Quaker Meeting House and Research Library at 7 Fair Street · Academy on Fair Street, a handsome...

Nantucket Historical Association 52

» OLD GAOL» THOMAS MACY HOUSE

52

QUAKER MEETING HOUSE/RESEARCH LIBRARY

Quaker Meeting House and Research Library at 7 Fair Street

EILEEN POWERS, 2007

53

» THOMAS MACY HOUSE

Properties Guide | Quaker Meeting House/Research Library 53


Quaker Meeting House/ Research LibraryIn 1838, John Boadle opened the door to the new Friend’s

Academy on Fair Street, a handsome purpose-built structure

that would be his schoolhouse.

The two-story hip-roof building was sim-

ple but functional, with a central door

on the east side facing Fair Street, two

windows at the second-floor level, and

a chimney front and center. Two rows

of tall windows on the north and south

sides allowed light into the long school-

rooms: on the first floor were the desks

of the older scholars, while upstairs the

primary students were instructed by

Boadle’s assistant. An Englishman by

birth, Boadle had been recommended

for the job on Nantucket by Philadelphia

Friends, and he arrived on Nantucket

ready for the challenge. John, as he had

his students call him, settled in — becom-

ing one of the most beloved teachers in

the history of island schools — and made

the Fair Street schoolhouse his scholastic

kingdom for almost twenty years.

Next to the schoolhouse stood a

large meeting house built to serve the

Orthodox Friends in 1833 after one of

Nantucket Harbor

Lily Pond Park

Brant Point

Main Street

Upper Main St.

Broad St.

SteamboatWharf

StraightWharf

Civil WarMonument

NHA Whaling Museum& Museum Shop

Greater Light

Oldest House& Kitchen

Garden

Old Gaol

HadwenHouse

Thomas Macy

House

1800House

Old Mill

NHA Research LibraryWhitney Gallery &

Quaker Meeting House

Macy-ChristianHouse

Thomas Macy Warehouse

Fire HoseCart House

Eleanor HamPony Field

Mill St.

York Street

Prospect Street

How

ard Ct.

Vestal St.

Pleasant Street

Gard

ner St.

Liberty St.

Milk

St.

Sunset Hill Lane

West Chester St.

Oran

ge St.

S. M

ill S

t.

Washington St.

Easton Street

No

rth Liberty St.

Lily

St.

Chester St.

Cli� Road

N. W

ater St.

S. Beach

St.

India St.

Hussey St.

Centre St.

Ray’s Ct.

Judith Chase Ln.

Lucretia Mott Ln.

School St.

Hillers Ln.Charter St.

Fair St.

Kite Hill

N. C

entre St.

North Ave.

MacKay Way

Harborview Way

N. Beach St.

Cornish St.

Walsh St.

Willard St.

Hulbert Ave.

East Lincoln Ave.

Swain St.

Cen

tre St.

We

stm

inst

er

St.

Gay St.

Quince St. Chestnut St.

Federal St.

S. Water St.

Cambridge St.Oak St.

Acad

emy

Ln.

Ash Ln.

Ash St.

Sea St.

Step Ln.

Easy St.

Can

dle St.

Salem St.

Commercial St.

New

Wh

ale St.

Straight Wharf

Wash

ing

ton

St.

Un

ion

St.

Summer St.

Pine Street

Winter St.

Walnut Ln.

New

Do

llar

Starbuck Ct.

Candle House Ln.

Angola St.

Darling St.

Tattle Ct.

Farmer St.

Twin St.

Lyon St.

Je�erson St.

Eagle Ln.

Silver Street

Quaker Road

Low

ell P

l.

Madaket Rd.

Copper Ln.

Milk St.

Green Ln.

New

Lan

e

Bar

nab

as L

n. W

oodb

ury

Ln.

Franklin St.

Saratoga Lane

Mt. V

erno

n St.

Joy

St.

Hummock Pond Rd.

Vesper Lane

ProspectHill

Cemetery

New

Mill

St.

Mill Hill Lane

QuakerCemetery

MADAKET RD.

