Up Scuttle

Jascin N. Leonardo Finger • September 18, 2023

Isn’t this a lovely image? This was taken this summer by one of our artists in residence, Henry Michaelis. On nice days, we leave the roof walk open, as the Mitchells would have done – though we do add a screen! This allows the House to breath – hot air moves up through the House and exits the roofwalk hatch. The flow of air through the house as it makes its way through the open front door, and up the stairs and hall can at times create a nice soft and gentle breeze cooling and drying out the House to some degree. 



Roofwalks were put on the tops of houses for fire prevention and to put out chimney fires. The densely packed community of wooden houses all leaned in together made fire and its spread a big threat. The Great Fire of 1846 was not the only large fire on Nantucket. The term “widow’s walk” was not something that Maria Mitchell would have really known – at least earlier in life. The widow’s walk term was likely coined during Nantucket’s change from a whaling to a tourist economy in the late nineteenth century. It sounded far more romantic then saying it was a platform use for fire prevention. If you know that wood was scarce and expensive on island and it all had to come from off-island, then you would realize a housewright and the home’s owner would not be putting a walk on the top of his house for his wife to pine away for him and his return from sea. Wood was expensive – and she had a household and an island economy to run and grow.


JNLF

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