The Historical North Shore & Essex County
Toner Real Estate is familiar with the Massachusetts North Shore and Essex County. We possess the marketing expertise and historical knowledge beneficial to providing personalized attention to our clients. We can provide descriptions of communities, neighborhoods and down town areas for Massachusetts and Essex County from the rocky coast of Nahant to the rural routes of Beverly Farms. We look forward to serving your real estate needs and making your dreams a reality.
As well as being a great seaside destination, what locals call “the North Shore” is rich with heritage. Salem, best known for its infamous 1692 Witch Trials, was also a wealthy port: see the Friendship, a reconstruction of a 200-year-old three-master; take a guided tour of Salem Maritime National Historic Site; admire treasures and a Chinese merchant’s house at the Peabody Essex Museum. Out on Cape Ann, Gloucester is the real-life town in the movie The Perfect Storm: cruise on a schooner, go on a whale watch. Rockport is an artist’s colony; Essex, Ipswich and Newburyport are Colonial gems. Take a river cruise, eat famous fried clams, shop for antiques.
Lynn is home to Lynn Beach and Lynn Heritage State Park and is about 7 miles (11 km) north of downtown Boston. Lynn, now the largest city in Essex County, is an urban manufacturing and commercial center, densely populated and culturally diverse. Residents are proud of the city’s long history, which parallels the history of New England as a whole.
The Town of Nahant is a resort town of rocky coasts in the southernmost part of Essex County. It is the smallest municipality by area in the state. It is primarily a residential community.
Founded in 1626, by the late 1700s Salem MA had grown and prospered. Its ships sailed the world, many dealing in trade from the Orient, especially spices, silks, and other luxury goods. Salem is the birthplace of the National Guard and the home of the infamous Salem Witchcraft Trials of 1692. The gracious houses and public buildings constructed during this era are still here to be seen, and Salem’s museums hold a treasure of mementos and artifacts from the maritime boom. The population was 41,340 at the 2010 census.
Swampscott is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States located 15 miles up the coast from Boston in an area known as the North Shore. The population is 13,787 as of 2010. A former summer resort on Massachusetts Bay, Swampscott is today an affluent residential community, the 16th wealthiest in the state, which includes the village of Beach Bluff, as well as part of the neighborhood of Clifton. It is known for its quiet suburban character and beaches. The town is home to Marian Court College.
A day-trip to Essex MA, 34 miles northeast of Boston (map), includes a pleasant ride through pretty country, an hour or two browsing in the town’s dozens of shops selling antiques and collectibles, a boat cruise, and a lunch or dinner of traditional seafood: clams and lobsters.
The swift, tidal Ipswich River runs through the heart of Ipswich MA (map), an old New England colonial town founded in 1634 and located 31 miles (50 km) northeast of Boston.
Gloucester, north of Boston on Cape Ann (map), was at one time an important shipbuilding town, and still prides itself on being the birthplace of the schooner (1713).
About an hour’s drive north of Boston, the Massachusetts seacoast’s other cape, Cape Ann, is actually an island (map), separated from the rest of Massachusetts by the Annisquam River, a short salt water channel between Gloucester harbor and Ipswich Bay.
Nearby Marblehead is a charming, historic port town and an important yacht harbor.
Summer and winter, beautiful, perfectly sheltered Marblehead harbor is full of white boats bobbing on the water, or in drydock, or heading out to sea.
Visit North of Boston a story in every mile for additional region information.
