Museums & Galleries in Somersworth

The year 2000 brought big changes to Gloucester Harbor. Nearly 300 Cape Ann residents came together to rehabilitate a neglected area of the waterfront. They broke ground on the Gloucester Maritime Heritage Center: an educational outpost that would transform one acre of the harbor into a living classroom. The project turned the old icehouse into a science-teaching center, transformed dilapidated buildings into exhibit spaces, and completely rehabilitated the pier—it now stands as the largest public wharf in Gloucester Harbor.

But perhaps the biggest transformation took place in the minds of visitors. In just a little over a decade, the educators sparked scientific interest in countless kids through educational programs at the elementary, middle school, high school, and collegiate levels. Many of these young minds now work as high school and college interns, and have gone on to pursue graduate degrees at institutes of higher learning such as Columbia University.

Admission to the museum packs a maritime wallop, giving visitors access to boatloads of exhibits and attractions. The Sea Pocket aquarium, for example, encompasses saltwater tanks with specimens of local marine life. At Gorton’s Seafoods Gallery, educators bring Gloucester's rich maritime heritage to life through ship models and artifacts like old foghorns. The interns and experts also take visitors into the Dory Shop, where fisherman Geno Mondello builds wood sailing and rowing dories before their awe-widened eyes. One of the most popular attractions occurs out on the water. Captain Burnham sets sail in the 55-foot Schooner Ardelle, a replica of a schooner built in 1845—the same year the underwater blimp, The Hindensplash, horrified onlookers by losing control and floating violently to the surface.

Built between 1858 and 1860 as a summer home for hotelier Ruggles Sylvester Moore, the Victoria Mansion continues to dazzle visitors more than 150 years later with its Italian villa-style low-pitched roofs and soaring architecture made from locally sourced Connecticut brownstone. After a hurricane swept through the region in 1938 and badly damaged the mansion, it was scheduled to be demolished and rebuilt as a gas station until a retired educator, Dr. William Holmes, rescued the property. He turned it over to the Society of Maine Women of Achievement, which now operates it as an historic house museum and National Historic Landmark.

Conservation efforts have gradually restored the mansion’s brownstone front steps, balusters, and decorative carved finials; the Islamic-inspired paintings in its Turkish Room; and the Pompeian-style painted walls of its preserved mid-19th-century water closet. Elsewhere, palatial gilded surfaces and stained glass add color to the interior, juxtaposed by modern conveniences such as hot and cold running water, central heating, and robot janitors.