We all know the quintessential postcard views of New Hampshire.
A pumpkin-colored sun sets on a forest-blanketed mountainside. A solitary canoe slices through a hushed morning fog and still water. Nineteenth-century, white-clapboard homes and a modest church encircle a cozy town common.
None of that is true for Armando Lopez when he rises.
The Veterans Administration Medical Center urologist and his wife live on the 13th floor of an apartment building in downtown Manchester. Every day, he takes in falcon-eye views of an endless Merrimack River cutting through an urban canyon of 19th-century mill buildings, dams and parking lots.
Concrete supports, two of them sporting colorful murals, shoulder a four-lane roadway over the river, the cars moving perpendicular to the roiling water.
And at dusk, a purple- and pink-hued sky backlights the soaring steeple of Ste. Marie Church, the cliffs of Rock Rimmon Park and the twin Uncanoonuc Mountains.
Photo by Allegra Boverman/New Hampshire Magazine. Mallory and Kyle Chumas have lived in downtown Manchester for many years, first on Hanover Street in Opera Block and then more recently at the corner of Hanover and Elm Streets. They love living downtown, where they can walk to favorite shops and eateries, and run into friends. The Bookery is a favorite for coffee and snacks.
“The view here is everything,” said Lopez, who decided on the Wall Street Towers apartment after losing a bidding war for a Bedford house.
Lopez represents a breed of New Hampshire residents who have ditched the pastoral, slow-lane of old New Hampshire for an urban, energized existence in Manchester, the state’s largest city.
They make their homes in office space that is being reconfigured into luxury apartments or in repackaged condos, no longer cheap, that had been built for solitary mill workers.
“I love it. I love downtown,” said Stephen Hemming, 30. Last year, he purchased a $235,000 one-bedroom, walk-up condominium in the row houses that connect downtown to the historic Millyard.
“There’s everything you want,” said Hemming, a Concord police officer. That includes restaurants with a United Nations- style selection of cuisines: Thai, Italian, Japanese, African, Vietnamese, Mexican, Nepalese, farm-to-table and, of course, rib-sticking pub food.
There are bars and nightclubs to share drinks with friends, and gyms to work off the carb overload the following day.
If he sits at home, Hemming can study the comings and goings of Canal Street from his fourth-floor bedroom window. “It’s like the (Hitchcock) movie ‘Rear Window’: You see everything,” he said.
That’s because everything seems to be happening downtown.
• Foot races as short as 5K and as long as a marathon.
• Performances at arenas that range from the 300-seat Rex to the 10,000-seat SNHU arena.
• Parades and cultural festivals with as much ethnic diversity as the restaurant scene.
• Summer movies and music shows at the block-sized Veterans Memorial Park.
• Car shows, fireworks and the latest rave – the Taco Tour, a May event that draws thousands to sample tacos created with all sorts of culinary twists. (One of the best: the taco contribution from Kisaki Japanese restaurant, a downtown dweller assured me.)
Photo by Allegra Boverman/New Hampshire Magazine. Steve Hemming at his Canal Street condo with the view of some of Manchester downtown behind him.
The popularity of downtown Manchester is reflected in a building boom. During the previous two years, 902 dwelling units were under construction in the city, according to data provided by the city Department of Planning and Community Development.
The data does not distinguish between downtown or other areas of the city, but a good portion of the residential growth is arguably centered downtown.
Consider Brady Sullivan Properties, one of the largest developers in the state.
Last summer, Brady Sullivan started the conversion of some of the office space in the Brady Sullivan Plaza, a 20-story, monotoned, gray-glass office building. When completed, 200 apartments will be rented out.
The one-to-three-bedroom apartments rent from $2,450 to $3,500 a month.
The rent includes lots of amenities: parking, a putting green, a fitness gym, a theater, community spaces that include electric fireplaces and big-screen TVs, a pet washing station and a game room with ping pong, foosball and air hockey.
Many tenants work at area hospitals, Southern New Hampshire University or the DEKA tech company, said Mikel MacAuley, executive director of residential property management for Brady Sullivan.
Further north on Elm, the company will lease out another 100 apartments in an office building that had been leased to Southern New Hampshire University.
“There never seems to be enough to meet the demand,” MacAuley said. She sees similar growth in Boston satellite cities such as Worcester and Providence, Rhode Island.
Photo by Allegra Boverman/New Hampshire Magazine. Armando and Carolyn Lopez live on the 13th floor of the Wall Street Tower with an unobstructed view of Arms Park, the Merrimack River, the Manchester Millyard and the West Side of Manchester and beyond.
