Windsor Cottage, The First Black-Owned Summer Residence on Nantucket, Celebrating 100th Anniversary
JohnCarl McGrady •
Windsor Cottage, at 58 Prospect Street, is believed to be Nantucket’s oldest summer home owned by a Black family. This year, it celebrates its 100th anniversary.
Mabel Carter first came to the island in 1925 as part of her employment with a rich family from Pennsylvania, and when she fell in love with it, she and her husband, a postman named John Carter, purchased a piece of land for $2,500, with a $7 per month mortgage. They built a small cottage, where they would escape the bustle of Philadelphia in the summer for years to come.
Their great-grandson, Carter Stewart, still owns the property to this day.
To celebrate the cottage’s 100th anniversary, Stewart plans to hold a celebration in August when he will invite everyone who has stayed at the house since the current guest book began in 1982, as well as some friends who live on-island. Some of the people, he said, he hasn’t spoken with in years.
“I sent out a general invite to everybody who had ever stayed there to come back,” he said. “It was fun to reconnect with them. Some are living in California, some are in England, some are all over.”
Stewart has been visiting the island since he was a child and has seen a lot of changes in that time, but what hasn’t changed is the calmness that his home offers him.
“There's a serenity at our house,” he said. “There's just a sense of place and familiarity since I've been coming for so long. And just sitting on the front porch and watching the sunset, even though the island has changed, that part hasn't.”
Stewart’s celebration will include dinner at the Nantucket Historical Association on August 8th, and a ceremony in the island’s Historic Coloured Cemetery, where his family is buried, on the 9th.
Windsor Cottage has a unique history. It once served as a bed and breakfast for Black tourists, and was a community space for Black college students and other Black summer visitors who were turned away from white-dominated spaces on the island.
