ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY

“A GOOD IN-LAND TOWN: Buildings & landscapes in North Andover, MA from 1640 - 1940”

The product of more than thirty year's work, A Good In-Land Town by Stephen Roper, is a comprehensive record of the rich architectural heritage and disappearing rural landscapes of one of New England's oldest and most historic communities. A Good In-Land Town is illustrated with photographs by North Andover photographer Gayton Osgood. Published by the North Andover Historical Society, this 264 page limited-edition hardcover book is available exclusively in our 1646 Bookstore.

In 1702, when Judge Samuel Sewall of Salem traveled through what was later to become North Andover, Massachusetts, he encountered what he called "a good in-land town, and of a good prospect." It was an accurate, if modest, description of a community that would experience tremendous growth and change over the three centuries to follow.

In A Good In-Land Town, Roper, architectural historian elaborates on Sewall's observation by exploring North Andover's evolution through a study of its buildings. From the first, simple dwellings, through the shops and mills of the commercial centers, to the grand gentlemen's country seats, the town's manmade topography is presented not as a series of isolated monuments but as an almost organic intertwining of four discrete historical landscapes.

Taken together, these buildings, in their various settings, tell the story of a community centered first on agriculture, then on trading and manufacturing, and, as the 20th century progressed, on an increasingly suburban life-style.

Roper's carefully annotated portrait of North Andover's development is based on an exhaustive review of property titles, manuscript records, local newspapers, and other documentary evidence.