What is it like to live in Essex?
“I grew up playing in the woods, running through backyards, riding my bike. Essex has always stayed a little ‘Live Free or Die.’ ’’
Once, when Cynthia Sweet was about 7 years old, she got lost not far from the home she grew up in, on Apple Street in Essex. Ernie Nieberle, who owns Ernie’s Service Station on Main Street, was one of the people who went looking for her.
Thirty-five years later, he changes the oil in Sweet’s car.
It’s that kind of old-fashioned community in Essex, the little North Shore town of 3,500 or so located about 25 miles outside Boston. Sweet, who founded Sweet Paws Rescue — a shelter-free organization that uses foster families for its dogs — six years ago, went to college in New York and has traveled internationally. Otherwise, though, she has never really left her hometown.
“Why leave?’’ Sweet said. “It’s absolutely beautiful, and the public school system nowadays is fantastic.’’
Known for its main drag of antiques dealers and restaurants (most famously Woodman’s of Essex, the fried seafood mecca that Zagat has called “an enduring American cult favorite’’), Essex has little in the way of typical contemporary chain stores. There’s no big grocery store, Sweet noted, and she’s not sure many of her fellow residents are clamoring for one: “The town is so tiny. We don’t want any more traffic,’’ she said.
Zoning laws are less strict than in neighboring communities, she said, one more indicator of the town’s laissez-faire attitude.
“I grew up playing in the woods, running through backyards, riding my bike. Essex has always stayed a little ‘Live Free or Die.’ ’’
BY THE NUMBERS
$165,000
Grant-funded, the cost of clearing 27 acres of spruce and pine trees most vulnerable to blowdown on Choate Island. Sometimes called Hog Island, the 135-acre spot, part of the Crane Wildlife Refuge, was crowned with 95 acres of trees in the 1930s by Cornelius Crane.
101
The number of years since Lawrence “Chubby’’ Woodman reportedly invented the New England fried clam. According to Woodman’s of Essex, the popular restaurant’s namesake ran a roadside stand on weekends, selling fresh clams and homemade potato chips. At a customer’s suggestion on a slow weekend in 1916, he dipped clams in batter and deep-fried them.
3,000+/-
The number of photos in the Essex Shipbuilding Museum’s collection, many portraying “vessels under construction from the middle nineteenth century through the twentieth century,’’ according to the organization’s website. In total, the collection counts more than 8,000 artifacts related to local history.
$1,800
Asking price for a hand block-printed textile called “Whirling Teakettles’’ by Joshua Tolford, one of the few male designers associated with the Folly Cove group of artists during the mid-20th century on Cape Ann. The print and others like it are for sale at Andrew Spindler Antiques, one of Essex’s many antiques shops.
PROS & CONS
Pro
The people
It’s a small-town life in Essex: When Cynthia Sweet calls the bank for help, she just says, “Hi, it’s Cynthia.’’ And Shea’s Riverside Restaurant & Bar still has a “Cheers’’-style feel, Sweet said.
Con
Plant your beach umbrella elsewhere
Living amid beautiful estuaries, Essex residents don’t enjoy substantial open-ocean beachfront. Neighboring Manchester-by-the-Sea, Gloucester, and Ipswich do. Essex gets the traffic headed to and from those locales and drivers inching along the causeway looking for a certain antiques shop.
James Sullivan can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @sullivanjames. Subscribe to our free newsletter on real estate, home repair, and design at pages.email.bostonglobe.com/AddressSignUp.
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