Front Street Block

The Central Gloucester Historic District encompasses the historic commercial, civic, and residential core of the fishing community of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Now largely defined by 19th century architectural trends, it includes the city's commercial downtown (Main Street), its civic heart on Dale and Prospect Streets, and some adjacent residential areas. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

The Sargent House Museum is a historic house museum located at 49 Middle Street, Gloucester, Massachusetts. The museum is open on weekends from Memorial day to Columbus day, and offers guided tours of the historic home, a small gift shop, and rotating exhibits in its exhibit space. The Sargent House was built in 1782 for the feminist writer and philosopher Judith Sargent Murray and her first husband, John Stevens, a merchant in the West Indies trade. Judith's second husband, John Murray, the founder of the first Universalist Church in America, also lived in the house. The home is considered high Georgian because of its symmetrical floor plan, and includes Georgian details in its quoins, windows, cornices, and columns. The central stairway is an unusually fine example of the skill of 18th-century woodworkers. It has an undercut spiral newel, two types of spiral balusters on each step, and a long arched window enclosed by Ionic columns at the landing. This stair was almost purchased by the MET Museum in NY around 1915 for installation their "period rooms." This spurred the former families and friends of the House to preserve it as a museum. The Museum houses a small but exquisite collection of American decorative arts and furniture. It displays sculpture by Hiram Powers and one of the finest collections of family portraits in the United States by major American artists like Christian Gullager, Thomas Sully, James Frothingham, and Alvan Fisher. It has landscape prints and a painting by Fitz Henry Lane. The Museum owns several Thomas Sheraton pieces of furniture, as well as furniture made in major American furniture centers like Boston, Salem, Newburyport and New Orleans. Artifacts from the life of Judith Sargent Murray such as her dictionary and first edition "The Gleaner" (1798) are also exhibited. The house has a collection of original works by the painter John Singer Sargent, a descendant of the Sargent family.

Short & Main is a restaurant in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It was included in The New York Times's 2024 list of the 22 best pizzerias in the U.S.

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. It was built in 1810 form James Tappan, a schoolteacher from New Hampshire who once had Daniel Webster as a student. Tappan operated Tappan's Hotel on the premises, and it served as a major social center for the community. Later owners also operated it as a hotel space, including one who gave it the name "Puritan House". It now houses other businesses.The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, and was included in the Central Gloucester Historic District in 1982.

St. Peter's Fiesta is a five-day festival honoring the patron saint of the fisherman, St. Peter. Hosted by the Italian American community of Gloucester, Massachusetts, the festival involves a carnival, seine boat races, and the Greasy Pole contest, and attracts people from all over.

The Gloucester Lyceum (1830-1872) of Gloucester, Massachusetts, was an association for "the improvement of its members in useful knowledge, and the advancement of popular education." It incorporated in 1831.From the 1830s through at least the 1860s, the Lyceum arranged lectures from notables such as: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., "the two Everetts, Choate, Sumner, Rantoul, Winthrop, Colfax, Greely, ... Parker, Curtis, Phillips, Bayard Taylor, Dr. Holland, Chapin, Starr King, Hillard, ... Beecher, Giles, Gough, Dr. Hayes, the Arctic explorer, Burlingame, ... Alger, Whipple, Murdoch, Vanderhoff, Bancroft, and Dana." From 1830, "meetings were held in Union Hall ... until 1844 when the Murray Institute was used for one season prior to the occupancy of the Town Hall."In 1854 "the Lyceum opened its library on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons and evenings, with 1,400 volumes. It was located in the eastern parlor of the residence of F. G. Low on what was then the corner of Spring and Duncan Streets." Patrons could use the library for $1 per year; the fee was waived for those unable to afford it. In 1863 the library moved to Front Street; the building burned down in 1864. Thereafter it occupied rooms on Middle Street (in the Baptist church), and later on Front Street (in the Babson block). Much of the funding for the library came from "Samuel E. Sawyer, a Boston merchant, but a native of Gloucester."The Lyceum became the Gloucester Lyceum and Sawyer Free Library under a new charter in 1872.

Gloucester City Hall is located at 9 Dale Avenue in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It was built in 1870 and dedicated the following year, and has served as the main location for the city's offices since then. Built to a design by Bryant and Rogers, it is a two-story Second Empire brick building. Each of the rectangular building's four corners is topped by its own pyramidal roof structure, above which is a small rectangular cupola with its own roof. Centered on the front elevation is a clock tower that is brick in its lower levels, and decorated wood above, ending in a copper dome.The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and included in the Central Gloucester Historic District in 1982.

Fort Defiance was a fort that existed from 1794 to after 1865 on Fort Point in Gloucester, Massachusetts. The location protecting the inner harbor was also called Watch House Point.

The Folly Cove Designers were a mid-20th-century group of American artists block printing in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on Cape Ann. Their blocks were made of linoleum, and they primarily printed on fabric.

Cape Ann Museum is an art and historical museum located in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Its collection and programming focuses on the artists and art colonies of Cape Ann, including the Rocky Neck Art Colony and the Folly Cove Designers. The museum's collection also features objects from Gloucester's fishing and maritime history, and granite quarrying history.

Gloucester ( GLOST-ər) is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, in the United States. It sits on Cape Ann and is a part of Massachusetts's North Shore. The population was 29,729 at the 2020 U.S. Census. An important center of the fishing industry and a popular summer destination, Gloucester consists of an urban core on the north side of the harbor and the outlying neighborhoods of Annisquam, Bay View, Lanesville, Folly Cove, Magnolia, Riverdale, East Gloucester, and West Gloucester.

Gloucester station is an MBTA Commuter Rail station in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Located off Railroad Avenue and Washington Street in downtown Gloucester, it serves the Rockport branch of the Newburyport/Rockport Line. The station consists of a single side platform serving the line's single track. The station has a mini-high platform, making it accessible.