Walk one street in Portsmouth and cross four centuries without moving your feet

Portsmouth’s oldest block is still standing

Most living history museums build their villages from scratch, hauling old buildings onto empty fields. Strawbery Banke did something different.

This nearly 10-acre outdoor museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, sits right where the original neighborhood stood.

The waterfront district called Puddle Dock tells the story of everyday life across more than 350 years, and you walk from house to house, century to century, on the same ground where the families actually lived.

What each door opens to is a completely different era.

A city librarian saved these homes from the wrecking ball

By the late 1950s, Puddle Dock had fallen apart. The old homes faced demolition.

But city librarian Dorothy Vaughan pushed back, warning that Portsmouth was about to lose its own past. Local citizens rallied behind her, and instead of tearing the neighborhood down, they turned it into a museum.

The name comes from the town’s first settlement, where early colonists found wild strawberries growing along the riverbank. That original spelling stuck.

Each house is set to a different year

You can tour about 10 fully furnished homes here, and they range from grand mansions to small working-class places. The rooms hold actual dishes, furniture and objects that belonged to past owners.

What makes it work is the time layering. One house drops you into the 1770s.

The next puts you in 1919.

Some homes sit mid-restoration on purpose, so you can see old plaster, exposed beams and the painstaking craft of bringing a 200-year-old wall back together.

Patriots and loyalists argued under this tavern roof

The William Pitt Tavern has stood on this spot since 1766.

During the Revolutionary War years, it was a gathering place where loyalists and patriots sat under the same roof and fought over the future of the colonies.

The Stavers family ran the place and kept it going through some of the toughest years in Portsmouth’s history.

Step inside and you can try the colonial games set out on the tables, the same kind of diversions people played between arguments.

A merchant’s wife left behind her garden journal

The Goodwin Mansion shows Portsmouth at its wealthiest.

Merchant Ichabod Goodwin and his wife Sarah once lived here, and the rooms are set to 1870, a period of big social and industrial change. Rich furnishings fill every corner.

But the real find came from Sarah’s journal. She recorded what she planted and where, and gardeners used those notes to recreate her flower beds exactly as she kept them. You can walk through them today.

A Jewish family’s first home tells an immigrant story

Not every house here belonged to the wealthy. The Shapiro House shows a Jewish immigrant family settling into their new life around 1919, and their story reflects the growing immigrant community in Portsmouth at the time.

Nearby, the People of the Dawnland exhibit shares Abenaki culture from past to present. A reproduction Abenaki wigwam previously stood beside the exhibit and is awaiting reconstruction.

Together, these spaces put ordinary lives front and center.

Vintage Campbell’s soup cans line the shelves

The Abbott Store is frozen in World War II. Widow Bertha Abbott ran it with help from a local teenager, and the shelves are stocked exactly as they would have been, with vintage goods and a Coca-Cola cooler near the door.

The store cashed paychecks and delivered groceries to busy shipyard workers who kept the war effort running. You get a clear picture of how one small shop held a whole neighborhood together when times were tight.

Try a loom inside a 300-year-old house

Skilled craftspeople run hands-on demonstrations across the grounds, and the specific crafts change by day and staff availability.

At the Dinsmore Shop, you can watch coopering, the old art of building wooden barrels by hand. Inside the historic Cotton Tenant House South, weavers work the looms and let you try one yourself.

Over at the Wheelwright House, open-fire cooking fills the room with smoke and the smell of whatever is simmering in the pot.

A tavern keeper from 1777 might answer your questions

Costumed roleplayers dress and speak as real people who once lived in Puddle Dock. You might run into a tavern keeper from the Revolutionary era or a shopkeeper stocking shelves in the 1940s.

Many stay fully in character and answer your questions as if they are living in their own year. Look for an American flag outside a house.

That signals the door is open, someone is home and they have a story to tell you.

Three heritage apple orchards dot the grounds

More than 10 gardens spread across the property, and each one matches a specific time period. A formal Victorian-era garden shows off the style of the 1800s.

A colonial kitchen garden grows heirloom vegetables and herbs the way early settlers did. Three heritage apple orchards fill out the grounds between the houses.

Lawns and picnic areas give you space to sit, eat lunch and let the kids run around between house tours.

The old waterway became a public ice rink

Where the Puddle Dock waterway once flowed, a seasonal outdoor ice rink now sits in the heart of the museum.

Known as the Labrie Family Skate at Puddle Dock Pond, it opened to the public in December 2014 after a community fundraising effort.

You can lace up for public skating, sign up for lessons or jump into a pick-up pond hockey game with the locals. Historic houses line the edges and make it feel like skating in another century.

Carolers and candle boxes light up December nights

Every December, Strawbery Banke hosts its Candlelight Stroll over several evenings. Candle boxes and string lights line the paths.

Historic homes are decorated with greens and dried flowers cut from the museum’s own gardens. Carolers, fifers and drummers fill the cold air with seasonal music as you walk from house to house.

Inside, costumed families share old New England holiday customs. The whole neighborhood glows the way it might have 200 years ago.

Explore Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire

You can find Strawbery Banke Museum at 14 Hancock St. in Portsmouth’s historic district.

Furnished houses and gardens are open seasonally from spring through fall, with special events during the holidays and winter months.

Plan on spending two to four hours to walk the grounds and visit the homes at your own pace.

Check the official website before you go for current hours, admission prices and any seasonal programming on the calendar.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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