The Caldwell Block is a historic block on S. Main Street in
Ipswich, Massachusetts
Ipswich is a coastal town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 13,785 at the 2020 census. Home to Willowdale State Forest and Sandy Point State Reservation, Ipswich includes the southern part of Plum Island. A res ...
. It is the oldest surviving building in Ipswich that was designed as a commercial and retail space, and is still used for that purpose. It is located prominently in the center of Ipswich, at the junction of North and South Main Streets, and Central and Market Streets. It was built in 1870 by Luther Caldwell, on the site of an old woolen mill that was destroyed by fire a few years earlier, and features
Italianate
The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...
styling. The building has always housed retail stores on the ground floor and office space above. It is notable as the location of the offices of writer
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tar ...
between 1961 and 1974, when he wrote many of his works there.
The building was listed on the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
in 1983.
See also
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References
Commercial blocks on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts
Buildings and structures in Ipswich, Massachusetts
National Register of Historic Places in Ipswich, Massachusetts
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