West Side, Manchester, New Hampshire

The West Side is a large area defining many neighborhoods in the city of Manchester, New Hampshire, in the United States. It consists of all parts of the city that lie west of the Merrimack River and includes the neighborhoods of Northwest Manchester, Rimmon Heights, Notre Dame, Piscataquog, Wolfe Park, and Mast Road. It lies just to the east of the community of Pinardville in the neighboring town of Goffstown.

While much of the West Side was historically dominated by French Canadian neighborhoods like Notre Dame and Rimmon Heights, the area was also home to other ethnic groups, including the city's largest German neighborhood in Piscataquog. It has become increasingly diverse, but is still largely associated with the city's French Canadian heritage.

Most of the developed areas of the West Side are high density urban neighborhoods, but the outer neighborhoods of Northwest Manchester, Wolfe Park, and Mast Road are medium to suburban.

The lower area of Notre Dame, immediately west of present-day downtown Manchester, was originally known as McGregorville, after the McGregor family that built the first bridge in the city in 1792. The area later grew into a dense neighborhood called the Flat Iron District beneath Rimmon Heights and adjacent to the western side of the Amoskeag millyard.

Pisctaquog was originally part of the neighboring town of Bedford, and developed as an industrial area around the confluence of the Piscataquog and Merrimack rivers in the early nineteenth century. The contrast between the urban area, then known as 'Sqoug Village, and the otherwise rural town of Bedford led local residents to request annexation by the city of Manchester, which the General Court granted in 1853.

Rimmon Heights developed later in the nineteenth century when a streetcar line extended up the hill and along Kelley Street, which remains the center of economic activity in the neighborhood today. Mast Road and Wolfe Park also developed as more typical streetcar suburbs along the lines extending to Goffstown Village and the Bedford town line.

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