The Swansea Town Beach is in this unpretentious, beach-cottage neighborhood.

SWANSEA — Ocean Grove, a neighborhood first developed as a summer colony near the Town Beach, today is a densely built, year-round neighborhood of smaller winterized houses near Coles River, Mount Hope Bay and the town’s border with Warren.

“It’s a quaint little area,” said Donna Webster, an agent with Fiddler Real Estate in Swansea. “Everybody knows everybody else down there.”

According to town historical accounts, the Ocean Grove area had been left largely undeveloped, except for some fishermen’s shacks near the water, until the early 1900s, when it became a summer destination for people who worked in Fall River, Providence and Pawtucket.

At one time the neighborhood had its own cinema and a dance hall, which was later used as a community center.

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Ocean Grove, in Swansea

In 1865, Swansea was still largely agricultural, with 191 farms producing corn, potatoes and beef. That same year, the new Fall River, Warren and Providence Railroad gave local farmers the opportunity to ship their products east or west.

Later, the railroad opened a South Swansea station, opening Gardner’s Neck, an area on Ocean Grove’s eastern edge, to summer residents, mainly well-off merchants and mill owners from Fall River.

The family of the infamous Lizzie Borden owned property in Gardner’s Neck.

Today, Gardner’s Neck is an attractive historic district that is home to the neighborhood elementary school, Gardner Elementary, a number of Victorian-era houses and a historic church, the South Swansea Baptist Church, on Gardner’s Neck Road

Ocean Grove’s houses, mainly cottages, bungalows, and smaller Capes and Colonials, were built before the town’s zoning rules demanded that each new single-family house be built on lots of 30,000 square feet with 150 feet of frontage. The area remains one of this town’s most densely populated neighborhoods.

The neighborhood also includes an age-restricted, 55-plus condominium community on Pinehurst Avenue, built as a result of a Massachusetts affordable-housing law.

It also has a 30-year-old association, the Bluffs Ocean Grove Neighborhood Association, which for many years has held a neighborhood fair and flea market after the close of the summer season.

The town recently closed the Bluffs Community Center, after a new home was found for the local Council on Aging, and Town Planner Steve Antonelli said it has not yet been decided what to do with the historic building on Private Joseph Butler Road.

But at a recent special Town Meeting, Swansea voters decided to change the town’s zoning bylaw to allow multifamily housing, including condominiums, through a special-permit process.

Antonelli said a local developer, Sutherland Properties Inc., is expected to propose plans soon to build three five-unit condominium buildings under that process, and some of the units are planned for Wilbur Avenue (Route 103) in Ocean Grove.

Webster said eight houses are currently for sale in Ocean Grove, ranging in price from $119,000, for a short-sale property, to $239,900. Webster said she recently sold a house on Ocean View Avenue for $235,000.

Webster said house prices can get substantially higher in Gardner’s Neck, which generally includes larger houses on larger lots.

POPULATION: (Swansea, 2000) 15,901

MEDIAN HOUSE PRICE: (Swansea, 2008) $236,000

ET CETERA: King Philip’s War began in the Town of Swansea in 1675.

cdunn@projo.com