Living in Plymouth, MA

About Plymouth

The Mayflower Pilgrims settled here in December 1620, and Plymouth served as the capital of Plymouth Colony until 1691. The old town center keeps that story close to the water: Plymouth Rock under its 1921 portico in Pilgrim Memorial State Park, the Mayflower II at the State Pier, Cole's Hill, and Burial Hill above Leyden Street, where the Pilgrims built a fort in 1621 and 1622. Pilgrim Hall, opened in 1824 on Court Street, is the oldest public museum in the United States in continuous operation. Plymouth Colony merged into the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691, and the town governed itself by open town meeting from 1622 until voters adopted a representative town meeting in 1953.

Beyond downtown the town spreads across about 96 square miles of land. North Plymouth grew around the Plymouth Cordage Company, once the largest maker of rope and twine in the world, and much of its multifamily housing evolved from mill housing; the company closed in 1964. West Plymouth filled with subdivisions in the 1970s, and South Plymouth drew new growth from the 1980s. Inland, Myles Standish State Forest has ponds and pine and oak woods, while Manomet and Ellisville Harbor sit along the Cape Cod Bay shore. Plymouth Beach, about three miles long, is the largest of the town's nine public beaches, and the town also holds the 81-foot National Monument to the Forefathers, dedicated in 1889.

Detached single-family homes make up 71.1 percent of Plymouth's housing units, according to its 2024 Housing Production Plan, and the town grew from 25,058 units in 2010 to 28,353 in 2021, with most new building expected in its rural areas. Because Plymouth is adjacent to Kingston, which has a commuter rail station, the state's MBTA Communities law treats it as an adjacent community that must zone for at least 2,807 multifamily units by right. On January 24, 2024, the Planning Board voted 4 to 0 to recommend Article 18 to the April 2024 Annual Town Meeting: a Multifamily Overlay District with four subdistricts, Cordage, Home Depot Drive, Plaza Way and The Pinehills, where, as drafted in January 2024, developments of ten or more units must make at least 10 percent of them affordable. The state now lists Plymouth as compliant. Cordage Park also has a Chapter 40R district, capped at 675 units.

Homes in Plymouth

Plymouth's 2024 Housing Production Plan reports that detached single-family homes make up 71.1 percent of housing units, with attached single-family homes another 7.4 percent. As of 2021, 80.9 percent of occupied homes were owner-occupied, and the town's housing units grew from 25,058 in 2010 to 28,353 in 2021. The plan expects most new residential development in the town's rural areas, with recent projects in the south and at Cordage Park in the north.