City of Portsmouth Bike Tour - Visit Historic Landmarks + Sites

Highlights of the Hidden Neighborhoods of Portsmouth City View Bike Tour: Former North End / Italian "Little Italy" The Hill  South End and Prescott Park Strawbery Banke Wentworth Coolidge Mansion Frank Jones Brewery - West End Creek Neighborhood - Christian Shore

The destruction and preservation hits Little Italy. There are over a dozen colorful wooden houses are squeezed up against the towering Marriot and the Hilton Hotels. The concept, in the early 1970s, was that dilapidated buildings bred ragged people. After World War II, most cities demolish thousands of "blighted" urban areas across the nation. Most were replaced by high-rise apartments, shopping malls, and hotels. In Portsmouth, we lost much of historic Vaughan Street and replaced it with a parking garage and open lots. We will pass by a collection of preserved historic homes saved by urban renewal and move into this area for preservation.

Strawbery Banke Museum began as a “save our history” effort by the citizens of Portsmouth. In the late 1950s, Puddle Dock, an area of dilapidated homes near the Piscataqua River was targeted for urban renewal. All the “substandard” homes in Puddle Dock — some of which dated back to the 1600s — were to torn down and replaced with modern buildings. That was until city librarian Dorothy Vaughn addressed the Portsmouth Rotary Club one day in 1957. That day Vaughn “laid it on the line” for the Rotary Club, telling them that every time one of the old houses was torn or an antique piece of Portsmouth furniture shipped out of town, the city was losing its past. The Rotary Club was galvanized into action, and while Puddle Dock did undergo urban renewal, much of it has been saved as a historic museum.

Explore the beautiful Little HARBOR

The Wentworth Lear Historic Houses are a pair of adjacent historic houses on the south waterfront in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Both buildings and an 18th-century warehouse were owned by the Wentworth Lear Historic Houses and were operated as a house museum. Only the Wentworth-Gardner house is a museum.

Prescott Park is a ten-plus acre waterfront park in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, United States. The land was purchased in the 1930s by two sisters, Josie and Sarah Prescott. The sisters, public school teachers, had used an inheritance to systematically purchase and clear properties along the Piscataqua River.

Strawbery Banke is an outdoor history museum located in the South End historic district of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It is the oldest neighborhood in New Hampshire to be settled by Europeans, and the earliest neighborhood remaining in the present-day city of Portsmouth.

Porter was a prominent UnionBrevet Major General during the American Civil War, celebrated for his role in the Peninsula Campaign but infamously court-martialed and cashiered for his actions at the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862. A highly regarded officer in the pre-war army, he was eventually exonerated and reinstated to the army in 1886 after a long campaign to clear his name. During the Second Battle of Manassas (Second Bull Run) in August 1862, Porter's V Corps was transferred to Maj. Gen. John Pope's Army of Virginia. Porter, who held a low opinion of Pope, was accused of disobeying orders to attack on August 29, 1862, arguing that the attack would have been futile against strong Confederate positions. Following the Union defeat, a court-martial found Porter guilty of disobedience and misconduct, resulting in his dismissal from the Army on January 21, 1863.