Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1976. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“The Puritan House is a historic hotel building at 3 Washington Street and 2 Main Street in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It was the first brick building to be built in the city.”
Wikipedia article Puritan House, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 350 National Register listings in Essex County · listed in 1976 · category: Building · one of 2 National Historic Landmarks in Essex County.
National Register reference number.76000244- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Fires near this property
24 since 2015
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 24 fires within 5 miles of Puritan House between
2015 and 2020, burning about 19 acres in total. None started naturally. 5 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Recreation and ceremony
10
Arson/incendiarism
5
Smoking
4
Debris and open burning
3
Misuse of fire by a minor
1
Equipment and vehicle use
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 5,187 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Puritan House between 1817 and
1975: 2,146 Animalia, 1,369 Plantae, 1,037 Fungi, 326 Chromista, 198 Unrecorded, 91 Protozoa, 20 Bacteria. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A H HIGGINSON, A Perlmutter, A. A. Eaton and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
6 workings within 5 miles of Puritan House: 6 past producers.
None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Granite. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Gloucester, the town this property stands in, in 10 storm reports between 1997 and 2020: 6 thunderstorm wind, 2 lightning, 1 heavy rain, 1 flood.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
2,266 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Description of the property
The Puritan House (1810) is located in downtown Gloucester Center at the corner of Main and Washington Streets. Its main facade faces Gloucester Harbor and the rear extension stretches up the hill on Washington Street. The Puritan House is situated near the commercial district, although it is separated from it by a vacant lot and a number of intrusions. The principal section of the building facing Main Street is four stories with a six-bay facade. The building is brick and sits on a granite foundation which is nearly a full story in height. The central doorway on Main Street is arched (originally with fanlight) as is another entryway on Washington Street. The roof of the main section is a hip roof and has two brick chimneys. There are dentils at the eaves.
The rear portion of the building (also built in 1810) provides additional hotel rooms and echoes the treatment of the main section. This part of the building is also brick, but is only three stories. Another addition on the northeast side of the building was built around 1905 and is of wood construction. On the interior, the main lobby is approached by a stairway leading from the Main Street entrance. The most striking feature of the lobby is the winding staircase which goes to the third floor. Just off the lobby on the east side of the building is a room approximately 20 feet by 30 feet which has a nicely appointed marble fireplace. On the Washington Street side of the lobby is another room with two brick fireplaces at either end of the west wall.
The floors above are divided into rooms used for lodging in the old inn.
/ARCHITECT STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE The Burthan The Puritan House is significant as one of the first brick buildings in Gloucester and as the first hotel in the community. Standing on a prominent spot overlooking Gloucester's inner harbor, the Puritan House (Tappan's Hotel or Atlantic House as it was first known) was certainly the most impressive hotel in the vicinity at the time of its construction. With forty-five rooms for guests, it had the capacity to serve a city ten times the size of the little fishing village of Gloucester. Therefore, its erection was no small source of amazement to the inhabitants there. When the Puritan House was built, there were only two brick structures in town -- a fort-keeper's house at the fort point and an old gunhouse on High Street.
The new four-story hotel became the most significant brick building in the area and a fore- runner of the brick commercial buildings which followed on Main Street. The Puritan House was one of the few buildings to escape a disastrous fire of 1830. The hotel was built by Colonel James Tappan of New Hampshire. Tappan was a school teacher, one of whose students was Daniel Webster. Tappan employed a large force of workers to excavate the foundation, during which a solid ledge was encountered. The task of cutting through this rock brought about such added expense that Tappan was forced to borrow money to complete the venture. In the late nineteenth century the hotel was owned by John Mason, a surveyor of Cape Ann.
Both Tappan and Mason served as representatives from the area to the State Legislature. One of the famous occupants of the hotel was Winslow Homer who stayed there in 1873.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 76000244, 13 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
Block
