Nantucket Historic District

Nantucket Historic District
National Register of Historic Places
National Historic Landmark District
location	Nantucket , Massachusetts , United States
Coordinates	41 ° 16 '59.6 " N , 70 ° 5' 51.3" W Coordinates: 41 ° 16 '59.6 " N , 70 ° 5' 51.3" W.
surface	30,000 acres (121.4 km² )
NRHP number	[1] 66000772
Data
The NRHP added	December 13, 1966
As NHLD declared	November 13, 1966

The Nantucket Historic District includes the entire island of Nantucket plus the islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget in the state of Massachusetts in the United States . The National Historic Landmark District was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966 . With an area of 30,000 acres (121.4 km² ), it is the largest Historic District in the continental United States .

Description of the district

The 17th century buildings on Nantucket, as well as the ownership structure of the land, bear witness to medieval England . The design and the materials used give the island its characteristic appearance. Some of the older houses were moved from the original Capaum Pond settlement to what is now downtown Nantucket. The first plots were shown as early as 1678; some of the oldest houses are in today's CDP Siasconset .

At the beginning of the 19th century there was a change in architecture towards classicist details and federal style . With the flourishing of the whaling industry around 1820, a golden age began for Nantucket, which is reflected, among other things, in the particularly spacious buildings of this era, which mainly stood along Main Street and Orange Street. In 1846 a fire destroyed the entire commercial center of the city of Nantucket, covering an area of 36 acres (14.6 hectares). The then newly built houses on Main Street have details in the style of the Greek Revival .

Despite the growth in the number of inhabitants and the associated expansion of the infrastructure, a large part of the island still consists of open bogs overgrown with bushes . 1,050 acres (4.2 km²) are taken up by lakes and ponds, 750 acres (3 km²) consist of peat bogs . The 75 mi (120.7 km ) long coastline is virtually unchanged and regularly overgrown after summer visitors leave the island. Nantuckets Harbor was modernized in the 1960s and is still used for commercial purposes today.

Historical meaning

Nantucket was the starting point for the development of the US whaling industry in the 17th century and was the leading whaling base in the US until the 1840s. To date, the city has retained its character as a typical coastal town of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in New England , both from an architectural and environmental point of view . Of the smaller former observation posts on the island, only Siasconset still exists, where the Auld Lang Syne is probably the oldest surviving structure in Nantucket.

Originally, Nantucket was settled by people who longed for religious freedom. A group of 18, led by Tristram Coffin, acquired most of the island from Thomas Mayhew and, along with him and his son, became the first 20 settlers on the island. At their first meeting in 1661, the group divided the island between themselves and determined who was allowed to settle where. In 1671 all settlements on the island were combined under the name Nantucket . In 1673, Governor Francis Lovelace changed the name to Sherburne after the island became part of the province of New York .

The island, which largely consisted of moors , was unsuitable for agriculture, so that the land was mainly used as sheep pasture and, to a lesser extent, for arable farming . The residents therefore endeavored to earn their living by fishing and whaling. The first whaling company was founded on Nantucket as early as 1672, but the inexperienced seafarers were not very successful. In 1690 the Cape Cod Icabod Paddock was invited to the island to teach whaling methods. This formed the starting point for significant growth in the whaling industry on Nantucket; In 1712 the whaling fleet already had five ships, two years later the number rose to nine. As early as 1715, the whalers brought 600 barrels of oil ashore. In 1727 the island had 28 whaling ships that hunted whales along the island's coast. To support them, observation stations were set up on the beaches with Cisco , Sesachacha and Siasconset , among others .

The coastal whale hunt was abandoned in 1760 in the course of the shift of the deep sea hunt for sperm whales , and most of the buildings of the then largest fishing port Sesachacha Beach were moved to Siasconset in 1820. Until the American Revolution , the whaling industry on Nantucket flourished and grew steadily; In 1766, 118 ships sailed under the island's flag and landed 11,969 trans-barrels, which were sold not only to Boston , but also to London . In 1774, Nantucket's whaling fleet comprised 150 of New England's 250 fishing vessels. With the outbreak of the American War of Independence, the island's economy suffered considerably; During the war, not only were 134 ships of the island fleet lost, but more than 1200 sailors lost their lives or were taken prisoner.

In 1795 the name of the town was changed back to Nantucket and both the island and town became synonymous with the New England whaling era. After the war ended, Nantucket recovered and successfully continued whaling until the early 1840s. At its peak, Nantucket had a population of around 10,000, and the town had five wharves , 36 candle factories, and a variety of shipyards . The island's whalers have been leaders in discovering new fishing areas and developing hunting methods. They were the first to have extensive knowledge of the Gulf Stream , which was mapped by Captain Timothy Folger for the then United States Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin .

During the British-American War in 1812, the island fleet lost 38 ships again, but the number could be increased to more than 80 ships by 1822. Nantucket initially held its own in competition with New Bedford , which had an even larger fleet, but suffered initial losses in the mid-1840s. The island's whaling industry was badly hit by a major fire in the city center in 1846, and the California gold rush in 1849 lured more than 400 young people to leave Nantucket.

The greatest economic damage, however, was caused by the increasing silting up of the harbor basin, which made it impossible for the ever larger ships to call at Nantucket at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1803 and 1806 the island administration unsuccessfully asked the United States Congress for assistance in the dredging of the port, so that the whaling ships had to switch to the port of Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard . In desperation, the people tried Nantucket in 1839, returning fishing boats using a as camel steam designated dry dock to be transported in the dock, but even for the port was now too shallow. In 1869 the Bark Oak was the last whaling ship to leave Nantuckets harbor, and in 1874 the name was removed from the list of US whaling bases.

literature

Patricia Heintzelman: National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form. ( PDF ) National Park Service , April 2, 1975, accessed March 17, 2016 .

Web links

Individual evidence

^ National Register Information System . In: National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service . Retrieved November 2, 2013.
↑ Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: Massachusetts. National Park Service , accessed August 11, 2019.
↑ cf. Heintzelman, p. 2.
↑ cf. Heintzelman, p. 5.
↑ cf. Heintzelman, p. 6.
↑ ^a ^b cf. Heintzelman, p. 3.
↑ ^a ^b cf. Heintzelman, p. 7.
↑ ^a ^b ^c cf. Heintzelman, p. 8.

[1] National Register Information System . In: National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service . Retrieved November 2, 2013.

[2] Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: Massachusetts. National Park Service , accessed August 11, 2019.

[NRHP_2-3] . Heintzelman, p. 2.

[NRHP_5-4] . Heintzelman, p. 5.

[NRHP_6-5] . Heintzelman, p. 6.

[NRHP_3-6] . Heintzelman, p. 3.

[NRHP_7-7] . Heintzelman, p. 7.

[NRHP_8-8] . Heintzelman, p. 8.