Rockland may be a quiet town tucked away south of Boston, but if you look at it the right way, it’s in the middle of everything.
“You can drive 20 minutes in any direction and get to great places,’’ said Donna Roine, 70, a retired librarian who lives in a Colonial farmhouse in Rockland.
Traffic permitting, of course. But the town is just off Route 3, a gateway to Boston to the north and Plymouth to the south. And while Rockland doesn’t have a shoreline, it is just “one town from the ocean,’’ Roine said.
“People who come to my house and then go to Boston from here they say, ‘I can’t believe how close it is,’ ’’ she said.
Rockland was originally settled as the northeast corner of Abington in 1673. (It was incorporated as its own town in the late 19th century.) For people who love old homes, the town has plenty to offer, Roine said.
“I don’t really know anybody in Rockland who lives in a new house,’’ she said. Roine moved into her home, which has been in her family since the early 19th century, in 1976. It had belonged to her grandparents, and Roine was born in the house next door.
“My grandson is now the seventh generation’’ to live in the home, Roine said, but then amended that. “Well, he doesn’t live here, but he is having a nap here right now.’’
Rockland’s shoe factories are long gone, but many are being repurposed.
Roine is vice president of 4th Floor Artists, a group that houses studio and gallery space in an old sandpaper factory and the former ET Wright shoe factory. Roine, a fiber artist, said the shoe factory is another connection to her past; her grandfather once worked there.
She said planners working with the town see arts and culture as critical to carrying Rockland forward in the 21st century. Art is being featured around town in galleries, restaurants, and the rotunda of the library, Roine said.
“We’re trying to revitalize Rockland, not necessarily to how it was before, but how we might imagine it to be,’’ she said.
Brian J. White, a multiplatform editor at the Globe, can be reached at brian.white@globe.com.
