NRHP Reference # 90000235 Architectural style American Colonial | Built 1940 Opened 1940 Added to NRHP 9 March 1990 | |
 | ||
Similar Choate Bridge, Greenwood Farm, John Whipple House, Castle Hill, Bradley Palmer State Park | ||
The Ross Tavern is a historic building at 52 Jeffrey's Neck Road in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Now a private residence, the building was moved to its present site from central Ipswich (adjacent to the Choate Bridge) in 1940, and carefully restored to a First Period appearance. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
The building has a complicated history, in part because it includes parts of two different structures. A house was built c. 1690 in downtown Ipswich, and moved near the Choat Bridge in 1735. This house, known as the Ross Tavern, remained at that site until it was disassembled and moved to Jeffrey's Neck by Daniel Wendell, an amateur architectural historian, in 1940. Nothing is known of its original owners. Wendell joined the tavern to a second house, the c. 1675-1700 Lord-Collins House, that he also moved to the site. This house is one of a very few First Period homes to provide evidence of a transom window.