Fish House (1896)

The Fish House is the only municipal fish house on the East Coast. Historically seafaring fishing village, Swampscott hosted a large commercial fishing fleet in its protected bay. Built in 1896 on land taken by eminent domain, the Fish House was built to consolidate the many fishing structures that stretched along the oceanfront obscuring views of the ocean and subtracting from the area’s appeal. The town’s forefathers decided that building one municipal Fish House, where lockers would be rented to fishermen, would help rid the town of the fishing shanties. Today, the Fish House is an historic building and part of the National Register of historic places.