OLD TOWN BY THE SEA

It is healthy to enter the New Year with as little baggage as possible. With that in mind we hereby unload the following. Portsmouth is largely lovely city. That’s why most of us are here – for the colonial houses, the swift-flowing river, the purple sunsets and the cozy neighborhoods. And there are those places you love to avoid.

Worst Places in Portsmouth
Courtesy of the NH Gazette

(1) Portsmouth Traffic Circle

Hating the traffic circle is about as original as hating Saddam, but first things first. What I like least, besides the cloud of death that hovers over the rotary, is the fact that for many tourists – this whirring automotive circle is all they see of Portsmouth. I can’t count the tourists who have told me that they passed this spot for decades on the way to Maine without ever getting off the highway to explore the Old Town by the Sea. Learning to navigate this rotary is, of course, a local rite of passage – like the way adolescents in the rainforest leap off tall towers with vines tied around their ankles. There is something to be gained, I suppose, by knowing how to merge and rotate simultaneously. Mostly I fear meeting up with the guy who skipped driving school on the day they did traffic circles. I knew a couple who got married in the back of a van in the 80s while going around the Portsmouth Rotary a couple dozen times. There is some sort of metaphor there, but I’ve never quite grasped the point.

(2) Upper Islington Street

Most of the places I seem to like least were once perfectly decent areas of town that were wrecked by progress. They got caught in between upheavals of change, like that dark space between a refrigerator and a wall. Islington, like Pleasant and Middle streets, was once a beautiful tree lined rural entrance to the city. Gov. Ichabod Goodwin’s grand mansion was here. But something happened in the 20^th century as the trees died and commercial shops of every size and shape splintered the passageway to the brewery at the West End. Everything historian Dorothy Vaughan feared would happen in Market Square, happened here instead.

(3) High- Hanover Parking Garage

The only way to preserve our historic treasures is to share them with the world. As a growing heritage and cultural destination point we desperately need places to store our visiting tourists, who bring the cash that keeps us going. We got rid of our train service, so we’re stuck with the cars, and with each new car comes a new dank, butt-ugly concrete and asphalt parking spot. I don’t have to like the garage to use it. I don’t have a better solution, and clearly no one else does. More ugliness is on the way.

(4) The Alley Above and to the Right of Gilleys

This place feels evil. The road rises unnaturally and is crushed between the parking garage and the rear end of a Congress Street block. There was a deadly snowball fight here years ago. Now there is a stinking trash bin and the road is blocked by a concrete barrier. Even my dog senses the danger in the air here.

(5) The Wall Around "Point of Graves"

With all good intentions one of the local charitable groups once "repaired" the ancient stone wall that surrounds the city’s oldest burying ground. Knowing nothing about preservation or building stone walls, they simply encased the stone in a hardening spray called "Gunite". Now that protective layer is cracked and peeling and this hallowed spot looks like hell.

(6) Portsmouth Parade Mall

Someday historians may lobby to prevent the destruction of this building since it represents one of the greatest architectural blunders in the city’s long history. Look up "gross" on Wikipedia and if you don’t find a picture of this hulking monster, you should send one in. For this mess we tore down Little Italy, a brick schoolhouse and uprooted a generation of immigrant families during the last gasp of urban renewal in the 70s. The only time I ever enter the building – and it seems wholly appropriate – is when my doctor requires a blood or urine sample from the lab there.

(7) Market Street Extension

Between the road to the Gypsum factory and the Chamber of Commerce is a no-pedestrian strip of highway that I travel regularly. I don’t drive a car so I walk it. This could be an interesting spot since the road intersects the Piscataqua as it flows into the North Mill Pond. But there is no sidewalk on either the riverside or the side with the Albacore submarine. The breakdown lane is often sprinkled with shimmering bits of broken glass and particles of rusty metal, now encased in patches of black ice. It feels dangerous and, walking there day after day, I can’t help thinking about Steven King’s accident.

(8) Merging onto Lafayette Road

You know the part I mean. You’re traveling peacefully down Middle Street past the Greek Orthodox Church and then suddenly the road veers right and you’re on Route 1 and everyone else is a maniac. You only want to merge left to go bowling or to the movie theater or Philbrick’s Fresh Market, but the tide is against you. Here the town becomes a city with a vengeance and the sprawl doesn’t quit until you hit Hampton Beach.

(9) Woodbury Ave. Toward the "Mall-area"

Go ahead, write your feeble protest letters, but this is still, with the exception of Lafayette Road, the most dismal stretch in the city. That is because it looks and feels like everywhere else in America, and by the time we capitalists are done, the rest of the world. Sure, I go there, now and then, but I would gladly shop and eat junk food elsewhere. I have nothing against rank commercialism, per se, but there is nothing on this strip I couldn’t live without. And I will not shed a tear when the tall grass and vines someday swallow each and every building here and the returning dinosaurs trample them back to dust.

(10) Got a solution? Got a least-favorite Portsmouth spot? This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Copyright © 2006 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved.