The old school on the corner of Cabot and State streets was used by the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church until their building near the high school opened in 1971. The First United Methodist Church on Miller Avenue dedicated a parish house education wing in 1958. Page 32 �Where Did We Shop? Congress Street has always been Portsmouth’s Main Street and was the location of a wide variety of shops including jewelry stores, clothing stores, drug stores, shoe stores, a hat shop, photography studios and camera shops, the Singer sewing machine store, realtors and insurance agencies, news agent, a cigar store, a lawn mower dealer, music stores, and a hardware store. There were a number of beauty parlors and barbershops, which still tended to be segregated. The pharmacies were all in the downtown. Starbucks is currently located in the old Green’s Drug Store at 1 Market Square. Liggett’s drug store, which became Rexall pharmacy, was in the Franklin Block. Healey’s was on the corner of Pleasant and State streets, site of the Rusty Hammer Restaurant in recent years. Peavey’s Hardware on Market Street was a hardware store dating to the eighteenth century. It was under the same ownership from 1941 until it closed in 2004, the last hardware store in town. Fanny Farmer Candy Store was in one of the buildings replaced by the Worth Block at Congress Street and Maplewood Avenue. One of the oldest continuous businesses is now The Eyeglass Shop on Daniel Street, open since 1943. Foye’s department store on Congress Street occupied the storefronts of several buildings (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 33 The Arthur J. Healey drug store on the corner of State and Pleasant streets, later site of the Rusty Hammer (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) �Market and Congress streets offered a full range of clothing shops and about ten department stores. J.J. Newberry department store was at 19-21 Congress and extended to the rear on Fleet Street, where the sign is still visible above Gilley’s diner, although the store closed in 1991. A new modern façade put on the store after a fire in 1956 was removed in recent decades. The Montgomery Ward building on Congress is now home to Flatbread Pizza and other shops. The store was located downtown until the Newington Mall was built in the 1970s. Kimball’s occupied a row of old buildings on Market Street and specialized in women’s and children’s clothes. French’s was another women’s store on Market Street that had started as a dry Kimball’s department store on Market Street in 1951 spanned several contiguous goods store in the buildings (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) 1880s. Hudson’s Apparel was in the block of buildings removed from the end of Congress Street in the early 1970s during urban renewal and replaced by the Worth Block, built by clothing store owner Stuart Shaines. It reopened afterward in what is now the health food store. Goodman’s was a men’s store on the ground floor of the former YMCA building next door. Foye’s Store, run by several generations of that family, was in the Peirce Block next to the Athenaeum. There were nine shoe stores. The popular Buster Browns were sold at the Thom McAn store in the Franklin Block and Shaines Shoes sold the Stride Rite brand. 1955 Day’s jewelry store on Congress Street (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 34 �There were variety stores including Woolworth’s and Grant’s. Toys were sold in the department stores, particularly at the holidays. Sears had a mail order office on Pleasant Street in the Piscataqua Savings Bank building. Toys that are now iconic date from this period, like Mr. Potato Head, Slinky Dog, Play-Doh, and Hula Hoops. In addition to old favorites like marbles, checkers, Chinese checkers and Parcheesi, new board games ranged from Candy Land, created in 1948, to Risk: the Game of Global Domination, in 1957, and Yahtzee, “the Yacht Game,” a popular party game for adults. Barbie the “teenage fashion model” was introduced in 1959 and patented in 1961. G.I. Joe followed in 1964. 1950s toys on display in Kimball’s toy department (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) In the days before wayside furniture stores and shopping plazas, home furnishings could be purchased downtown. Margeson’s Furniture, owned by Richman Margeson, who was mayor in 1950-51, continues today as Cabot House on the Vaughan Mall. Atherton’s and Kline’s were located on Islington Street, now gone. Food shopping had been done more frequently before refrigerators were common. The pattern of many small shops throughout the city continued through the 1950s. The 1950 city directory listed about sixty grocery stores. They ranged in size from one-room “mom and pop” shops to the new chain supermarkets. Stores got larger and fewer in number. The 1959 directory listed forty-four groceries and by 1961 there were only forty. Those who lived Page 35 Interior of J.J. Newberry’s department store on Congress Street (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) �near enough walked downtown or to a corner store, which offered more necessities than modern convenience stores. Home delivery was important for those farther away. Grocery stores offered delivery service for those who could afford it, and bakery and fruit trucks had regular routes to the outlying neighborhoods. Downtown shops included Mario’s Market, a meat market owned by Mario Pesarisi at 101 Market Street, and Kol’s deli in Market Square near North Church. Zacharias Fruit Store was at the upper end of Congress. Hershey’s Bakery was located on Daniel Street. The First National store First National Stores, the first large, chain grocery store, was built on the site of the on the corner of Universalist Church on Pleasant Street, now the site of Citizen’s Bank. (Courtesy of the Pleasant Street Portsmouth Athenaeum) and Parrott Avenue was built despite opposition from residents who sought a zoning change to stop it. The increase in family cars allowed other chain stores to locate farther from the city center. The A&P that opened on Islington in 1948 lies under the Bank of America facade. Hannaford Brothers originated as a wholesale The original Hannaford Brothers wholesale building in former Frank grocery company also on Jones buildings on Brewery Lane (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Islington Street. When the Pic Athenaeum) ‘N Pay, now the site of Newberry’s advertisement (1961 City Hannaford’s since 1999, opened Directory) in 1961, it was advertised as New England’s most exciting supermarket. Page 36 �What Did We Do for Fun? Market Square has always been a focus of city life. Long before the first Market Square Day in 1978, Congress Street was the site of parades and celebrations. On any weekend night, downtown Portsmouth was the place to be. Stores were open late and the banks cashed paychecks until 8:00 on Friday night. Annual Jubilee Week celebrations were popular for many years, beginning in 1955 when 65,000 people attended. Opening with a parade and closing with the crowning of the Jubilee Queen, the week included a road race, swim meet, softball and baseball games, archery and horseshoe tournaments, barbeque and bean suppers, boat races, doll carriage parade, and fireworks. Dining Out Portsmouth has always offered a wide range of dining options, though going out to a restaurant was not as common as it