Restoration and expansion on Nantucket

Magazine Antiques, June, 2005 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

The Whaling Museum (a part of the Nantucket Historical Association in Nantucket, Massachusetts) is appropriately housed in a spermaceti candle factory that was built in 1847. Nantucket prospered in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries when it was the whaling capital of the world and the largest supplier of the whale oil needed to light the interiors of houses across the United States. Since the museum was founded in 1930 the collections have grown considerably, and the building has been restored to bring it to contemporary museum standards. The board of trustees engaged the architect Martin Sokoloff of Brookline, Massachusetts, to renovate the candle factory and to expand it by adding twenty thousand square feet of gallery space. The new facility, which opens on June 4, links what was formerly the Peter Foulger Museum with the candle factory. Gosnell Hall, the largest room in the museum, contains a skeleton of a forty-six-foot-long sperm whale, a thirty-foot-long whaleboat, whaling tools, and ship captains' portraits. A large gallery is dedicated to life on Nantucket from the early 1700s to the late 1830s--the heyday of the whaling industry on the island. A decorative arts gallery features the association's excellent scrimshaw collection as well as furniture, needlework, silver, whirligigs, lightship baskets, and sailors' valentines. There is also a large gallery for changing exhibitions. American Indian material is on view in the introductory gallery, which contains a time-line of Nantucket history. Nantucket whalers were forced to sail great distances in search of their prey, and they were among the first to explore the Pacific Ocean. Numerous objects made by the peoples of the South Pacific, today considered rare artworks, were brought back to Nantucket as souvenirs. These are also on view in the new museum.

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The shallow waters off Nantucket are treacherous at night and in stormy weather, and there, as elsewhere, lighthouses alerted ships at risk. By 1822 a Frenchman, Augustin Jean Fresnel, had invented a lens that was comprised of a series of prisms that enabled even a poor light to cast a long and bright beam that, in the case of the Nantucket lighthouse, could be seen at a distance of twenty-four miles. The Fresnel lens was installed in Sankaty Head Lighthouse at Siasconset, Nantucket, in 1849. At first it was fueled by whale oil, then kerosene, and finally in 1933 by electricity. The lens was removed in 1950 and given to the historical association. In the newly reconfigured museum, it resides at the base of the stairs in front of a large window making it visible from the street.

The new building is capped with a roof walk, echoing an architectural feature atop numerous houses on the island that is commonly referred to as a widow's walk. From this height all of Nantucket harbor, so critical to the island's early prosperity, is visible.

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