West Newbury Historical Commission’s Monthly Tales of Our Town

July’s story concerns the repurposed buildings at 282 and 320-322 Main Street, which serve as reminders of West Newbury’s brief boom time as a manufacturing town of factory whistles, industrial stench, and labor disputes—along with remarkable wealth, growth, and civic improvement. Between the 1840s and the 1890s, West Newbury was an industrial town, with twice as many employed in manufacturing as farming. Yet in 1915, the Boston Globe described West Newbury, “‘beautiful for its situation’ on the banks of the Merrimac,” as having again “become a farming community entirely, with the exception of its being used as a ‘bedroom’ for many of the workers of Haverhill.”

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