is today. There were fifty restaurants and cafes listed in the city directory in 1950, nearly all of them downtown. By the end of the decade, sixty restaurants included several roadside businesses outside of town. One of the oldest restaurants still in business is Moe’s Sandwiches, which opened a few doors down from its present site on Daniel Street in 1959. Phil “Moe” Pagano sold one signature sandwich based on an Italian recipe. The price was 45 cents. Gilley’s, the late-night hotspot on Fleet Street, is a 1940 lunch cart. Until 1974, it was a mobile diner, hauled by truck and parked in front of North Church in Market Square for evening business. “Friday nights the stores would stay open. Occasionally my mom and dad would go downtown, park the car, and watch all the shoppers for a short time before my sister got off work at 9. We would have supper at Liggett’s Drugstore. I would have a Coke, order of toast, and a hot fudge sundae all for 49 cents, no tax or tip.” –Lorraine Boston, longtime Portsmouth resident Page 37 Gilley’s, shown at its home base, was typically parked in front of the North Church in Market Square and serviced the late-night crowd as it continues to do today (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) �Postcard from the newly remodeled Jarvis Restaurant in Market Square (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) The Jarvis family ran several popular restaurants and other businesses in Market Square. Andrew Jarvis, who opened his first café in 1913, became Portsmouth’s first Greek mayor in 1958-59. In the 1950s, the restaurant had a diner style interior with chrome and Naugahyde benches. The Clipper Restaurant on the opposite side of Congress Street was also popular. The Blue Goose in the Kearsarge House hotel advertised a full steak dinner for $1.25. Kol’s Deli on Congress Street (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Thorner’s Oyster House on Daniel Street had fried clams, coleslaw, and fries for 95¢. Newick’s was on Ceres Street before relocating to Dover Point in the 1960s. The earliest Chinese restaurant, the New China, was above Jarvis’ on Congress Street. Some of the first pizza in town was served at Paola’s on Deer Street in the North End. The Rosa Italian and pizza restaurant on State Street, in business from the 1920s, was known for the individual mini jukeboxes in each booth. The Victory Spa at 96 State Street was owned by the Greek Savarinis and Raizes families. It was a workingman’s breakfast and lunch place where shipyard workers met up before catching the bus over Memorial Bridge to the Navy Yard. The Newberry’s department store luncheonette was a popular meetup place, and the drug stores soda fountains, like Liggett’s, were the places to get an inexpensive meal. Interior of Hank and Fan’s lunch counter at 107 State Street in 1953 (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 38 �Bars and clubs were located downtown, near the waterfront and in the North End. The Press Room on Daniel Street was the Sagamore Social Club. The State Street Saloon that burned down in 2017 was Roger’s Café. The Olympia Café on the Vaughan Mall was run by the Polazzi family. The Elks Lodge was located on the corner of Pleasant and Court streets. A new VFW post containing a bar and banquet hall opened on Deer Street, where it recently became The Statey Restaurant. At the American Legion Post on Islington Street weekly dances featured a 12piece orchestra and vocalist. Admission was 90 cents. Many bars identified as a hangout for a certain neighborhood or branch of the military. The notorious Dolphin Hotel and Restaurant on High Street was popular with visiting Navy sailors and their companions until it burned to the ground in 1969. At Liggett’s “I remember coffee was 10 cents, a Coke 5 cents, hot fudge sundae 40 cents, and a banana split 50 cents.” ~Lorraine Boston, former Liggett’s employee Liggett’s soda counter menu, when the lunch specials cost a quarter (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 39 �Upscale dining was offered by the Rockingham Hotel downtown and Wentworth by the Sea in New Castle, both owned by James B. and Margaret Smith. The Rockingham Hotel was the site for functions and meetings, and the restaurant specialized in lobster and steak dinners. The Library restaurant, opened in 1975, continues the steakhouse tradition. The hotel rooms started at $2.50 a night. The Wentworth-by-the-Sea offered The Rockingham Hotel on State Street, an upscale hotel and site of many meetings and functions in Portsmouth (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) grand hotel experience to upper-class tourists and diners. The massive complex was nearly three times larger than it is today, until demolition of several sections in the 1980s. The Smiths purchased it in 1946 for $200,000. Both businesses played a role in the process of ending segregation in this period. The Rockingham Hotel has been The Library Restaurant since 1975 (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) In 1948, the Rockingham Hotel was forced to allow its first Black patrons, when director Louis deRochemont used it as the base of operations for filming his movie Lost Boundaries. The film was about a light-skinned Black doctor passing as white in a small New Hampshire town, being too light to be accepted at Black hospitals in the South. The stars were of Mediterranean ancestry, but Blacks were among the cast and extras. Smith accepted them rather than lose the business. At the Wentworth by the Sea, however, Blacks were still not served or employed, nor were known Jews and Greeks welcome. It wasn’t until two days after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended segregation in public places and employment discrimination, that a Black couple Emerson and Jane Reed and their white friends insisted the Wentworth honor their reservations in the dining room. Reed, like so many Portsmouth men, was a World War II Navy veteran and longtime shipyard employee. Page 40 �Recreation Beach scene of New Castle, from Meadowbrook Inn brochure promoting recreation in the area (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Sports were popular, particularly basketball, and the star high school players were local idols. Even the elementary schools had their own teams. They practiced in local parks and playgrounds. The baseball diamond at Portsmouth Plains was resurfaced in 1953 and Hislop Field in Atlantic Heights was rebuilt in 1956. Prescott Park offered playground equipment and a field in “Liberty Park,” where the flower displays are now. The South Playground had tennis courts and a baseball field. School sports were for boys only, although girls could be cheerleaders. There was a Girl’s Athletic Association with about a hundred members, but it wasn’t until well into the 1960s that Portsmouth had interscholastic girls’ teams. The old Portsmouth Country Club became part of Pease Air Force Base. A new Portsmouth Country Club was built just over the town line in Greenland in 1956-57 by golf course architect Robert Trent Jones. The Wentworth by the Sea County Club was also popular with local residents. In winter, the city maintained ice-skating rinks in several neighborhoods, such as this one at South Cemetery (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 41 Prescott Park was enlarged by the City after it received the million-dollar Prescott Trust fund. Union wharf was