Streetscapes

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • May 21, 2019

Streetscapes are an important component to historic preservation.  What people seldom realize is that alterations anywhere in their yard or on their land will alter what a historic view has been.  This has happened all over Nantucket – and throughout the U.S. – and I often wonder what a person from the nineteenth century might think when houses have been demolished, moved on the site, or small ancillary buildings have been removed.  It really changes how a place looks – not just one particular lot – bit the whole historic feel of a street.  One things that we have lost a lot of on island is the secondary or ancillary buildings – outhouses, sheds, chicken coops, small barns.  Nantucket was not all lawns – yards had multiple uses and I believe I have written about this before.  They served as barnyard – for chickens and other small animals and sometimes even a cow; laundry washing and drying; candle manufactory; work yards  ̶  if a shop such as a boatbuilding shop, carpentry shop or some other small shop was located on a house lot; play yard; schoolyard; fish drying yard; etc.  The list goes on.


Each neighborhood on island functioned as a small village with coopers, cobblers, blacksmiths, boat or carpentry shop, shops in houses run by women out of their front sitting rooms, small factories – if you lived on Gay Street you had a straw works at the top of the street! – it was a cacophony of sounds and smells!


And so it brings me to this image.  A house on Main Street was recently renovated and a small garage – that likely was an old carriage house at the rear of the yard – was removed.  What it did was open a view shed to the back of the Maria Mitchell Observatory that was never this exposed ever before.  You could see a piece of the dome at a glimpse over the old carriage house but not like this ever – the MMO was built in 1908.  Interesting how now, that view from Howard onto Main, has been altered.


JNLF

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