Block Island Neighborhoods: One Town, Two Harbors, and a Lot of Conserved Land
Block Island doesn't have "neighborhoods" in the way a lot of coastal markets on this site do -- there's no second town line to cross, no separate village government, no competing municipal tax rate to sort out depending on which side of the island a listing sits on. The entire island, 12 miles off the Rhode Island coast and reachable only by ferry, is incorporated as a single town: New Shoreham, Rhode Island. One town government, one set of zoning rules, one jurisdiction, covering every parcel from the harbors to the bluffs. What most buyers actually mean when they ask about Block Island "areas" is really a question about the island's two harbor villages -- Old Harbor and New Harbor -- and about how much of the rest of the island's land sits outside development altogether, held in conservation by organizations like the Block Island Land Trust and the Block Island Conservancy. This page sticks to that real structural picture rather than inventing subdivision names, HOA communities, or price tiers that don't exist here.
No Jurisdictional Split: New Shoreham Is the Whole Island
On many islands and stretches of coastline covered on this site, the first research question is jurisdictional: which county, which town, which special district does a given parcel fall under, and does that change the tax rate, the building rules, or which office you call. Block Island removes that question entirely. The island is the Town of New Shoreham, Rhode Island, confirmed via the town's own official website -- there is no second town, no unincorporated county land, and no separate village or fire-district government layered underneath it. Every address on Block Island, whether it's a short walk from the ferry landing or out toward the bluffs, answers to the same town government.
That matters practically for a buyer in a few concrete ways: one planning and zoning office, one tax assessor, one town council setting policy for the whole island. It doesn't tell you what that policy is, what the current tax rate happens to be, or how strict a given zoning district is -- those are all things to confirm directly with New Shoreham town offices for a specific parcel -- but it does mean you're not trying to figure out which of several overlapping jurisdictions applies. There's only one.
Old Harbor and New Harbor: The Island's Two Anchor Areas
Within that single town, Block Island's geography is anchored by two harbor areas that are broadly and reliably known as the island's main points of activity: Old Harbor, on the island's east side, where the ferry from Point Judith and the historic hotel-lined waterfront sit, and New Harbor, tucked into the more sheltered Great Salt Pond on the island's interior/west side, home to much of the island's marina and boating activity. These are real, well-established geographic references for the island, not marketed subdivision names -- they describe where the ferries dock and where the harbors are, not a builder's community with a fixed boundary, an HOA, or a price tier.
Beyond those two harbor areas, the rest of the island is best understood in general geographic terms -- the bluffs and higher ground toward the south end near the Southeast Lighthouse, the more rural interior, and the shoreline that wraps the rest of the island's roughly ten-square-mile footprint -- rather than as a list of named neighborhoods. This page is not going to manufacture specific subdivision or neighborhood names beyond Old Harbor and New Harbor, because no such list of developer-named communities was confirmed in this site's research, and Block Island's real character is genuinely different from a mainland subdivision market.
A Defining Feature: How Much of the Island Isn't Developed at All
Perhaps the single most important thing to understand about Block Island's development pattern is how much of the island's land sits outside development altogether. The Block Island Land Trust and the Block Island Conservancy are both real, decades-old conservation organizations with a long, well-documented history of protecting land on the island, and multiple general sources describe Block Island as having an unusually high share of its total land area held in conservation for a developed New England island. This page will not state a specific percentage or acreage figure -- that number was not independently confirmed via full-text primary sourcing this session, and a guessed figure would do a buyer a disservice -- but the underlying pattern (extensive, organized, long-running land conservation shaping what can and can't be built) is real and well corroborated.
For a buyer, that translates into something you can feel walking or driving around the island: long stretches of open bluff, dune, pond edge, and farmland that will not become the next subdivision, sitting alongside the developed areas near the two harbors and along the main roads. That conservation footprint is arguably as defining a feature of Block Island's neighborhoods as any named place would be -- it's a big part of why the island still reads as open and rural rather than built-out, decades after it became a well-known vacation destination.
What This Means If You're Evaluating a Specific Property
If you're looking at a specific Block Island listing, the useful questions are about that parcel, not a neighborhood brand: how close is it to Old Harbor or New Harbor (and to the ferry landing you'd actually use), is it near land held by the Block Island Land Trust or the Block Island Conservancy (which can mean protected open space as a neighbor, sometimes a real amenity), and what does New Shoreham's zoning and any coastal-setback rule say about that particular lot. None of that comes packaged into a neighborhood name here the way it might in a platted mainland subdivision.
This page also won't estimate home counts, typical prices, or price differences between the harbor areas and the rest of the island -- none of that was confirmed via primary sourcing this session, and secondhand figures on a site like this aren't a substitute for a current listing search or a conversation with a New Shoreham-based real estate professional. Given that the whole island is one town, at least you're only dealing with one set of town offices to check zoning, setback, and conservation-adjacency questions against for any parcel you're evaluating.
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Get a Free Agent Referral →Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. That Block Island is incorporated as the single Town of New Shoreham, Rhode Island, with no second town or county-level jurisdiction on the island, is confirmed via the town's own official website. Old Harbor and New Harbor are described here as the island's two well-established harbor areas based on general, widely available knowledge of the island's geography, not a proprietary or invented list of neighborhoods. The Block Island Land Trust and Block Island Conservancy are real, decades-old land conservation organizations active on the island, corroborated via the Block Island Times, the Land Trust's own listing on the Land Conservation Assistance Network, and the town's own website; this page does not state a specific percentage or acreage of the island under conservation, because no such figure was independently confirmed via full-text primary sourcing this session. This page does not invent any specific neighborhood, subdivision, or HOA name beyond Old Harbor and New Harbor, and it does not state any home count, population figure, or price or price-differential claim for any part of the island. Nothing on this page is real estate, financial, or legal advice; confirm zoning, setback, conservation-adjacency, and any other parcel-specific detail directly with New Shoreham town offices or a Block Island-based real estate professional before making a purchase decision.