purchased in 1954, and the public boat landing built in 1957. Prescott Park reached its final size in 1964 with the $80,000 acquisition of the former Walker coal wharf, though the arts festival for which it is known was another decade in the future. Action shot from the 1957 Portsmouth High School yearbook A dad referees a baseball game behind the junior high school (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) �The riverfront offered local children opportunities for fishing and boating. Each neighborhood had its own waterfront spot to play by or put into the water. North End kids swam from Littlefield Wharf on the North Mill Pond. South Enders played off Prescott Park and Peirce Island, and Atlantic Heights families had access to the river, too. Kids played in their neighborhoods and, with the acquisition of a bicycle, could roam even farther. The river current was strong, but pollution was an issue throughout this period. The Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948 mandated action, but Portsmouth, like many cities, could not afford a sewage treatment system until federal money became available in the 1960s; it wasn’t until 1965 that the Peirce Island plant eliminated discharge into the river. Attendance at the Peirce Island Pool fell during the polio scare of the 1950s, because polio was one of the most serious communicable childhood diseases before the vaccine was first given to school children in 1955. A new bathhouse improved conditions, and the bridge to the island was rebuilt in 1958. Day trips to the beach or holidays at nearby shorefront cottages were more common than traveling farther out of town for family vacations. The state parks at Hampton Beach and Rye Harbor were improved in the 1940s, and Wallis Sands State Park opened in the early 1960s. “A lot of [playtime] wasn’t structured. Just, ‘be home when the streetlights come on.’” ~Ted Connors The new bathhouse at the Peirce Island Pool was shown in the 1955 City Report The Peirce Island Pool, which opened in the 1930s, was fed by salt water pumped in from the river (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 42 �The original Connie Bean Community Center was in the former Army-Navy building on Daniel Street, remodeled by the City in 1954. Basketball and badminton leagues, cribbage tournaments, boxing, judo, archery, photography, and art classes were offered. There were “record hops” for high school students and USO dances for area servicemen. The 1905 YMCA building on Congress Street was home to that organization until 1957 when Camp Gundalow day camp opened in Greenland. The YWCA offered clubs and activities for “young wives, teens and business girls.” Bowl-O-Rama, built in 1956 by the Genimatas family, was one of the earliest businesses on Route 1. League play was popular, and the high school had large bowling teams. Downtown, an arcade and bowling alley were built in 1957 on the corner of Congress and Middle after the historic Treadwell Mansion was demolished, to the dismay of preservationists. Newly remodeled Community Center lobby (City Annual Report 1959) Vintage Bowl-O-Rama postcard Page 43 �Movies Downtown Portsmouth had four movie theaters, of which the Music Hall is the only survivor. Then known as the Civic Theater, it was run by New England movie magnate E.M. Loew from 1947. Cartoons and news reels ran continuously all afternoon between scheduled feature films and admission was a quarter. The Colonial Theater and the Arcadia Theater, in the Franklin Block, were on either side of Congress Street, and the Olympia Theater was just around the corner on Vaughan Street. Loew’s Cinema on Congress, showing The Ten Commandments, released in 1956 (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) 1955 Portsmouth Herald advertisement for Colonial Theatre “The Arcadia was the cheapest. That was only 9 cents, and 10 cents you could buy a bag of popcorn and go to the theater. It was called the ‘scratch house.’ It was terrible, terrible! But no one complained.” ~Harold Whitehouse, Jr. Page 44 �The Louis deRochemont movie Lost Boundaries, depicting racial injustice of the 1930s-40s, premiered at the Colonial and Olympia Theaters on June 22, 1949. Locals had been cast as extras, and local sites were used for scenes of a New England small town. The film was considered controversial, and many theaters would not show it. The 1950s were the drive-in era. The Open Air Drive-In, later the Newington Outdoor Theater, opened on the newly built Spaulding Turnpike in 1952 and operated into the 1980s. The York-Kittery Drive-In also opened in 1952 and was located on Route 1, where the Kittery outlets are now. 1958 Ad for the Newington drive-in (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) In the 1960s, movie attendance declined as television expanded. The Olympia and Arcadia theaters closed and were converted to offices. The E.M. Loew’s company took over and remodeled the Colonial Theater, which was in business until 1980 and has since been replaced by new construction. Page 45 �Home Entertainment WHEB broadcaster (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Radio was still the primary source of communication and entertainment for most families during this period. Radios, phonograph players, and tape recorders could be bought along with musical instruments in downtown music stores like Sessions and Hassett’s. The hand-held transistor radio was introduced by a new Japanese company, Sony, in 1952. WHEB was the original local radio station with its studio and offices downtown and a tower on Lafayette Road where the station is today. WHEB AM was a “daytimer,” required to go off the air at sunset. Boston radio stations provided the evening programming. 1954 TV ad from The Portsmouth Herald WHEB was broadcast from the top of the New Hampshire National Bank building on Pleasant Street in Market Square (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Televisions were in less than one percent of American homes in 1948, but by 1952 the rate was over thirty percent. The biggest brands of the day were Magnavox, Philco, RCA and Zenith. The cost for a television set came down gradually. The average price was $250 in 1955, which is over $2,000 in today’s money. TVs ranged from about $120 to over $1,200. There were eight places to buy or service a television in Portsmouth, including Tony’s Television which is still in business on Islington Street. State Street Discount House was on State Street from 1958 until 1986. Page 46 �Cobb’s Television shop in the North End was owned by Thomas Cobb, who had come to Portsmouth to work as an electrician in the shipyard during World War II (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) There were two and then three Boston TV channels to choose from. Local newspaper listings show that programming ran from 5:30AM to around midnight, and stations signed off overnight. The Pridham family had one of the first television sets in the Puddle Dock neighborhood in 1950. Their neighbors were known to sit outside and watch through their living room windows (Courtesy of Strawbery Banke Museum) Page 47 Popular shows of the day included I Love Lucy, Gunsmoke, The Ed Sullivan Show, American Bandstand, Howdy Doody and The Mickey Mouse Club. The first Saturday morning children’s shows came on in 1950. The first ever presidential debate, between Kennedy and Nixon, was aired in 1960. �How Did We Get There? Transportation