An arched carriageway splits the Nutter-Rymes House at 409 The Hill in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This house was built in 1809, and it is an unusual double house with a large arched carriageway set in the middle. Look up: the central keystoned arch once provided a vehicular passage between the two halves of the building.
The structure you face is a 2½-story wood-frame with a side-gable roof and a clapboarded exterior; its entrances sit at the outermost bays of the long southern facade. This building survives as an important early example of urban residential design in the city, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Today it is occupied by the apart-hotel THE INN Downtown, but it still anchors The Hill — a cluster of closely spaced historic houses bounded to the north by Deer Street and to the east by High Street at the northern edge of downtown Portsmouth.
The group was created by a road-widening project from houses originally located on or near Deer Street, and this house, on the southeastern corner of The Hill, is one of the few that remain at its original location. Notice the southern facade and its keystoned arch, then picture the closely spaced houses that share this corner of the Hill.