BIKE PATH

CLIFF RD. BIKE PATHSU

RFS

IDE

BIK

E P

AT

H

PROSPEC

T ST. BIKE PATH

Atl

anti

c A

ve.

CLIFF RD. BIKE PATH

MADAKET RD. BIKE PATH

CLIFF RD. BIKE PATH

Deaco

n’s W

ay

CommercialWharf

Faye

tte S

t.

Meader S

t.

Fran

cis St.

West Dover StreetE. Dover St.Weymouth St.Mulberry St.

York Street

Warren Street

New Street

Back Street

Williams S

treet

Cherry Stre

et

Williams Ln.

Sparks Ave.

Bear Stre

et

Lower Pleasant Street

Coon St.

Beaver St.

Spring St.

Unio

n St.

Lower O

range St.

Salt Marsh Way

Washin

gto

n St. E

xt.

Boyer’s Alley

Gardner P

erry Ln

.

Tristram Co�n

Homesite Marker

Wyers Way

NewNorth

Cemetery

OldNorth

Cemetery

Grove Lane

Old NorthWharf

Old SouthWharf

Folger-Franklin Memorial Boulder and Bench

ADDRESS

7 Fair Street

CONSTRUCTED

Quaker Meeting House

1838

Research Library

1904/2001

DISTANCE FROM

WHALING MUSEUM

.3 miles



54


the early schisms in the Society

of Friends. Records show that

James Weeks built the meeting

house, and he may have built

the schoolhouse five years later.

The Fair Street meeting house

was larger than the one on

Main Street that later became

a straw-hat factory and passed

through several other adapta-

tions before settling as the core

of the Dreamland Theatre. John

Boadle married Hanna Heaton

of Plattekill, New York, in the

Quaker Meeting House in 1854.

Soon after, he left Nantucket to teach in New Bedford, and his able

assistant, Hepsibeth Hussey, continued the school, but in a new loca-

tion on the corner of Charter and Fair Streets. By the 1860s, the num-

ber of Quakers had diminished, rendering the large meeting house of

questionable usefulness; it was dismantled and shipped to Dennisport

Quaker schoolmaster John Boadle

CDV1005

Interior of the Quaker Meeting House, early 1900s

HENRY S. WYER GPN4313

55




on Cape Cod, where it was reassembled and used as a school until it

burned down in 1930.

The schoolhouse at 7 Fair Street, a better size for a small popula-

tion of island Friends, was reconfigured as a meeting house in 1865.

Two thirds of the second floor was removed, leaving a balcony at the

east end; simple bench pews saved from the old 1833 meeting house

were added to the first floor; and a raised platform with bench seating

at the west end of the room accommodated the elders. For almost

three decades the old schoolhouse turned meeting house served as

the site of quiet Quaker contemplation, but eventually only a handful

of the faithful was left on the island.

In 1894, the meeting house was available for purchase. Many in

the community were unaware of the history of the building, prompt-

ing Henry S. Wyer to write a letter to the editor of the Inquirer and

Mirror and lay out the facts, summing up with the statement, “Thus it

is evident that the building was identified with the Friends for about 54

years, and is to all intents a landmark and a relic of them which should

The Quaker Meeting House as headquarters of the Nantucket Historical

Association, 1890s P3414



56


Museum collection displayed in the Quaker Meeting House, circa 1900

HENRY S. WYER P9326

57






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be preserved to futurity.” The Nantucket Historical Association had

recently been organized, in May 1894, and members were actively

searching for a “suitable place in which to store and exhibit the dona-

tions and loans of antique and historical articles, which already began

to come in.” Their June 25 meeting was held in the Friends Meeting

House on Fair Street and new president, Dr. J. Sidney Mitchell, recom-

mended buying the building in which the meeting was held, “. . . as

an old and valuable landmark which would serve temporarily as the

headquarters of the society, and the Council was authorized to pur-

chase the same at once.” And so the Quaker Meeting House, formerly

John Boadle’s schoolhouse, became the first building owned by the

Nantucket Historical Association, a place for meetings and for storing

the donated material that was rapidly accumulating

Just three years after its inception, the NHA recognized the need

for safe storage of the treasures in its care. Recording secretary Mary

E. Starbuck wrote in her 1897 report: “More than anything, we need

a fireproof building. We have land enough at the rear of the Meeting-

house for a brick extension of sufficient size for our purposes, and

when we have such an addition many valuable relics will come back

to the island. They have already been promised and for many reasons

it seems expedient to claim them as soon as possible.”

