Major Phases in Rye:
1600’s/1`700’s: fishing, farming, a few mills and some small cottage industries
1800’s:Â Regular coach service to Portsmouth means more Rye people working there and at ship yard starting 1800;
1840’s RR brings tourists and hotels, boarding houses, summer communities like Straws and Concord Point and mansions for the rich, and the wider world to Rye and Rye going out into the word
1900’s: 1899 trolley makes commuting in seacoast easy and first housing development at Jenness beach c. 1904;
 post WWI auto boom brings tourist accommodations and seacoast businesses to serve drivers and beach goers;
 post WWII – brings first conventional housing developments (Central at Cable and Mt View Terrace (nr. Websters); bigger developments begin in 70’s
We have open space because, thankfully many owners of former farmsteads retain that space for aesthetic value – ie Central Rd. and some other roads
Blanchard’s on West Rd only real farmers left; Philbricks hay but no animals
About 400 houses built before WWII but that is rough – in ’09 i took photos of 350 of them driving around – for our old house doc project at museum
