Old towns of North America

Old towns of North America outlines a list of notable old towns in North America, including the historical districts of the United States.

List

Bermuda

• Saint George was first settled in 1612 is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Canada

From east to west:

• 1 St. John's — the eastern-most city in North America claims to be the oldest city in Canada and the U.S.
• 2 Lunenburg — dates back to the 18th century, with other buildings from the 19th century
• 3 Quebec City — the most famous old town in Canada, very reminiscent of European old towns
• 4 Old Montreal — includes 17th- to 19th-century buildings
• 5 Ottawa — much of its historical centre is composed of old low-rise buildings from the early to mid-19th century, plus other later ones built in a compatible style.
• 6 Old Town Toronto — an area with many preserved Victorian-era commercial buildings.
• 7 Vancouver's Gastown and Chinatown — the oldest parts of the city, and much of the early architecture and character remain
• 8 Dawson City — a late 19th-century gold rush town and national heritage site that continues to function as a working town, with frontier buildings and boardwalks, saloons, and a vintage sternwheeler

The Caribbean

Havana

• 1 Bridgetown (Barbados) — established by English settlers in 1628
• Cienfuegos (Cuba)
• 2 Havana (Cuba) — retains a lot of beautiful buildings from its heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, creating a romantic atmosphere of a bygone era
• San German (Puerto Rico)
• 3 Old San Juan (Puerto Rico) — the oldest city under the jurisdiction of the United States, it has distinctly centuries-old architecture, such as Spanish military forts built from the 1540s to 1800s
• 4 Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) — the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the Americas and was the first seat of the Spanish colonial empire in the New World
• Trinidad (Cuba)
• 5 Willemstad (Curaçao) — a destination for cruise ship tourists

Central America

• 1 Antigua Guatemala (Guatemala) — the colonial Spanish capital of Central America
• 2 Granada (Nicaragua) — the oldest colonial city in Nicaragua has colored colonial buildings and interesting history
• 3 Leon (Nicaragua) —renowned for its old churches, fine museums, revolutionary history
• 4 Panama City — completed and settled in 1673

Mexico

• Alamos
• 1 Campeche — one of only two cities in North America to have its city walls still intact
• 2 Durango — the city with the greatest architectural wealth in northern Mexico
• Guanajuato
• 3 Merida — has a wealth of historic colonial-era architecture that's second only to Mexico City on the national scene
• 4 Mexico City/Centro — the original foundation of Mexico City was built on the ruins of the Aztec empire capital destroyed by the Spanish in 1521; many of its buildings date to the 16th century
• Morelia
• 5 Oaxaca — has a colorful, lively, and culturally-rich historical city center
• Patzcuaro
• 6 Puebla — the "cradle of Mexican Baroque" in architecture and one of the five most important colonial cities in Mexico
• Queretaro
• Real de Catorce
• San Cristobal de las Casas
• San Luis Potosi
• San Miguel de Allende
• Taxco
• Xochimilco
• 7 Zacatecas — full of colonial architecture, and 17th-century churches

United States

See the Old West article for a list of additional cities and towns in the Old West.

"Old towns" of American cities are often called "historic districts".

• Annapolis
• Baltimore/Fells Point
• Boston/Downtown
• Charleston, South Carolina — you can encounter many antebellum (pre-Civil War) mansions while walking through town
• Charles Town
• Eureka Springs
• 1 Franklin, Pennsylvania
• Frederick
• Galena, Illinois
• Gloucester, Massachusetts
• Harpers Ferry
• Leesburg
• Manhattan/Financial District — the oldest buildings in the southernmost neighborhood of Manhattan date from the 18th century, notably including Fraunces Tavern and St. Paul’s Chapel, plus early 19th-century buildings including City Hall; in general, though there are some recently completed skyscrapers and ongoing construction of others, much of the architecture dates from the first decades of the 20th century or earlier and the narrow side streets were not built with cars in mind. Wall Street follows the route of the wall the Dutch built to protect New Amsterdam in the 17th century.
• 2 New Orleans/French Quarter — laid out in French and Spanish colonial times in the 18th century
• Old Market, Omaha
• Philadelphia/Old City
• Plymouth, Massachusetts
• Port Townsend
• Old Port, Portland, Maine
• 3 Old Sacramento — the former riverfront pioneer town is now a living historic district and tourist destination. The boardwalk style sidewalks and horse-drawn stage coaches give this small section of town a unique Western flavor
• Salem, Massachusetts
• St. Augustine
• San Antonio — there is an entire historic neighborhood around the Alamo
• 4 San Diego/Old Town-Mission Valley — its Mission San Diego de Alcalá is the oldest of the California missions
• 5 Savannah — one of the largest historic districts in the country
• Santa Fe, New Mexico — the central Santa Fe Plaza is lined with historical buildings, the oldest of which is the 17th-century Palace of the Governors
• 6 Taos — Taos Plaza, the historic center of town, is a shady town square surrounded by adobe architecture
• Troy, New York — while New York State's Troy is not an ancient city, its Central Historic District reflects its industrial wealth in the 19th and early 20th centuries, such that it has often stood in for New York's Financial District in movies due to its unbroken collection of beautiful relatively old buildings and monuments
• Washington, D.C./Georgetown
• 7 Colonial Williamsburg — America's largest living history museum
• Virginia City, Nevada

See also

• North American history
• Old towns of South America