Also downtown, Red Oak Properties last year completed a multicolored, six-story building on Elm Street with 90 high-end apartments. On Hanover Street, Red Oak is retrofitting a former commercial building to 40 studio and one-bedroom apartments.
Also under construction downtown: a 250-unit development on Canal Street and a 77-apartment building next to Veteran’s Memorial Park.
The new downtown dwellers are firmly committed to an urban lifestyle.
“We’re not interested in settling down in a small town and taking on the responsibility that comes with home ownership right now,” said Mallory K. Chumas. The social media consultant lives downtown with her husband, Kyle Chumas, who works on business strategy for a Sweden-based tech company.
“Living downtown allows us so many opportunities to connect with other people,” Chumas said. Restaurants, coffee shops and a supermarket are within walking distance.
“Even when we don’t want to, we are always running into friends, family and other members of the downtown community,” she said.
The Chumas, who are in their 30s, fit the downtown demographic. More than one-third, 38 percent, of the people living in the U.S. Census tract that includes the downtown and Millyard are between the ages of 20 and 35.
That compares to a mere 18 percent in the state as a whole.
“As a 22- to a 30-year-old, it’s great to live downtown. I know a lot of people who do,” said Wil Hebert, who serves and tends bar at a unique downtown club. Focused on retro gaming, Boards and Brews charges customers $5 per person, which includes three hours at a table and access to a library of 1,700 board games.
Hebert, who shares a $1,400-a-month two-bedroom apartment with his brother, likes the convenience of living downtown.
Just a year above the legal drinking age, he clubs. A weekend night with friends starts at Chicken Biscuit USA, a fried chicken fast-order restaurant that boasts a fanatical following.
Then they hit Bonfire, a country-music themed bar where they can go downstairs to play games such as cornhole and the Big Buck Hunter arcade game.
If they want to dance, they will walk seven blocks to The Goat, which has a dance floor and live music that slants toward country and rock. Next door is Soho Bistro & Lounge, which is more clubby and offers high-energy techno and hip-hop music.
On occasion, their foray ends at the Red Arrow, the landmark diner in downtown Manchester.
“Everything’s so accessible,” he said.
Photo by Allegra Boverman/New Hampshire Magazine. Architect Michael DelValle lives in Cat Alley in downtown Manchester.
Demographics make downtown Manchester rife for clubbing. Singles comprise 60 percent of downtown/Millyard households (39 percent are men; 21 percent women), according to the census. Singles count for only one-third of the city as a whole.
“There’s more people to interact with,” said Michael DelValle, 37, an architect who lives with a roommate in a three-story condo just off Elm Street. “You can go to the restaurants and bars and have all the nightlife you want.”
Downtown is not all clubbing. It has jewelers, barber shops, a computer store, an independent bookstore and a couple of tattoo parlors.
And little crannies offer a surprise. Hometown Coffee Roasters serves up a fresh-made cup of joe and all its -achino derivations in an industrial setting: concrete floor, white walls and a roll-up corrugated-steel garage door on the street-facing wall.
The Hop Knot, a small bar at the base of the Brady Sullivan Plaza, offers its own contribution to downtown culture: two drag shows a month (one for Sunday brunch).
Downtown draws all sorts, said Hop Knot owner Kenny Frasch.
“It’s all kinds of people, from ultra-rich to the homeless folks,” said Frasch. “You get a nice mix of everything.”
Downtown dwellers acknowledge that homeless people congregate downtown. But several said the numbers seem to be declining, and none expressed fears.
DelValle, whose bedroom is three stories up from an alley, hears them outside his window, at times animated and argumentative.
“It’s like a soap opera,” he said. But he doesn’t fret about their presence. “It’s everywhere.”
Photo by Allegra Boverman/New Hampshire Magazine. Architect Michael DelValle lives in Cat Alley in downtown Manchester.
Another recent downtown denizen is John Clayton, 70, a historian, former newspaper columnist and undisputed ambassador/cheerleader for the city.
Last December, he sold his home in the city’s upscale North End neighborhood and moved to a two-bedroom, $2,300-a-month apartment in the former Citizen’s Bank building on Elm and Hanover streets.
In honor of the move, his daughter bought him a two-wheeled cart he uses to visit Market Basket.
He misses his backyard bird feeder, but loves being in the heart of his beloved city. This past winter, he and his wife went for dinner at XO Bistro, which is less than a block from his building.
They walked back the way they came to meet his sister-in-law at the City Hall Pub on Hanover Street across from his apartment building. Then they walked a half-block up Hanover Street to see his niece in the Palace Theatre production of the ABBA-themed musical “Dancing Queens.”
“Never started the car, never paid for parking,” Clayton said. “This is why you want to live downtown.”