Pages

Friday, October 7, 2011

Manchester, NH City Tour

Yesterday, we spent the day exploring downtown Manchester, the largest city in NH. Among the places we visited were City Hall, the Palace Theatre, the Millyard Museum, Manchester Public Library, and famer’s market.

If you are a regular reader of The Frog & PenguINN blog, you know of our fondness for stopping into public libraries along our travels. Manchester’s main library is a massive building located on Pine Street, directly across from what is now Victory Park. Its made of Concord granite and marble. The library building was dedicated on November 1914, before an estimated crowd over 5,000 people, as the Elenora Blood Carpenter Building. It was named after the wife of the president of Amoskeag Paper Mill , Frank Pierce Carpenter, who donated funds for its construction in her memory.
manchester library collage1manchester library collage2We lunched at the locally famous Red Arrow Diner, which is reportedly one of the country’s top 10 diners. Since Grenville and are are natives of NJ, the nation’s diner capital, we had to check it out. We’re happy to report, lunch was delicious.
red arrow collage1It was so good that we forgot to take photos before we gobbled it down. My lunch was the traditional burger, but with onion rings. Grenville tried a meat loaf club sandwich with fried.
red arrow dinerNH (6)red arrow dinerNH (9)
There are no parking meters in the downtown Manchester, NH. Instead, the city uses a Pay to Park system, which requires that you prepay for up to a 2-hour maximum, cash or credit card. The hourly rate was steeper than Nashua by 25 cents, at 75 cents per hour.
manchester collageThe red phone booth in the photo above was near City Hall and it contained a working pay telephone. When was the last time you say one of these?

Located in downtown Manchester, just down from City Hall, is the Palace Theatre, an 840-seat non-profit performing arts center that hosts its own professional company.
palace theatre collage

8 comments:

jp@A Green Ridge said...

That burger and onion rings sounds mouth watering although those fries look pretty tasty too!..What a huge library...compared to the one here that it!...:)JP

MadSnapper said...

beautiful dome, love the pay to park and the red thinga ma bobber... ha ha, almost did not recognize the phone booth

Connie said...

Great pictures, Beatrice. Sounds like you're taking quite a tour. I can't remember the last time I saw a public phone booth!

Anonymous said...

We don't have diners like that over here and I've always wanted to go to one :-)

I think we only have one non county financed library in this country and it just recently opened. Well it was some business that bought an old one to be honest.

That theatre looks beautiful!

Have a great continuing of Your trip!
Christer.

Montanagirl said...

You visit the best places! And the food always sounds so good too.

Unknown said...

Enjoyed the tour. my mom is a New Englander and I can still remember visiting my grandparents in Massachusetts and friends in Rhode Island when I was a boy.

Beatrice P. Boyd said...

Glad Everyone enjoyed this 1-day quick tour. There is lots more to see in this city, but we found it wasn't as much fun as walking around Nashua, which is a bit smaller.

JP, both the onion rings and fries (hand cut) were very good, even though we know we should steer away from fried foods, but every now and then . . .

Yeah Sandra & Daisy, we were surprised not only to see the phone booth, but a working pay phone inside!

Thanks Mona & Chip, we surely do enjoy ourselves and like sharing with you all. We won't hit MA this trip, but will be in RI for granddaughter's christening in mid-Oct and we may try to see a bit of Vermont as well.

Elaine said...

Okay, the Red Arrow Diner is on the list for next week!