First Period Architecture

The oldest surviving buildings are considered New Hampshire's "First Period" architecture. Two-story structures exclusively built of wood with brick chimneys, these combined everything necessary for survival in these rough early days: food storage, cooking facilities, and defensive storage against attacking, marauding natives. Numerous examples dating from the late 1600s, many lovingly restored, can be found in the Strawbery Banke neighborhood of Portsmouth and around the Seacoast's Rockingham County.

Richard Jackson House, Portsmouth, NH. Circa 1664 from a 1909 postcard. Situated on Portsmouth's historic Christian Shore, this is the oldest surviving building in New Hampshire and is one of New England's most picturesque seventeenth-century dwellings. Erected by Richard Jackson, a cooper and shipwright, and occupied by his descendants for more than 250 years, this wood-frame house has many interesting structural details. A central brick chimney rises above the peaked roof of the original portion of the house; a lean-to added about 1690 slopes toward a stonewall at the rear. A tiny gambrel-roof wing, dating from the mid-eighteenth-century, and a lean-to ell are subsequent additions.