Jackson House

Portsmouth, New Hampshire

c.1664

A National Historic Landmark

Jackson House is the oldest surviving wood-frame house in New Hampshire. The house was built by Richard Jackson, a woodworker, farmer, and mariner, on his family's twenty-five-acre plot.

Jackson House resembles English post-medieval prototypes, but is notably American in its extravagant use of wood. Succeeding generations added a lean-to by 1715, and more additions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to accommodate several different family groups sharing the house at once.

Historic New England’s founder, William Sumner Appleton, acquired the house in 1924 from a member of the seventh generation of Jacksons to live here. Despite pressure to remove post-seventeenth-century additions, Appleton limited his restoration to stripping off twentieth-century lath and plaster and replacing eighteenth-century sash with diamond-paned casements where evidence of the original fenestration was too compelling to ignore.

Please visit nearby Langdon House, Rundlet-May House, Gilman Garrison House, Hamilton House, Sarah Orne Jewett House, and Sayward-Wheeler House.

Visit Jackson House

Open
First and third Saturdays, June 1 – October 15
11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Tours on the hour. Last tour at 4:00 p.m.
Closed July 4.

Admission
$6 adults
$5 senior
$3 students
Free for Historic New England members and Portsmouth residents. Become a member.

Location and directions
Jackson House
76 Northwest Street
Portsmouth, N.H. 03801

Map and directions

Directions detail: Take I-95 to Exit 7 (Market Street) and follow signs for downtown. Bear right after the railroad tracks. Turn right onto Deer Street. Turn right onto Maplewood Avenue. Turn right onto Northwest Street.

Parking: There is street parking along Northwest Street.