Davidson Photographs at Peter Foulger Museum

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Davidson Photographs on Display at Peter Foulger Museum

A COLLECTION of the photographs of Louis S. Davidson, well known summer resident of Nantucket, has been placed on exhibit on the second floor of the Peter Foulger Museum. They embrace a wide variety of Nantucket personalities, including the late Herbert Coffin, for so many years Commodore of the Wharf Rat Club on Old North Wharf; George "Bunt" Mackay, so familiar to the Pacific Club and Wharf Rat members; Austin Strong, the playwright; Emerson Tuttle, artist and Yale professor; Bassett Jones, electrical engineer and Polpis devotee; James H. Wood, last of the Grand Army veterans of Nantucket; Frank Swift Chase, the artist, and Everett U. Crosby, who worked so diligently to preserve this island town.

These were distinct personalities and Louis Davidson, with his skill as a photographer, has captured them in characteristic poses, so that they represent an historical record. Although most of these outstanding figures have been nearly two decades removed from the Island scene their memories are still green in a wide circle of relatives and friends.

Other photographs on display are of islanders still active on the local scene — all in informal poses, looking their natural selves, as Mr. Davidson has so carefully caught them. A group picture of the Wharf Rat Club, taken in 1968, has such a remarkable clarity that all the individual members may be easily identified. Among the older views is the Burridge-Mazerole Boat Yard, at Francis and Washington Streets, and one of the first buses to run to the Bathing Beach, owned by Elmer Pease — "Bus No. 4, Seats 20, Fare 10c" — with one of the old surreys in front of the Pacific Club as a contrast.

Louis Davidson also presented fifty other views of Nantucket, with houses, landscapes and seascapes represented. The entire collection is a record of scenes of Nantucket's recent past, and will increase in value in the passage of time. The Nantucket Historical Association is indeed fortunate to receive such a splendid gift.