The Rudder Restaurant
is Steeped in History

Rocky Neck has been luring artists to its picturesque shores for more than 150 years.

These artists range from Fitz Hugh Lane, who was painting here in the 1840s, through Emile Gruppe, who made the neck his home and painted into the 1970s.

Other famous Gloucester artists include Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Childe Hassam, William Morris Hunt, Maurice Prendergast, Cecilia Beaux,Theresa Bernstein, Jane Paterson, Joseph Solman and a host of other professional and amateur artists.

Gloucester's iconic sculpture The Man at the Wheel, a permanent memorial to the ten thousand Gloucester fisherman lost at sea, was created by Leonard Craske in his studio on the pier on Rocky Neck in the 1920s. Writers of the stature of Louisa May Alcott and Rudyard Kipling frequented the "Neck" and T.S. Elliott spent many summers here.

Being on Rocky Neck is like stepping back in time. It has managed to preserve a bygone unhurried way of life. Artist members of the colony range from year round residents to those who eagerly make the trek back each summer from all over the country, and they play host to visitors from all over the world.

The Rudder Restaurant is located in one of the few remaining landmarks on Rocky Neck dating from the age of sail. The building was originally a fish packing establishment, the fish being landed here by boat and packed in barrels with salt for shipment. The floor above was a sail loft until early in the 1900s when it was converted into artists studios where many of America's famous painters have lived.

The Rudder Restaurant is in its 51st year of business. The restaurant was run by the Parsons Family for the first forty-one years when it was purchased by its current owners, the Attaya Family.