Stair to the Heavens

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • December 13, 2021

As a MMA staff member and also the person who works with facilities of the MMA, I have the opportunity to go places and know places in our buildings that few others do. I am intimately knowledgeable about how things work – or don’t work – why something is a certain way and how things were or are used.


This image is the rear interior stairs in the Maria Mitchell Vestal Street Observatory (MMO). The original piece was built in 1908 (dome) and then in 1922, an Astronomical Study was added. What you see here is a staircase added in 1922 and I love the curve of the railing and the sweep and change in width of these stairs. It’s sort of astronomical for lack of another word. This staircase provided access for the astronomer and even visitors when they held “Moon Nights” on the roof and in the yard – long before we had our other beloved observatory – Loines. So I guess, it really is/was a stair to the heavens.


If you have been by Vestal Street lately then you have noticed some commotion at the MMO. The inkberries have been taken down and the fence removed along the street. Staging has been erected along the side of the MMO and Mitchell House. This is because we have begun the conservation of the exterior of the MMO – funded by a Community Preservation Act grant and a grant from the M. S. Worthington Foundation. This will be a long process as we replace lintels, repair and replace spalling brick and grout, and make repairs to the copper roof and flashing, and other issues that will help us make the building weather tight and conserve the more than 100-year-old structure. Island mason, Wayne Morris, is conducting the masonry work and James Lydon will complete the copper work. Once the exterior has been conserved, the MMA will address interior needs – including more brickwork!


I will be updating you as we go through the long process. Its very detail oriented and because it is a historic building, we need to match mortar and bricks and other materials as best we can if original pieces cannot be salvaged. The mason has been working hard just to grind up the right stones – size and color – which need to be a part of the lime mortar. He’s devised a “smasher” even – that’s why he is so good at what he does. He takes his time and is very good at thinking outside the box. If you take a look closely at the grout on the MM you will note how “chunky” the grout actually is. It looks like the masons in 1908 and 1922 went to the south shore and collected pebbles!


JNLF

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Mallow!

By Jascin Leonardo Finger • August 31, 2026
I’m sure you’ve seen it as you trek about the island – near the beaches and ponds. This image is of the swamp or marsh mallow that we have on Vestal Street in our garden out front of the Observatory. It can grow in drier places – though it’s not as lush as at Capaum Pond or out in Quaise. It’s in the Hibiscus family – and is fairly tropical looking and always a delight to see.  “When in bloom, one of the most showy plants of the Island, for a mass of the magnificent, large flowers on the edge of a blue pond causes one’s heart to thrill at the wealth of deep pink colour . . .” from Nantucket Wild Flowers, Alice O. Albertson (cousin of Maria Mitchell), 1921. JNLF

A Piece of a Clay Pipe

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 24, 2026
I have always wanted to find a piece of a clay pipe. I know – weird – but if you have ever read any of my blogs here for the MMA then you know I have a thing for pottery shards. I sort of figured I would not find a piece of a clay pipe – not even a piece of a stem. But the other day, walking in a place where I have found quite a few shards, I found a piece of clay pipe! Now, I’m not talking about water pipes – I am talking about tobacco pipes. And I know very little about clay pipes. Yes, I am a curator of a historic house museum, but this family did not smoke. They were Quaker and among the many things they abstained from, tobacco was one of them. Therefore, I am not up on clay pipes so I am doing a bit more research.  For one, age can be determined by the width of the hole inside the pipe. So based on this one, I would say it’s fairly late. Since they were so fragile, and those holes pretty small, if it got filled with tobacco, the person just broke off the stem creating a shorter pipe and one that was not clogged with tobacco. Apparently, stems could be recycled – in fact, 15,000 broken stem pieces were uncovered at a historic walkway at Colonial Williamsburg – they were used as fill! And pipes were made into the early twentieth century – falling out of favor around World War One. It makes sense – they were cheap, easy to make, and affordable. Typically, one could last a few years – unless you dropped it of course. An,d pipes were used by men, women, and (eh, em) yes, children. I can see that Nantucket may not have had a lot of tobacco smoking residents – not just that some were Quaker – but because of the Quaker influence. I t does not mean people here do not smoke – I just think there may have been fewer smokers on the island in the nineteenth century and earlier. JNLF

Maria Mitchell In Her Own Words

By Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • August 17, 2026
August 19 {1857}. There are four great men whose haunts I mean to seek, and on whose footsteps I mean to stand: Newton, Shakespeare, Milton, and Johnson. To-day I told the driver to take me to St. Martin’s, where the guide-book says that Newton lived. He put me down at the Newton Hotel, but I looked in vain to its top to see anything like an observatory. I went into a wine-shop near, and asked a girl, who was pouring out a dram, in which house Newton lived. She pointed, not to the hotel, but to the house next to a church, and said, “that’s it – don’t you see a place on the top? That’s where he used to study nights.” It is a little, oblong-shaped observatory, built apparently of wood, and blackened by age . . . .” Blackened no doubt by the wood ash and soot found in the air throughout over-crowded nineteenth century London. We always think about London being very foggy in the nineteenth century but frankly a lot of it was wood and coal ash as the nineteenth century grew older, particularly as factories developed and belched all of that into the air – think Sherlock Holmes in the 1880s. But Maria Mitchell, while starting in Europe as a young woman’s chaperone, also knew that this tour of Europe was a great learning experience – the equivalent of a college education she could not have. Doors were thrown open to her around Europe – in particular at all of the observatories that dotted the continent. She was not just well-known – she was famous. JNLF
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