The automobile transformed life in Portsmouth during the 1950s. After World War II, new car production resumed, and by 1950 more than half of American households owned a car. Ten years later, the number was nearly three-quarters. Portsmouth followed that trend with 7,272 vehicles registered in 1952 and over 12,000 in 1962. Moving to the suburbs often meant the need for a second family car. Cars meant freedom and mobility, a release from walking outside in bad weather and being subject to train or bus schedules. During the 1950s and 1960s, “going out for a drive” was a popular activity, visiting nearby towns or parks to see something new. Driver’s education was first offered at the high school in 1950. The Portsmouth Traffic Circle was the gateway to the Seacoast (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Memorial Bridge traffic in front of Daniel Street power station (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 48 �Highways The National Interstate and Defense Highway Act of 1956 established the modern highway network. Interstate-95, which is the backbone of the region today, was built in several sections. From 1940, the main north-south highway was the Maine-New Hampshire Turnpike, known as the Route 1 Bypass. In 1950, I-95 was completed from the Massachusetts line to Portsmouth. It joined the Bypass at the newly constructed Portsmouth Traffic Circle, and the route north to Maine continued north over the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge. The final section of I-95 was built in the early 1970s along with the new Piscataqua River Bridge, which bypassed the Route 1 Bypass. The Portsmouth Circle became the terminus of US Route 4 and NH 16 when the lower end of the Spaulding Turnpike was built in the early 1950s, coinciding with the selection of the air base site. The traffic circle was constructed to connect I-95 with the Route 1 Bypass (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Cars - What Did We Drive? A car ad in The Portsmouth Herald, 1954 Chevrolet, Ford, and Buick were the most popular 1950s makes. The Ford Fairlane was a best-seller, costing around $2,000 in 1955, the equivalent of just under $20,000 in 2020. The Chevrolet Bel Air was similarly priced. A Buick Special cost upwards of $2,200. The Chevy Corvette, introduced in 1953, cost around $3,500, equivalent to nearly $34,000 today. A Cadillac ran upwards of $5,000. There were eleven Portsmouth dealerships in 1950, representing all the major companies: Chrysler, DeSoto, Dodge, Ford, Nash, Packard, Plymouth, Pontiac, and Studebaker. They were concentrated on Islington Street and nearby in the West End. Car dealers prospered with the growing population, particularly when Pease was established. By the Page 49 �end of the decade, there were nineteen dealerships and additional makes such as Buick, Edsel, Imperial, Mercury, Oldsmobile, Opel, and Triumph. Some are still in business. Taccetta Chevrolet was on Albany Street until opening on Woodbury Avenue in Newington in 1968. Ben’s Autobody was also on Islington Street during this period. Brooks Auto sales, a long-time Ford dealer, was on Hanover Street in an old mill building. Seybolt Chrysler Plymouth was located on Vaughan Street and moved to Lafayette Road around 1956. One of the first dealers on the Spaulding Turnpike was Seacoast Motors, Inc., a Volkswagen dealer from ca. 1960. Seybolt Motors on was Route 1/Lafayette Road, now site of the Goodwill Industries building (Portsmouth Athenaeum) Businesses related to the automobile proliferated on Lafayette Road, the Maine-NH Turnpike or Bypass and connecting streets, like Islington. In 1950, the city directory listed thirty gas stations, and by the end of the decade there were over fifty. Several are still standing, though all have been remodeled. The former Gulf Station built ca. 1950 on the Route 1 Bypass retains the porcelain enamel walls that were popular. Nearby Buzzy’s Bypass Gas dates from the 1950s, as do the service stations on the corners of Middle and Lafayette roads and Bartlett and Islington streets. The Berry Motor Company was one of several dealerships on Islington Street. It is now the brick plaza on Islington Street at Spinney Road (The Portsmouth Herald, 1950) Texaco station at the Middle Street and Middle Road intersection (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 50 �Public Transportation The Boston and Maine railroad station stood on Deer Street right where Maplewood Avenue now crosses the tracks. The streets in this area were reconfigured as part of urban renewal of the 1970s. The station was reduced in size in 1949 with a reduction in service. Just a few years later, the last passenger train ran between Portsmouth and Portland in 1952 and Boston in 1965. The station was later torn down with the rest of the North End around 1970. Freight traffic in and out of Portsmouth continues with spurs connecting to Pease and the Navy yard. Interstate bus service was offered by Greyhound and Trailways, the predecessor of C&J Bus lines. Both stopped downtown on Congress Street in Market Square. There were five trips a day between Portsmouth and Dover and daily service to Manchester, Concord, Boston, Portland and elsewhere in Maine. Not everyone had a car, and many Portsmouth families of the 1950s still relied on city The train platform in the late 1940s buses to get to work, shopping, (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) and recreation. Bus routes ran in and out of downtown along the main thoroughfares to all the outlying neighborhoods, including Pease Air Force Base. In the summertime, service was offered to York and Rye Beach. Bus patronage declined by the end of the decade, as the family car became ubiquitous. The Boston and Maine Transportation Company had busses in the 1950s (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 51 �Parking Downtown parking has been an issue since the first cars arrived alongside horses and buggies. It became increasingly important as people moved out of town but drove back there for business. In 1954, the Penhallow Street parking lot was cleared of buildings. In 1955, the City built three more parking lots: the Vaughan or Worth lot, the Hanover and Fleet street lot, now site of the garage, and the Court Street fire station lot. Penhallow lot from the 1954 City Annual Report 1955 City Annual Report showing today’s Worth Lot Page 52 �Tourism and Roadside Businesses The new highways bypassed the downtown and changed traffic patterns. Travelers could avoid Portsmouth altogether if they chose, so maps and guidebooks promoted its many historic houses. New accommodations for tourists were established outside the downtown, with motor inns on Route 1 and the Bypass. The oldest still in business is the Port Inn, built as the Port City Motel in 1956. Near the Rye town line on Route 1, the Wren’s Nest Village Inn also dates from the 1950s. Portsmouth Chevrolet on the traffic circle now occupies the site of the Meadowbrook Motor Inn, which was the height of modern luxury when it opened in 1952, designed by Portsmouth architect Lucien Geoffrion and featuring hardwood furniture and pastel colored bathroom fixtures. The Meadowbrook Motor Inn lobby was decorated in the latest style as seen in this brochure image (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Traffic circle looking south, shows new roadside businesses (City of Portsmouth website) Page 53 �Howard Johnson’s