2023 August Fête Program - Nantucket Preservation Trust

et Sail for India Street

18 th Annual August Fête

Thursday, August 10, 2023

Six O’clock in the Evening

We help responsible owners of the finest built homes care for the place that matters most.

To learn more, contact: Charlie Kilvert Nantucket Insurance 508.901.1500

ckilvert@me.com

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Set Sail for India Street

Thank you for supporting Nantucket Preservation Trust’s 18th Annual August Fête on India Street.

Sense of Place Exhibition & Silent Auction

August 7–August 14

A selection of carefully curated one-of-a-kind pieces by local artists and artisans and experiences inspired by the qualities that make Nantucket unique. Visit our Sense of Place Exhibition at 11 Centre Street. Bid online via 32 Auctions, August 7–14 bit.ly/NPTAuction23

The Houses

12 India, c.1835 • 17 India, c.1800

18 India, c.1769 • 35 India, c.1786 • 45 India, c.1804

Party tent is located at 26 India Street Houses open from 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Nantucket Preservation Trust is most grateful to our underwriters, sponsors, and Fête leaders.

nantucket preservation trust 11 Centre Street | P.O. Box 158, Nantucket, MA 02554 508-228-1387 | www.nantucketpreservation.org

Historic images courtesy of the Nantucket Historical Association

Graphic Design by Kathleen Hay

TALIA LARGE CHANDELIER IN GILD AND CLEAR SWIRLED GLASS DESIGNER: JULIE NEILL

India Street

Much of this history draws on the work of Betsy Tyler in Off Centre: The Wesco Acre Lots, published by NPT in 2012

In Isaac Coffin’s 1799 town street list, this street was called “Pearl.” It is not known who selected the name “Pearl,” or why. The often-quoted description by Joseph Samson, from the January 1811 issue of the Port Folio, is said to have referred to Pearl Street:

“Persons of note are saluted by everybody they meet; and the popular name of captain is often bestowed on respectable people, who have never followed the sea, and perpetuated, as a credible title, like that of squire on the continent, to those who have retired from business. One quiet lane, leading into the country, is called India Row, from the number of persons of this description, who reside there, in ease, and affluence…”

An 1816 deed calls the street “India” Street, and this name continues through the 1820s. “Pearl” reappears in the early 1830s and continued throughout the first half of the twentieth century. By the 1957 Street List of Registered Voters, the name of the residential end of the street was “India.” Today, the upper, middle, and lower parts of this busy residential and commercial street are called India Street.

Benjamin and Ann Chase built a new brick house on the site of the old Swain House c. 1835.

12 India Street c.1835

This is the second house to stand in this location, an earlier house was built sometime prior to 1800 and lived in by Rueben Swain and later, his son John Swain, John’s wife, Hannah, and their five children. The Swain house stood until about 1834.

Benjamin and Ann Chase built a new brick house on the site of the old Swain House c. 1835. The construction of brick houses on Main Street in the 1830s must have influenced Benjamin, although his house was smaller and less ornamented than those grand homes of whale-oil magnates (and their heirs) seen on Upper Main Street, including the Three Bricks. The recessed doorway at 12 India Street is a feature also found at 69 Main Street, the earliest brick house built on Upper Main Street.

Benjamin and Ann had four sons; only Alexander survived his father, a widower for almost forty years who lived to be ninety, and who bequeathed the house on (what was then called) Pearl Street to Alexander’s wife, Eliza C. Chase, in 1884. She sold the house the next year to Robert B. Coffin, whose family owned it for more than fifty years.

17 India Street c.1800

Timothy Horsfield, a tinplate maker, bought vacant land on India Street in 1800. At the time, there was a wetland called Micha’s Pond in the area where 17 to 23 India Street now stand. He married Amey Hussey in 1791, and they had four children by the time they purchased the property; a fifth was born soon after. In 1810, Timothy mortgaged the house on India Street to Nantucket Bank, which was not paid when he died in 1812. The bank did not find a buyer and held the property until they sold it to wealthy merchant Zenas Coffin in 1818. Coffin sold it a year later to Charles Barney, a block maker and merchant, who mortgaged it to another of Nantucket’s early banks, Phenix Bank. Barney sold the house to master mariner Stephen West in 1826.

West began his long career as a cabin boy about the William Rotch ship Speedwell at the age of only 12, in 1787. He sailed to the South Pacific at 15 and became a captain by age 22. West took part in successful China trade voyages on the Oneida and later commanded whaleships Dolphin, Martha, and Pacific. West’s daughter, Mary West Clasby sold 17 India Street to Samuel C. Coffin, a mariner, for $450 in 1861. Later, it was owned by Mary Lawrence Weeks, wife of mariner Barzillai Weeks. The Weeks family owned the property for 23 years.

Throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s, 17 India Street was operated as a boardinghouse, as Nantucket became an increasingly popular tourist destination. The Hospital Thrift Shop acquired the property in 1945. The shop has served as a highly successful fundraising operation for the Nantucket Cottage Hospital ever since and is the preeminent mercantile mecca for treasure hunters and thrifty shoppers on Nantucket. In 2015, the Hospital Thrift Shop was awarded funding from the Community Preservation Committee of the Town of Nantucket to preserve the building. 17 India Street is protected by a Preservation Easement held by NPT and was NPT’s 2018 Architectural Preservation Award winner.

17 India Street, 1970, Historic American Buildings Survey

18 India Street c.1769

The house built by Silas Paddack around 1769 is unlike any other in the Wesco Acre Lots, the name for this area of town. It is one of only nine eighteenth-century gambrel-roof houses in town. This house stands out in a neighborhood of Typical Nantucket Houses. The one-story addition on the west side of 18 India Stret is thought to have been a small shop space, and is often referred to as the “rum shop.”

Paddack was a mariner in the early whale fishery, a grand-nephew of Ichabod Paddack, who was invited by the Proprietors to come to Nantucket in 1690 to teach them the ins and outs of whaling. Silas’ grandfather, Joseph, came to the island with Ichabod and settled here. Silas married Hepsabeth Swain in 1762, and ten years later her grandfather deeded Silas the land “on which the dwelling house of him and the said Silas Paddack now stands.” The land formerly belonged to Mary Mitchell, sister of Hepsabeth’s grandfather; she died in 1768, so it is likely that the house was built shortly thereafter.

The Paddacks moved to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia in 1788, where they joined a colony of Nantucketers who were establishing a whaling town there. It was not an entirely successful venture, and the Paddacks returned to the island in 1795 after Silas died. They sold their Nantucket home in 1791 to William Barnard, whose brothers Jonathan and Libini had married two Paddack daughters. The house remained in the extended Paddack family until 1920.

The house was restored in 2006–2007 by Pen Austin, Michael Burrey, Robert Mussey, Newton Millham, and Brian Pfeiffer. Curtis Livingston, owner of the house at the time, assembled this team of preservation experts to make critical repairs to the home. The historic section’s interior work included repair of plaster walls, floors, timber framing, and the rescue of the central chimney mass, which had undergone structural damage. The goal was not to restore the house to a particular period or even to previous conditions, but rather to repair old elements and introduce new ones only as necessary. For his efforts and foresight, Curtis Livingston was awarded NPT’s Traditional Building Methods Award in 2012. Today, Curtis’s children are the thoughtful stewards of 18 India.

Pen Austin at work, 2007, photo courtesy of Brian Pfeiffer

35 India Street c.1786

From 1783 to 1785, George Lawrence acquired six parcels of land on the North Side of India Street, in what was known as the “Coffin Squadron.” Described variously in deeds as a block maker, mariner, and merchant, this man of many hats from Alexandria, VA married two great-greatgranddaughters of the original Tristram Coffin. (Not at the same time.) Lawrence’s first wife, Mary Coffin, died in 1763. Later, he married Judith Coffin, with whom he had four children. The house he built at 35 India Street between 1785 and 1788 is one of the earliest on the street and is a Typical Nantucket House in style. The Lawrence family left Nantucket in 1801 and returned to Virginia, after he sold every lot on the north side of Main Street, from number 15 through number 35.

35 India Street, 1970, Historic American Buildings Survey

In 1795, the house was purchased by Martha Swain, the widow of David Swain. Her son, Gilbert, purchased shares of the house from his brothers after Martha died in 1799. 35 India Street remained in the Swain family for 85 years.

Twentieth-century owner Frances Devens “Daisy” Parrish gained some local literary fame as the author of Poilu, Petit Chien de la Guerre, a memoir of her adventures as a nurse in France during World War I, with her heroic and faithful canine companion, Poilu. For her services, Parrish was awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French government.

Over the years, 35 India Street has looked different than you see today. In the 1880s, the house had two large wraparound verandas and a balustrade along the roof. Ornate Victorian brackets embellished the structure and were later removed.

35 India Street with Victorian embellishments, c. 1890s

Rescom Taber and his neighbor at 43 India Street, Maltiah Nye, may have been business partners; both were carpenters who moved to the island, married local woman, and built similar houses side by side. Unlike Nye, who remained at 43 India Street for sixty years, Taber sold the house he built on 45 India Street in 1813 and bought and sold several other pieces of property on the island. On at least two of them—on Hussey Street and Bunker’s Court—he built houses before he left the island with his second wife, Nancy Bramley.

