Your Guide to Buying a Home in Nashua, NH

Buying a Home in Nashua, New Hampshire

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Nashua is located in Hillsborough County

Introduction Calling itself the "Gateway City," Nashua is the first glimpse of New Hampshire to motorists trekking up Route 3 North. Since a commercial development boom in the 1980s, the city - New Hampshire&146;s second largest - has served as a shopping Mecca for those fleeing Massachusetts sales taxes.

In addition to a massive retail center, the city also hosts several major high-tech companies such as Oracle, Fidelity, Compaq, Benchmark Electronics, and Sanders, a Lockheed-Martin company, to name a few.

Like everywhere else where malls have spread like wildfire, the city is making an aggressive effort to prevent the downtown from becoming a ghost town. Officials have bold plans to construct a scenic river walkway, and ethnic restaurants and posh specialty gift shops have begun to see some success. Taking a page from the winter holidays decoration book, downtown merchants have solicited community donations to keep trees illuminated all year.

Nashua History
Long before malls and fast food restaurants made sluggish traffic a permanent Nashua trait, the city was a fur trading post in the mid-1600s &150; better known by its Native American name of "Watanic."
The City of Nashua was chartered in 1852. It had grown out of the Village of Nashua, centered near Railroad Square and the Main Street Bridge, and the Village of Nashville, across the Nashua River. The city is in the approximate center of the original 1673 grant of Dunstable, which included all or parts of the surrounding towns.

The Dunstable grant was part of Massachusetts until the boundary line was revised in 1741. The New Hampshire portion was incorporated by that state in 1746 and was gradually broken into smaller pieces as outlying areas developed. Just south of Nashua, the tiny Massachusetts town of Dunstable keeps the name alive.

Nashua was an early textile center. By 1836, Nashua Corporation had built three cotton mills and was producing 9.3 million yards of cotton cloth annually on 710 looms. Six railroad lines crossed the city with 56 trains entering and departing daily before the Civil War.
The Nashua Telegraph was founded in 1832, a few months after its competitor, the Gazette, which no longer exists.

After World War II, the textile mills moved south and the city gradually developed a diversified industry, particularly high technology and retail.
Today, Nashua is the state&146;s second largest city.

Nashua Schools
Nashua is School Administrative Unit 42. The city has twelve elementary schools, three junior high schools and one high school.

Nashua Business and Industry
The Pheasant Lane Mall on the Daniel Webster Highway represents the largest draw on a retail strip that welcomes hordes of Massachusetts shoppers wishing to save sales tax.

Top employers in the city are the Compaq (computers), Lockheed Sanders (electronics, military systems), Teradyne (circuit boards), Fleet Bank, the Nashua Corp. (paper, copier supplies), St. Joseph Hospital, Southern New Hampshire Medical Center, City of Nashua, and the Federal Aviation Administration.

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