Yankee City

I remember Newburyport as a summer landmark of my childhood when we used to drive through it in our old seven-passenger Jordan on the way to Maine. For me it was the last city in Massachusetts, and in those days I felt like a world traveler in crossing the boundaries of the state. I had the first tantalizing glimpse of its spires from the Newburyport Turnpike beyond the Danvers Insane Asylum. It seemed so serene a city, set on a green hill windy in space and with the great flood of the Merrimack River sweeping past below. The neo-classic eighteenth-century houses set apart and screened by elms were impressive to me even as a child, coming as I did from the close-ranged streets of suburban Dorchester. I was aware, with a twinge of envy, of their aloof security.

In those days we had to drive along the residential streets, past the Episcopal Church topped by a bishop’s mitre (each time I looked for that) and down into the business district to get to the chain bridge across the river. My father invariably got lost en route, so that we usually made the circuit of the city at least twice.

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Francis Russell

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I remember Newburyport as a summer landmark of my childhood when we used to drive through it in our old seven-passenger Jordan on the way to Maine. For me it was the last city in Massachusetts, and in those days I felt like a world traveler in crossing the boundaries of the state. I had the first tantalizing glimpse of its spires from the Newburyport Turnpike beyond the Danvers Insane Asylum. It seemed so serene a city, set on a green hill windy in space and with the great flood of the Merrimack River sweeping past below. The neo-classic eighteenth-century houses set apart and screened by elms were impressive to me even as a child, coming as I did from the close-ranged streets of suburban Dorchester. I was aware, with a twinge of envy, of their aloof security.

In those days we had to drive along the residential streets, past the Episcopal Church topped by a bishop’s mitre (each time I looked for that) and down into the business district to get to the chain bridge across the river. My father invariably got lost en route, so that we usually made the circuit of the city at least twice.