Why We Protect Nantucket

To the editor: Earlier this month the Select Board saved a historic garage on Union Street by upholding a finding of the HDC which was being challenged on appeal. The tiny, charming garage was built in the 1940s.

I’m writing to express thanks to the Board and the HDC. The board reviewed many reasons for keeping the garage where it is – the proposed development threatened a nearby elm tree; the recent land division was unconventional; and the area is already congested. But one reason was important above all – by denying the demolition, our civic leaders were protecting the Nantucket National Historic Landmark. This was articulated last Wednesday by Nantucket’s committed and qualified Preservation Planner Holly C. Backus, and by Union Street neighbor Liz Coffin. M. Coffin explained the significance of the little garage, which she recollected was built just after WWII in the style of an “auto house,” being a garage that fit a small car but was intentionally built to look like a house, with windows, window boxes, and trellises for climbing roses.

The significance of our island’s National Historic Landmark designation can feel elusive, especially with so much new development all around. Many people wouldn’t consider a 1940s garage on Union Street to be important enough to save. But Nantucket is a Historic Landmark not because of any single spectacular building. It’s the many buildings large and small, from the 18^th-century whaling period through to the mid- 20^th-century preservation period, that persist in context with each other and the landscape that make Nantucket special. Taken altogether Nantucket is not only beautiful; it also teaches us about the past, and that’s what we are trying to protect.

Now, at the urging of the Town, it seems everyone is writing letters to the State and the Federal government asking them to protect Nantucket’s National Historic Landmark status by stopping offshore wind. The turbines, their lights, and their industry amidst our wild ocean will harm Nantucket, which because of the Landmark, the federal government is pledged to protect.

At a time when Nantucket needs its Landmark status more than ever, this status is potentially at risk. Last summer the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, notified the Select Board of concerns via a letter to the Nantucket Preservation Trust dated June 5, 2024. The Park Service wrote: “We are now aware of a potential threat to the nationally significant district through the demolition of a contributing resource as well as ongoing district-wide threats presented by these same patterns of relocation, demolition, and infill.” The Park Service said its site visit and notification from the Trust “reveals continued troubling loss to the National Historic Landmark district that is occurring monthly” in the form of destruction and reconstruction of historic structures, as well as new structures poorly fitted to our landscape. The letter specifies a number of recent harms to the Landmark that were duly permitted, despite our power to stop them.

We should not ask the Feds to do for us what we are unwilling to do for ourselves. Tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, I appeal to property owners, spec developers, brokers, advisors, lawyers, designers, and our local elected officials – the HDC and Select Board, and also the Land Bank, the housing groups and the Planning Board – to prioritize keeping Nantucket’s historic structures and context intact and to protect our cultural, scenic landscape.

This takes time and study (for example, what is historic, and why?). It may also require some sacrifice. But it’s what has made Nantucket worthy of Federal protection in the first place.

Preservation laws are meaningless if people don’t implement them. Protecting Nantucket starts with us.

Hillary Hedges Rayport