Exeter
Discover Exeter
A concise introduction to Exeter, its geography, history and culture.
Introduction
Exeter is a small New Hampshire town at the head of tidewater on the Squamscott river, founded in 1638 at the falls where salt water meets fresh — which is what put it there, and what powered its mills for the next two centuries.
It was New Hampshire’s capital during the Revolution, and it has a decent claim to being the first colony to declare independence: the provincial congress met here and adopted its own constitution in January 1776, six months ahead of the Declaration. The American Independence Museum, in the Ladd-Gilman House, holds one of the surviving Dunlap broadsides — a first printing of the Declaration — found by chance in the attic. The town marks all of this with a Revolutionary War festival in July, with several hundred re-enactors.
The other reason to come is architectural. Phillips Exeter Academy, founded in 1781, occupies much of the town, and its library, designed by Louis Kahn and finished in 1971, is among the most admired modern buildings in the United States: a brick cube around a central well, with enormous circular openings framing the stacks. It is generally open to visitors. Beyond that, Water Street and the surrounding blocks are a well-preserved run of Federal and Georgian houses, and the coast at Hampton and Portsmouth is twenty minutes away.