restaurant was a traffic circle landmark for many years. The original building was moved across the highway when the circle was built around 1950; the roofline was changed in 1960 and exists as part of the current Roundabout Diner. The Howard Johnson’s motor lodge, built in 1960 and much remodeled, is now the Best Western. Howard Johnson’s postcard from the 1960s showing the restaurant at left and the motor lodge at right The Meadowbrook Motor Inn brochure advertises “luxurious” amenities (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 54 �New businesses were built on the highway roadsides to serve travelers and provide new destinations for local residents. Just over the Memorial Bridge in Kittery, Warren’s Lobster Pound was expanded to seat 150, which is still less than half its size today. South of the city, the landmark Yoken’s “Thar She Blows” sign on Lafayette Road marks the former location of Yoken’s Restaurant, which opened in 1947. Owner Harry Yoken, the son of Russian immigrants, had previously run a grocery store and restaurant downtown. His building had a Colonial façade designed by Lucien Geoffrion. The first of a series of renovations and expansions began after Yoken’s brother-in-law, Harry MacLeod, took over in 1958. The restaurant was a major employer of local young people during high school and college. The Dinnerhorn Drive-In on Lafayette Road was just a few years old in this 1962 view (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) When asked if someone had worked at Yoken’s, a common response was, “Didn’t everybody?” ~ former Yoken’s owner Kevin MacLeod Yoken’s was known for family dining at reasonable prices (Portsmouth Public Library postcard collection) Page 55 �The city’s first shopping center, Lafayette Plaza, was built in 1961. It housed King’s Department Store, a discount chain for the “self-serve” shopper. Shopping centers offered ample free parking for large store buildings, which had room to provide vast quantities of merchandise under one roof. Looking south on Route 1 showing Lafayette Plaza under construction (top), Portsmouth High School at lower left (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) King’s Department Store celebrated its opening in 1961 with door prizes and specials (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 56 �Urban Renewal – What Did We Save and What Did We Lose? Modern Portsmouth, with its cultural and historical tourism-based economy and ever-expanding hotels, was created by the urban renewal movement that was a defining trend of the Post-World War II period when hundreds of families from two of Portsmouth’s oldest residential, working class neighborhoods were displaced. In the wake of World War II housing shortages, the National Housing Act of 1949 was part of Truman’s “Fair Deal” to provide a decent home and suitable living environment for every American family. Funds were available for “slum clearance” and public housing projects. Substandard housing was acquired by public domain, demolished, and the land sold for redevelopment. Puddle Dock to Strawbery Banke The Portsmouth Housing Authority formed in 1953 and developed a plan to clear eighteen-acres south of the downtown along Marcy Street. There was opposition by South End residents, so the project was reduced to ten acres covering the Puddle Dock neighborhood, now occupied by Strawbery Banke Museum. The buildings were old and un-modernized, many of them with absentee landlords, and there were five junkyards. The plan was to level the area and sell the land to private developers for “garden apartments” that would include some low rent units. Few investors were interested in becoming the new landlords, however. For the development to be profitable, rents would need to be more than twice the $85-100 per month that Portsmouth residents in the area could afford. 1955 aerial view looking south shows 18 acres of the Puddle Dock neighborhood proposed for urban renewal (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 57 �At the same time, preservationists had a different vision in mind. Architectural historians had long recognized the significance of the Puddle Dock and South End areas because it had some of the oldest buildings, having avoided the fires that destroyed the downtown in the early 1800s. A colonial maritime village museum had been proposed in the 1930s, but the plan went nowhere until the buildings were threatened by demolition, just as more and more mid-century modern commercial blocks were being erected on the sites of old buildings downtown. Several events coincided to raise interest in preservation and resulted in the creation of Strawbery Banke Museum as an alternative form of urban renewal. A speech given by Dorothy Vaughan, long-time city librarian and historian, was instrumental. The date was June 20, 1957, and the audience was the Rotary Club, meeting in the Rockingham Hotel ballroom. This was the first time a woman spoke at, let alone Puddle Dock in the 1950s (Courtesy of Strawbery Banke Museum) attended, one of their meetings, but Miss Vaughan struck a chord when she warned these local leaders that their “Old Town by the Sea” was in danger. “Keeping Portsmouth old” was critical to its economic success, she said; otherwise it would soon look like “Main Street, USA.” “Nowhere in America is there more of this thing…the American heritage drips off the eaves of our houses, hangs from our trees and is in the brick sidewalks under our feet…we feel it when we enter the doors of our historic homes and we see it everywhere, yet it is slipping from us, day by day, and being replaced by ugly storefronts, joints and honky-tonks.” Two days later, the subject was raised again when the president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation visited the city and met with the Chamber of Commerce. Local businessmen saw the connection between history and tourism and quickly adopted the cause. Committees were formed and a plan to save buildings as part of a “colonial village” was revived. Over the next several months, the goals of preserving the oldest parts of Puddle Dock and taking advantage of urban renewal funding to improve the area were combined. Page 58 �Strawbery Banke, Inc. was founded in November 1958. Dorothy Vaughan was a leader of the project along with local businessmen and their wives. In May of that year, the City had approved a $200,000 twentyyear bond, $800,000 in federal funding The Governor Goodwin House and Stoodley’s was authorized in Tavern moved to new sites in Strawbery Banke. (1964 City Annual Report) 1959, and state law was amended to allow for restoration as a form of redevelopment. The one million dollars covered the purchase of all the buildings, relocation costs, selective demolition, and sitework. Site Plan of proposed Strawbery Banke area as acquired through urban renewal (1962 City Annual Report) Page 59 Touted as a unique urban renewal project, it still involved displacement of residents. Over one hundred families received $100 in moving expenses. Most of them were low-income renters who moved to other apartments, into public housing, or moved in with relatives. Some were bitter over the loss of their homes. Others felt their lives improved, since many of the old houses had lacked modern amenities such as full bathrooms and central heat. People moved out in 1962, and site clearing was complete within two years. About a third of the buildings were