Description

The fifth Morning Mixer of 2022 will be held Friday, June 10 at 8:30 a.m. at the Portsmouth Historical Society Discover Portsmouth Welcome Center. 

Imagine That! The Power of Picture Books is now open to the public every day except July 4 until Sept. 25. There  will be story hours in the gallery, school- and camp-group tours, pop-up reading around town, evening lectures, weekend workshops with illustrators, not to mention partner events with the Portsmouth Public Library (NH), G.Willikers Books & Toys, The Music Hall and The Children's Museum of New Hampshire.

Portsmouth Historical Society, founded in 1917, is a nonprofit devoted to championing the history, arts, and culture of the Portsmouth region through acquisitions, preservation, museum exhibitions, programs, and publications. It operates two facilities: Discover Portsmouth and the 1758 John Paul Jones House Museum and Garden, a national historic landmark.
 

Discover Portsmouth is really two separate Federal Style buildings both built around 1810. One was originally a private home built by Thomas Morton who ran a grocery store downtown. The other half, at the corner of Islington and Middle Streets, was a private school called Portsmouth Academy. After the school closed, it was rented for a Civil War memorial and in 1898 was entirely renovated for the city’s first public library.

In 1954 a one-story brick addition was built connecting the two properties. In 1976 that addition was totally replaced by a two story modern building that also replaced older additions to the Morton-Benedict house. The combined building served as the city library until 2006 when the new library was built on Parrott Avenue. The landmark is now leased to the Portsmouth Historical Society to help the public “Discover Portsmouth!”