01907 Summer 2021

SUMMER 2021 | 21
Swampscott's Angela Ippolito leads a Yoga on the Beach class twice a week during the summer
for Swampscott residents through the town Recreation Department.
"I started looking around and thinking
'you know, I can't believe this hasn't
been saved,' and 'that's not preserved,'"
she said. "Just thinking that it's such a
pristine little place that I always loved as
a kid."
Ippolito's husband, Joe, suggested she
see what she could do about her concerns,
and in 2000 she joined the town's
Historical Commission, despite never
having an interest in government before.
Twenty-one years later, Ippolito is the
chair of Swampscott's Planning Board
and has held several community positions
in town and around the North Shore.
"There's still lots more to do," she
said. "There's no shortage of things to get
myself involved in."
After graduating college, Ippolito
began a career in the art world, selling
the work of artists to galleries around the
world. Eventually, she and her husband
opened their own gallery on Boston's
Newbury Street. Later, she entered the
more commercial side of the business,
working with independent artists to
create posters and marketing materials
for museums and other organizations,
and then worked in marketing for a few
different companies.
She took a few years off after her son
Michael was born, and the family moved
back to Swampscott, which is when she
began getting involved in local government.
Ippolito said that when she first
joined the Historical Commission the
group was in the middle of preparing for
the town's 150th anniversary, and she
was able to write an article to enter into
the paperback book that the commission
published, "Swampscott, Massachusetts:
Celebrating 150 Years, 1852-2002."
Over the next few years, she helped
the commission write grants, start its
ongoing archive project and — most
notably — achieve a spot on the National
Register of Historic Places for the Olmsted
neighborhood, designed in 1888 by
noted landscape architect Frederick Law
Olmsted.
Ippolito said she had the opportunity
to visit the Olmsted archives in Brookline
during the process of the designation.
"I had a wonderful time doing that,
because I was able to speak with some of
the most renowned experts on Frederick
Law Olmsted in the country," she said.
"They pulled all of the original drawings
from Swampscott's Olmsted subdivision
and I was able to photograph them."
While she enjoyed her work with the
commission, Ippolito started to feel that
she wasn't doing everything she wanted
to do.
"Over the years, I realized a lot of the
issues we had with preservation and land
use were really related to flaws, omissions
and improper zoning," she said. "Our
zoning bylaws were just really not ideal
for development, and I became much
more interested in land use and preservation."
On her own, she began attending
seminars about the topic and joined the
Essex National Heritage Commission,
which falls under the National Parks Service
and works to highlight the cultural,
commercial and historical attractions
along the Essex Coastal Scenic Byway.
Then, in 2009, Ippolito was elected to
Swampscott's Planning Board.
"I started paying attention to what
zoning could do," she said. "Changing
any kind of a bylaw that affects personal
property and the desires of the town
to expand and develop, especially in a
coastal community, is a huge challenge
and takes a lot of time and a lot of public
input."
Ippolito considers one of her biggest
accomplishments during her time on
the board so far as her roles in creating
Swampscott's Master Plan — in collaboration
with the board, other town officials
and the Metropolitan Area Planning
Council — as well as the Open Space
and Recreation Plan, for which she was
the committee chair.
"It informs all the land use and zoning
we want to see happen," she said of
the Master Plan. "Because it happened
through the state process, which was a
very public process, it's something that
really belongs to the whole town."
497 Humphrey Street, Swampscott, MA
781-599-3411