saved, based on their age and significance, but more than forty houses were demolished. Fundraising began for the $37,000 that would be Strawbery Banke, Inc.’s purchase price for the ten-acre site and remaining buildings. �Phase II - The North End At the same time, however, a second, larger urban renewal project was being proposed for the North End, roughly bounded by Hanover, High and Bridge streets. This area of narrow streets and old homes, considered over-crowded, run-down and a fire hazard, was the main route by which traffic came into downtown from the north and west on Routes 4 and 16. Plans were to reconfigure the traffic pattern and create a new gateway. This was seen as a potential location for modern business, such as a shopping mall, or a site for a new city hall. “Coming in from the Concord area and into Portsmouth, you’re coming into rumble-tumble town.” ~Ted Connors, former Director of Portsmouth Housing Authority and former Mayor of Portsmouth 1964 Map of urban renewal projects (1964 City Annual Report) Looking down Deer Street toward waterfront (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Page 60 �What Happened Next? Portsmouth’s population remained at around 26,000 for over three decades. Pease bombers never saw combat, although the 157th Air Refueling Wing of the Air National Guard, based at Pease since the mid-1960s, flew logistical support to troops in Vietnam. Air bases were designed to have a lifespan of twenty-five years, but Pease served for thirty-five years, until the end of the Cold War. When it closed in 1991, along with bases throughout the country during the same period, Portsmouth had a sudden drop in population numbers. Over the next two decades, the site was cleared of Air Force-related buildings and redeveloped into a business park that now houses many of the region’s largest employers today. The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard built its last new submarine in 1969 and now specializes in the repair and refueling of nuclear subs. As of 2020, there were about 8,000 civilian workers and 1,000 officers and enlisted personnel stationed there. Several new shopping plazas were built in the 1960s, beginning the transformation of Route 1 and Woodbury Avenue into commercial strips. Newington’s first department store was built in 1966, the forerunner of the 1974 Newington Mall, now The Crossings. Southgate Plaza on Lafayette Road opened in the late 1960s. Drisco House interior as interpreted to the 1950s (Courtesy of Strawbery Banke Museum) Page 61 The Shapleigh Drisco House in 1961 (Historic American Building Survey) The precursor to the parking garage was a two-level deck built in 1964 (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Strawbery Banke began restoration work in 1962, and the museum opened in 1965. More buildings were gradually restored to represent many periods throughout Portsmouth’s history. The 1950s were recreated in the Drisco House duplex when it was restored in the 1980s. The museum played a major role in the expansion of tourism during the second half of the 20th century. �Urban renewal proceeded in the North End after federal funding was approved in 1966. Building removal started in 1969 and took several years, in what turned out to be one of the last big urban renewal projects in the country. Portsmouth Preservation, Inc. was able to save and restore about a dozen houses on “The Hill” at High and Deer streets. Twenty-six acres were cleared of over 300 buildings, relocating about 200 families and small businesses. Demolition on Maplewood Avenue in the North End in the early ‘70s (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) Moving houses to The Hill, about 1970 (Portsmouth Athenaeum) The old railroad station remained on Deer Street as removal of North End buildings began (Courtesy of the Portsmouth Athenaeum) The project created a blank slate on which the recent history of Portsmouth was drawn. The remaining old homes in Portsmouth became all the more valuable in the long run. Interest in historic preservation increased and a local arts scene developed. While shopping malls replaced downtown businesses, Portsmouth turned to specialty shops and restaurants. Then, in the early 2000s, the cleared land in the North End became the site of Portsmouth’s latest building boom. “So what we’re seeing is a seismic shift in the local culture and economy from a Navy town to a shift back to the late 1800s view of ‘The Old Town by the Sea’ as a potential tourist and cultural mecca, plus a new service industry hub.” – J. Dennis Robinson, Portsmouth historian Page 62 �Timeline Key dates in Portsmouth and nationwide from the end of World War II to the Vietnam War Date 1945 1946 1946 1946 1946 1947 1947 1947 1947 1948 1948 1949 1949 1949 1949 1950 1950 1950 1950 1951 1952 1952 1952 Event Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 6 and 9, and V-J Day marked the end of World War II, August 14 Mayor Mary Dondero and others travel to Washington, DC to meet with President Truman and secure further work for Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (PNSY) 1.5 million vehicles over the Interstate/Sarah Mildred Long Bridge on the Route 1 Bypass US Army Air Force acquires Portsmouth Airport from the Navy First Elwyn Park subdivision plan filed Planning begins for new interstate highway, now I-95, from Massachusetts to Maine The Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan offer assistance to countries threatened by communism US Air Force established as a military branch, separate from the Army House Un-American Activities Committee investigates alleged Communists Soviet blockade of West Berlin on June 24 marks the first Cold War conflict, “Berlin Airlift” by US and allies delivers supplies President Truman issues Executive Order 9981 requiring equal treatment and opportunity in the armed forces regardless of race NATO is formed as an anti-Soviet military alliance in April Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb, August 29 East Germany becomes a satellite state of Soviet Union, October Communist Party establishes People’s Republic of China, October Senator McCarthy in a speech claims over 200 state department employees are on a list of known communists Gurney Bill provides Federal funding for National Guard armories New Hampshire Turnpike (I-95) and Portsmouth traffic circle built Start of Korean War, June Portsmouth selected as Air Force Base site Pease land acquisition began Precursor to the Berlin Wall, barbed wire, 39' high erected between East and West Germany as border is closed Last scheduled passenger train from Boston to Portland Page 63 �1952 1952 1953 1953 1953 1953 1954 1954 1954 1954 1954 1954 1955 1955 1955 1955 1956 1956 1956 1956 1957 1957 1957 1957 1957 1957 1958 1958 1958 1958 1958 Dwight D. Eisenhower, World War II general, elected president and served two terms; Richard Nixon is vice-president US tests hydrogen bomb in the South Pacific, November Albacore submarine launched from PNSY End of Korean War, July Portsmouth Housing Authority formed Soviets test hydrogen bomb, August Army-McCarthy hearings broadcast live on television 3 million+ vehicles over the Interstate/Sarah Mildred Long Bridge on the Route 1 Bypass City receives million-dollar Prescott Trust Fund for Prescott Park City parking lots constructed Portsmouth Air Force Base official ground-breaking McCarthy hearings Construction of Portsmouth High