Mariner and trader William Robinson bought the house at 45 India Street in 1820. He may have been encouraged by his wife, Sally Hayden, whose sister, Hannah Hayden Nye, lived next door with her husband Maltiah at 43 India Street. After Sally died in 1841, William sold the house to his daughter, Emmaline Balch. The house changed hands a number of times: master mariner Frederick Swain mortgaged it to the Nantucket Institution for Savings in 1847, and lost possession; in 1869 the bank sold it to Lewis B. Imbert for $600. Imbert, like so many other Nantucket men, was a mariner who rose through the ranks to become a master mariner, and when the whaling industry declined became the captain of a cod-fishing schooner, owning a farm on the island as well. 45 India Street stayed in the Imbert family until 1927.

npt

45 India Street, c. 1880s

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2023 AUGUST FÊTE CONTRIBUTORS

With gratitude to SILVERCREST ASSET MANAGEMENT and

PURE INSURANCE & NANTUCKET INSURANCE

our corporate underwriters for this year’s August Fête.

We extend a special thank you to the following homeowners for opening their home:

Sarah Baker & Guy de Peyrelongue

Mary Casey & The Hospital Thrift Shop

Paiment & Livingston Families

Carolyn MacKenzie

Karl & Yvette Slatoff

and for providing our tent site: The Slatoff Family

Special thanks to Kathleen Hay of Kathleen Hay Designs and our auctioneer, John Shea.

With Thanks to Our Business Sponsors for their Support: Preserving the Craft

M. Sweeney Construction

Marine Home Center

Granite

ACKtivities Event Planning

Kathleen Hay Designs

Visual Comfort Inc.

Brick

Carolyn Thayer Interiors

Dujardin Designs

Gryphon Architecture, LLC

Schwartz Hannum PC

Weatherly Design, LLC

Mortar

Melanie Gowen Sense of Place

Nantucket Looms

2023 AUGUST FÊTE LEADERS

The following individuals provided financial support for the event at the Leadership Level (as of July 15, 2023)

$5,000 Level

Mr. and Mrs. Christian M. Hoffman

Mr. and Mrs. Amos B. Hostetter, Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. Greg Swart

$2,500 Level

Ms. Amanda Cross

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Friedman

Ms. Susan Zises Green

Mr. Michael A. Kovner and Mr. Jean Doyen de Montaillou

Mr. Albert S. Messina and Mr. Ken Jennings

Mr. and Mrs. Paul R. C. Sullivan

$1,000 Level

Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Atkinson

Mr. and Mrs. David S. Bailey

Mrs. Walter F. Ballinger, II

Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Bratton

Mr. and Mrs. David S.J. Brown

Mrs. William C. Buck

Mr. John B. Carroll

Ms. Susan M. Cosper and Mr. Brian Bartlett

Ms. Anne Delaney and Mr. Calvin Carver, Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. Bradford Dimeo

Mr. Harvey P. Eisen and Ms. Andrea Herron

Mr. and Mrs. Mark Filipski

Mr. and Mrs. Johan F. Firmenich

Mr. and Mrs. Dean Graham

Ms. Hillary C. Hedges and Mr. Jeffrey F. Rayport

Dr. Douglas Horst and Ms. Maureen Phillips

Mr. and Mrs. Daniel L. Korengold

Dr. and Mrs. Keith M. Lindgren

Ms. Katherine M. Logue and Mr. Jonathan Nyland

Mr. and Mrs. Martin McKerrow

Mr. and Mrs. Craig H. Muhlhauser

Ms. Diane Pitt and Mr. Mitch Karlin

Ms. Alison Potts and Mr. Mark T. Groenstein

Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy P. Richardson

Mr. and Mrs. George E. Roach

Mr. and Mrs. John S. Ross

Mr. and Mrs. Bruce A. Shear

Mr. and Mrs. Harris Stone

Mr. and Mrs. John Sussek, Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. David S. Wolff

$500 Level

Mr. and Mrs. Alan F. Airth

Mr. and Mrs. David Cheek

Mrs. John G. Lathrop

Ms. Anne MacLennan Perkins

Ms. Linda L. Saligman

Ms. Jane Schnitzer

Ms. Courtney A. Thorne

Additional Leadership Donations

Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Bailey Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. William P. Kupper Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. F. Brand Whitlock

AUGUST FÊTE COMMITTEE

Barbara Halsted, August Fête Co-Chair

Ann Swart, August Fête Co-Chair

Gussie Beaugrand, Auction Chair

Jon King, Volunteer Chair

Beth Davies

Trudy Dujardin

Aisling Glynn

Melanie Gowen

Susan Zises Green

SENSE OF PLACE EXHIBITION & AUCTION COMMITTEE

Gussie Beaugrand, Chair

Beth Davies • Barbara Halsted

Jon King • Ann Swart

NPT BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Executive Committee

Ken Beaugrand, Chair

David Brown, Vice Chair

Alison Potts, President

Chris Hoffman, Vice President

Anne Troutman, Vice President

Bill Moore, Treasurer

Barbara Halsted, Secretary

Directors

Melanie Gowen • Susan Zises Green • Jon King

Michael Kovner • Al Messina • Bernadette Meyer

Ann Swart • Michael Sweeney • Debra Treyz

Staff

Mary Bergman, Executive Director

Rita Carr, Deputy Director

Julie Kever, Administrative Assistant

Photo by Jeffrey Allen