Newington Center Historic District
Description and history
The town of Newington was originally settled in the 17th century as part of Dover. It was set off as a separate parish in 1712, and incorporated as a separate town in 1713. Its historic town center's origins date to 1640, when common land was set aside by the town. Some of this became the town center area, and a larger part (eventually reaching more than 100 acres (40 ha) in size) was at some point designated as the town forest.
The town center is clustered along a section of Nimble Hill Road, a historic north-south route between Dover and Portsmouth, and is also passed just to the north by a historic alignment of the Old Boston Post Road, connecting Boston, Massachusetts, to points in what is now Maine. The north-south road was truncated at its southern end by the construction of Pease Air Force Base in the 1950s, which also greatly reduced the town forest's size. One of the center's focal points is the Congregational Church, a structure built in 1712 and extensively altered in 1835, giving it its present Greek Revival appearance. Newington's Old Parsonage (1710) and Newington Meeting House (1717) are some of the oldest buildings in New Hampshire.