In 1897, the association made a pivotal decision. Rather than buy-

ing and “fitting up” a whaleship, an idea that was briefly considered but

deemed too expensive, it was voted that the fund accumulating for

that purpose be converted to a fund for “the most pressing need of the

Association — the erection of a fire-proof building.” Instead of brick,

concrete was chosen as the building material by architect George W.

Watson of Boston. Concrete was not a new material, in fact it was

used in ancient Rome for constructing aqueducts, the Colosseum,

and the Pantheon, but after the fall of the Roman Empire the art of

making concrete was lost until rediscovered in the eighteenth century.

It was used widely in Europe, particularly in France in the nineteenth

century. Harvard Stadium was made of concrete in 1903, and the first

concrete skyscraper was being built in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1904. News

of that achievement came to Nantucket, and persuaded Henry S.

Wyer, vice-president of the NHA, to use the aggregate material for the

59




proposed fireproof building. In 1904, one of the country’s early con-

crete buildings took shape behind the Quaker Meeting House. Frank

Lloyd Wright would follow suit in 1905, with his famous Unity Temple

in Oak Park, Illinois.

The collection of artifacts and documents that had been growing

for ten years was moved from the Quaker Meeting House to the new

fireproof building, a task that “ engrossed the whole time and efforts of

our working officials during the past year, and a most strenuous year’s

work for Curator and assistants. . . . “ wrote curator Susan E. Brock

in 1905. She was happy to report that the most satisfactory part of

the whole project was the restoration of the old meeting house to its

former condition, as it appeared when the association purchased it in

1894, adding, “We hope to be able to preserve it forever, in its Quaker

simplicity, as a type of the places of worship of our ancestors.”

The NHA has done just that, and the Quaker Meeting House looks

today very much the way it did in 1864. The attached fireproof build-

ing was for years known as the Fair Street Museum, the primary exhi-

bition space of the association, with collections arranged in a “cabi-

net of curiosities” style on both floors of the building. The Fair Street

Museum was the heart of the NHA, overflowing with everything from

Fair Street Museum, built 1904

GPN2842



60


arrowheads to whaling logbooks, along with larger items like furniture

and fire-hose carts. As the association expanded its properties in the

twentieth century, however, creating additional exhibition and storage

spaces, the aging fireproof building sat ripe for a new use that honored

the aspirations of the founders of the NHA: “. . . that a society should

be formed at once for the purpose of collecting books, manuscripts

and articles of any sort, to illustrate the history of our Island. . . . “

What better place for a library and research center than a fireproof

building — retrofitted, restored, and enlarged in 2001. The prima-

ry-source documents that record the history of Nantucket are housed

in the NHA Research Library at 7 Fair Street. An archival vault beneath

the Quaker Meeting House provides climate-controlled storage for

irreplaceable original documents — logbooks, account books, family

papers, journals, business records, photographs — that are made easi-

ly accessible to researchers when they visit, or through online records.

The intimate Whitney Gallery at the entrance to the library offers

changing exhibitions of Nantucket art and history and the light-filled

reading rooms are a haven for historians, students, journalists, film-

makers, homeowners searching for information about their Nantucket

houses, and genealogists filling in the branches of their family trees.

First exhibition in the Whitney Gallery

JEFFREY ALLEN, 2001 T436

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Edouard A. Stackpole Reading Room, NHA Research Library

JEFFREY ALLEN, 2001 T435

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Quaker Meeting House and Research Library at 7 Fair Street · Academy on Fair Street, a handsome...

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