School begins Warsaw Pact forms a communist military alliance China begins to develop nuclear weapons Portsmouth Housing Authority urban renewal study of Puddle Dock and South End Portsmouth Air Force Base active, 100th Bombardment Wing Elwyn Park, Meadowbrook Park, and Woodlawn Circle/Hillcrest Drive developments all under construction Construction of first nuclear submarines begins at the PNSY Suez Canal crisis Eisenhower pledges aid to countries fighting communism in the Middle East Portsmouth Air Force Base renamed Pease Air Force Base Dorothy Vaughan gives preservation speech to Rotary Club, June 20 New Portsmouth High School opens in fall Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite, October 4 Strawbery Banke incorporated, November 18 US puts first satellite, Explorer, into orbit in January Paul A. Doble Army Reserve Center on Cottage Street constructed 509th Bombardment Wing transferred to Pease AFB NH Army National Guard Armory built on McGee Drive Local chapter of NAACP formed Page 64 �1958 1959 1959 1959 1959 1959 1960 1960 1961 1961 1962 1962 1962 1962 1963 1963 1963 1963 1963 1963 1963 1963 1964 1964 1964 1964 1965 1965 1966 Permits issued for construction of 125 new buildings Gosling Meadows, first public housing built by the city South End Urban Renewal & Redevelopment Project approved Permits issued for 177 new buildings Pease employs upwards of 3,000 people and houses a total base-related population of over 10,000 Portsmouth Naval Shipyard had 8,400+ employees Mary Dondero Memorial School in Elwyn Park opens John F. Kennedy elected president, narrowly beating Nixon High-Hanover parking lot created Berlin Wall built to prevent defection of East Germans to the west Cuban Missile Crisis, US and USSR come as close as ever to nuclear war State Pier Marine terminal construction begins on Noble’s Island High school addition completed New hospital built on Junkins Avenue (now City Hall) Seacoast Council on Race and Religion (SCORR) formed Portsmouth Housing Authority initiates Vaughan Street urban renewal USS Thresher sub lost at sea; 129 died and 149 local children left fatherless Nuclear Test Ban Treaty - US, Great Britain, and Soviet Union agree to suspend nuclear weapons testing Addition to Portsmouth Junior High/Middle School Woodbury Manor public senior housing built on Woodbury Avenue President John F. Kennedy assassinated, November 22 John F. Kennedy Memorial Recreation Center opened in remodeled armory building on Parrott Avenue Civil Rights Act signed into law High-Hanover parking deck built Seacoast Shipyard Association formed to “Save Our Shipyard” from threatened closure Peirce Island Sewage Treatment Plant completed Vietnam War - US sends combat troops to South Vietnam, March Strawbery Banke Museum opens NH Air National Guard 157th Air Refueling Wing relocated to Pease Air Force Base Page 65 �Bibliography Primary Sources New Hampshire Profiles Portsmouth Athenaeum vertical files Portsmouth, City of, Annual Reports Portsmouth City Directories. The Portsmouth Herald and Seacoast online. Portsmouth High School yearbook, The Clipper. U.S. Population Census Historic Photographs Portsmouth Athenaeum Bechtel Corporation, Inc. 1990 “Pease Air Force Base Comprehensive Redevelopment Plan.” Collection of New Hampshire State Library, Concord, NH. Berkeley, Lt. Colonel William R. 1953 Portsmouth Air Base: A Chronological History and Study of its Community Relations. Published by the United States Air Force. Collection of New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, NH. Bolster, W. Jeffrey (editor) 2002 Cross-Grained and Wily Waters: A Guide to the Piscataqua Maritime Region. Portsmouth, NH: Peter E. Randall Publisher. Portsmouth Public Library Thayer Cumings Library, Strawbery Banke. Secondary Sources Achilles, Steven E. 2009 Portsmouth Firefighting – Images of America. Arcadia Publishing Company. Baumguart, Kenneth, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 2010 “Paul A. Doble U.S. Army Reserve Inventory Form,” on file at New Hampshire Division of Historic Resources (NHDHR), Concord, NH. Brighton, Raymond A. 1979 They Came to Fish, Vols. One and Two. Reprinted 1994. Portsmouth, Peter E. Randall Publisher. Brighton, Ray 1982 The Prescott Story. Portsmouth, NH: Peter E. Randall Publisher for Portsmouth Marine Society. Candee, Richard M. 2006 Building Portsmouth: The Neighborhoods and Architecture of New Hampshire’s Oldest City, Revised and Expanded. Portsmouth, NH: Portsmouth Advocates, Inc. Page 66 �Garvin, James L. 2004 “New Hampshire Good Roads Projects, 1904-2004,” New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources, Concord. Preservation Company 2005 “US Route 1 Bypass Project Area Form,” on file at NHDHR, Concord, NH. Lawry, Nelson H., Glen M. Williford and Leo K. Polaski 2004 Images of America: Portsmouth Harbor’s Military and Naval Heritage. Arcadia Publishing: Portsmouth, NH. Preservation Company 2010 “ Maine-New Hampshire Connections Study Summary Report on Historic Resources,” prepared for Maine DOT and NHDOT. Lawson, Russell M. 2003 Portsmouth: An Old Town by the Sea. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. McMahon, Charles 2013 Legendary Locals of Portsmouth. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. Munton, Alex, Susan Goodwin, and Don LaPointe, et. al. 1978 Cradle of American Shipbuilding: A History of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Published by the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. Openo, Woodward D. 1988 The Sarah Mildred Long Bridge. Portsmouth: Peter E. Randall Publisher. Pope, Laura (ed.) 2013 Portsmouth Women: Madams & Matriarchs who Shaped New Hampshire’s Port City. The History Press. Pope, Laura (ed.) 2017 Becoming Portsmouth: Voices from a Half Century of Change. The History Press. Page 67 Public Archaeology Lab 2016 “Downtown Portsmouth Historic District - National Register of Historic Places Nomination.” Rice, John. 1998 Granite Wings: A history of the New Hampshire Air National Guard: 1947-1998. Robinson, J. Dennis 2007 Strawbery Banke: A Seaport Museum 400 Years in the Making. Portsmouth, NH: Peter E. Randall Publisher. Robinson, J. Dennis 2019 Music Hall: How a City Built a Theater and a Theater Shaped a City. Great Life Press. Rutter, William, SAIC, Inc. 2009 “Pease Airforce Base Area Form,” on file at NHDHR, Concord, NH. Saltonstall, William G. 1987 Ports of the Piscataqua. Bowie, MD: Heritage Books, Inc. �Sammons, Mark J. 1997 Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth, New Hampshire Official Guidebook. Portsmouth, NH: Peter Randall Publisher. Sammons Mark J. and Valerie Cunningham 2004 Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of African-American Heritage. Durham, NH: University of New Hampshire Press. Warren, William T. and Constance S. 2001 Then and Now – Portsmouth. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. Watterson, Rodney K. 2016 Boomtown Portsmouth: The World War II Transformation of a Quiet New England Seaport. Portsmouth, NH: Piscataqua Press Whittaker, Robert H. 1993 Portsmouth-Kittery Naval Shipyard in Old Photographs. Dover, NH: Alan Sutton Publishing. Whitehouse, Harold Jr. 2008 Home by Nine: the Real South End. Portsmouth, NH: Peter E. Randall Publisher Wills, Kate and Amanda Taylor, Kleinfelden 2012 “Bersum Gardens Historic District Area Form,” on file at NHDHR. Winslow, Richard E, III 2000 'Do Your Job!': An Illustrated Bicentennial History of the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, 1800-2000. Portsmouth, NH: Peter E. Randall for the Portsmouth Marine Society. Interviews Sherman Pridham grew up in Puddle Dock in the South End. Sherm often volunteers with Strawbery Banke to share his memories of growing up in the neighborhood before urban renewal and the creation of the museum. Ted Connors grew up in the West End of Portsmouth and was elected mayor in 1963 at age 26. He was the director of the Portsmouth Housing Authority from 1968 until 2005. Valerie Cunningham has lived in Portsmouth her entire life and is the founder of the Portsmouth Black History Trail. She was an early member of the NAACP when it formed in New Hampshire. Sarah (Ludlow) Bodge grew up in the South End and was well known for her dancing and acrobatic abilities. The community raised money to send her to perform on the Ted Mack Hour in New York City in 1951, and she later became a professional performer. Kevin MacLeod grew up downtown and in the North End. His family owned a local business, Yoken’s Restaurant, which was a local landmark and community hub. S. Lorraine Boston grew up in the West End and in Atlantic Heights. She continues to live in Portsmouth and is proud of her hometown. Harold Whitehouse, Jr. was born in Portsmouth and still lives in the South End. He served in the Navy and worked for the Portsmouth Herald for many years. He has written a memoir about growing up in Portsmouth. Page 68 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cold War Portsmouth Subject The topic of the resource Cold War Portsmouth (N.H.) 1950s Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (U.S.) Pease Air Force Base Description An account of the resource The Cold War was a 45-year standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. In the years following WWII, the US and the USSR began building and testing atomic weapons and the threat of nuclear annihilation was never far from anyone’s mind. Thus began a nuclear stalemate that would last until the 1990s. <br /><br />Arguably, it was the 1950s that experienced the strongest impact of the standoff. America had just survived WWII and now had to watch an arms race escalate on their tv sets. Bomb shelters were built and school children practiced attack drills. Films turned atomically mutated creatures into horrifying monsters while the public vilified Hollywood actors accused of being communists. And the space race began. It was in 1957 that Sputnik was launched by the Russians and the US followed suit one year later with Explorer I and President Eisenhower signing a public order that created NASA. <br /><br />The major events that were happening on the global stage catalyzed change in Portsmouth. The 1950s were a time of rapid growth as the Seacoast Region was transformed by military expansion. <br /><br />Pease Air Force Base was built to house bomber jets capable of delivering nuclear bombs to the Soviet Union, and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard transitioned to the production of nuclear-powered, fully submersible submarines. Between 1950 and 1960, Portsmouth’s population increased by about 8,600 people to reach 26,900, which was larger than the current population of around 22,000. This era saw the birth of the “Baby Boomers” when World War II veterans had growing families. Transportation, mobility, and popular culture were transformed, and the vintage style now known as “Mid-century Modern” was new. Housing developments of colonial capes and ranch houses were built at the outer edges of the city. Highways bypassed the downtown to move an increasing number of automobiles on the roads. Businesses flourished and began to move out of town as well. <br /><br />This collection serves as historical documentation of Portsmouth's economic, social, and cultural life during the Cold War period. Historical photos and citizens' recollections were used to capture a snapshot of what life was like in Portsmouth during the Cold War - from where people lived, shopped, and ate to urban renewal and other social and cultural aspects of daily life. <br /><br />The items in this collection were created by Preservation Company (Kensington, NH) in collaboration with the City of Portsmouth's Community Development Department and the NH Division of Historic Resources as part of an agreement when the federal Paul A. Doble Army Reserve Center was transferred to the City for its adaptation and reuse as the new Senior Activity Center. <span>This historic and photo documentation mitigation effort was funded with Portsmouth Community Development Block Grant Funds.</span><br /><br />On May 18th, Portsmouth Public Library hosted a program in conjunction with Portsmouth's Community Development. The program included a screening of the Cold War video included in this collection, along with recollections shared by former and current Portsmouth citizens about life during the 1950s. You can view the recording of this program on the library's <a href="https://youtu.be/RHs81R8v6so" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">YouTube channel</a>. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource City of Portsmouth and Preservation Company Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Cold War Portsmouth Collection Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Portsmouth Public Library, Special Collections Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource © 2020, Materials prepared by Preservation Company for the City of Portsmouth, All rights reserved by the City of Portsmouth. View our <a href="https://portsmouthexhibits.org/copyright-information" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Terms of Use and Copyright Information</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF MP4 Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text MovingImage Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Metadata and Omeka entry by K. Czajkowski, May 2021 Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cold War Portsmouth: A Snapshot of Life in the 1950s Booklet Subject The topic of the resource Cold War Portsmouth (N.H.) 1950s Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Pease Air Force Base Description An account of the resource A social and historical context photo research document of the City of Portsmouth during the mid-twentieth century. This booklet was created as per an agreement between the City of Portsmouth and NH Division of Historic Resources when the federal government transferred the Paul A. Doble Army Reserve Center at 125 Cottage Street to the City for the City's adaptive reuse into a new Senior Activity Center. This historic and photo documentation mitigation effort was funded with Portsmouth Community Development Block Grant Funds. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource City of Portsmouth and Preservation Company Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Portsmouth Public Library, Special Collections Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Community Development, City of Portsmouth Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource © 2020, Materials prepared by Preservation Company for the City of Portsmouth, All rights reserved by the City of Portsmouth View our <a href="https://portsmouthexhibits.org/copyright-information">Terms of Use and Copyright Information</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Text