Old Nantucket Electric Company Building Demolished

The old Nantucket Electric Company building that had stood for nearly a century along the downtown waterfront was demolished Thursday.

An excavator operated by Costello Construction, working on behalf of the utility giant National Grid, which owns the property, took the structure down in less than an hour.

The demolition of the brick building, one of the last vestiges of the era when Nantucket produced its own electricity from a power plant on New Whale Street, had been debated for more than a year.

Built in 1927, the brick building had served as the processing plant for the coal gasification conducted at the site by the former Nantucket Electric Company. After the power plant was closed in 1996 following the completion of the first undersea cable from Nantucket to the mainland, the brick building at 10 New Whale Street was gutted of its structural steel to house equipment associated with the remediation effort for contaminated soil at the site. That included pumping and filtering groundwater in the area for 12 years. For years, it had sat empty and unused by National Grid, which allowed the structure to fall into disrepair, with large cracks through its bricks, holes in its roof, and broken windows.

National Grid filed a demolition permit for the building in late 2024, claiming it posed a hazard and safety risk. Preservationists, including the Nantucket Preservation Trust, immediately objected and urged the Historic District Commission (HDC) to deny the demolition permit. Yet after its members initially stated they would never allow it to be torn down, the HDC voted 3-2 in July 2025 to allow the demolition to proceed. That decision was appealed by the Preservation Trust, but the Select Board voted 3-2 in November to uphold the HDC’s decision.

The building was part of a wider area along the waterfront that the town, along with other property owners, including National Grid and Steve Karp’s Nantucket Island Resorts, previously targeted for redevelopment, including a possible parking garage. Those plans, however, have fizzled and gone quiet in recent years.

Asking about the future of the property, National Grid spokesman Bob Kievra told the Current: "Our priority has been making the parcel safe for the community by taking down the structure. It is too soon to talk about any future use for the parcel.”

Ahead of Thursday's demolition, there had been numerous inquiries about the building's bricks and whether residents would be able claim them as souvenirs. The National Grid crew at the site stated that the bricks are considered hazardous due to the years of coal gasification inside the building, and will be taken off-island for disposal at a facility that can accept hazmat materials.