Your own town
📍 Newburyport
3 chapters on a 3D map of Newburyport, about 40 minutes in all. Students explore it with Scout, find a true story at each place, then use what they learned.
Chapter 1 plays in your browser on a computer.
City Hall · The Bulfinch Courthouse · The Tracy Mansion
Standards: 3.T1.3b · 3.T1.3c · 3.T1.3f
The Market House · The Old Gaol · The Powder House · Birthplace of the Coast Guard
Standards: 3.T1.3b · 3.T1.3f
The Custom House · The Range Lights · The Steeple
Standards: 3.T1.3b · 3.T5.5c · 3.T1.1
Word for word what students read, with the sources we checked them against.
1851
Newburyport used to decide things at town meetings, where the town’s voters came together. In 1851 it became a city instead, one of the first in Massachusetts. A city has a mayor and a city council. This brick hall has held mayors and meetings. This is where the city decides things together.
Sources: cityofnewburyport.com · mass.gov · en.wikipedia.org · watertown-ma.gov · newburyportma.gov
1823
Built as a market house in 1823. Then it spent a hundred years as the fire station. Now it is a theater. It has been a market, a fire station and a theater.
Sources: cityofnewburyport.com · firehouse.org
1835
Solid granite, designed by the same man who designed the Washington Monument. Ship captains came in here to tell the government what their ships were carrying. Then they paid a tax on it.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org · ppreservationist.com