Haverhill, Massachusetts: From Town to City (Images of America Series) » (Reprint)

This collection is a charming sequel to Patricia O'Malley's Bradford: The End of an Era, published by Arcadia to commemorate the centennial of that town's annexation by Haverhill. Patricia O'Malley is the author of several articles and books about the area, and her insight will prove valuable to any person interested in this region's rich history.

In 1850, Haverhill, Massachusetts, was a small mercantile and farming town with slightly fewer than

6,000 residents. One half-century later, six times that many people called Haverhill home, and it had become an industrial center ranked as one of the top five shoe producers in the nation. The bustling downtown area featured buildings of uniform red-brick construction; elegant Victorian-style houses and new municipal buildings were erected; and civic pride was very evident. This was Haverhill's "Golden Age." Patricia Trainor O'Malley of Bradford College captures the exuberance and vitality of that era with more than 200 photographs from the Haverhill Public Library Special Collections. Included in this fascinating portrait are some of the oldest-known images of downtown Haverhill from the 1850s and 1860s.

Introduction     7
Acknowledgments     8
The Old Downtown     9
More of the Old Town     25
Transformation!     37
Grand and Glorious Architecture     57
A Thriving Retail Economy     69
Private Funding, Public Institutions     85
City Services     95
Faces and Places     113