New England Blog

Edgartown Harbor Lighthouse // 1881

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Pre-1939 image of original lighthouse with walkway to the left.

With Edgartown being synonymous with the whaling and the ocean, its obvious the town has long had a lighthouse to guide weary travellers. In 1828, Congress approved $5,500 for “building a pier and light-house on the Point of Flats, at the entrance to Edgartown Harbor.” That first lighthouse was a two-story dwelling with a side-gabled roof atop which was centered the lantern room. The structure was erected on wooden pilings out in the water, requiring its first keeper to row a short distance to get to the tower. In 1830, a 1,500-foot-long wooden walkway was built at a cost of $2,500 to connect the lighthouse to the shore. In 1840, the rotten wooden pilings supporting the lighthouse were replaced by a stone pier. The keeper’s house was drafty and leaky, and vulnerable to the sea and weather due to its exposed location. This resulted in a greater than average turnover of keepers, and some keepers refused to live in the official quarters preferring to seek lodging on the nearby shore. The lighthouse was restored numerous times through the early 20th century until The Great Hurricane of 1938 inflicted significant damage to the lighthouse. Upon taking control of the nation’s lighthouses in 1939, the U.S. Coast Guard quickly tore down the building.

The original plan was to replace the lighthouse with a steel skeleton tower, but instead a disused 1881 lighthouse that served as a rear range light on Crane’s Beach in Ipswich, Massachusetts was dismantled and barged, minus its brick lining, to Edgartown. The relocated forty-five-foot cast-iron tower was soon in service at Edgartown and remains an active aid to navigation today, showing an automated flashing red light every six seconds. The lighthouse remains a must-see spot when visiting Edgartown.

Baylies-Pease House // c.1845

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This stunning house on Starbuck Neck in Edgartown was originally built on Main Street by Frederick Baylies Jr., as his own residence. Baylies was the architect of the town’s original Methodist church, the Old Whaling Church, and a couple other extant churches in town in the early 19th century. The home was sold to William Cooke Pease, a shipbuilder and merchant. In 1839, he joined the United States Revenue Cutter Service, an armed customs enforcement service, and he quickly rose in rank, spanning the transition from sail to steam. Capt. Pease designed and built new Cutter ships for the Great Lakes and refitted many aging vessels on the West Coast. Today, he is regarded as a founder of the modern Coast Guard, which in 1915, was created by the consolidation by an act of Congress of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service the United States Life-Saving Service to form the United States Coast Guard as we know it today.

Old Whaling Church // 1843

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Methodists on Martha’s Vineyard arguably left the largest lasting mark between religious groups on the island between Wesleyan Grove in Oak Bluffs and this stunning church in Edgartown. The Methodists in Edgartown grew with the success of the whaling industry there and their former church was outgrown, requiring a larger and more prominent worshipping space in town. Designed by Frederick Baylies, Jr., the Old Whaling Church was built by skilled shipwrights for Edgartown’s Methodist whaling captains and is regarded as one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in New England. The Old Whaling Church was not only funded by mariners and those dedicated to seafaring trades, it was quite literally built by them, too. Baylies hired a crew of local carpenters who were equally as skilled in building churches as they were in constructing ships. The church is topped by a Gothic Revival clock tower which has crenellations, rounded arches, engaged pilasters, dentil cornice moldings and four spires capped with gilded acanthus leaf finials. The church was acquired by the Vineyard Trust in 1980, and they converted the old sanctuary into a performing arts space. The congregation meets in the former sanctuary in the summer months and in the vestry in the winter with its smaller numbers.

Captain Fisher House // 1892

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Standing out amongst the Federal and Greek Revival homes in Edgartown, this Victorian home was constructed in 1892 by Captain Charles W. Fisher (1835-1905) for his new wife. The Fisher family includes many members who were active in the local whaling industry. Fisher is said to have caught the largest sperm whale on record in 1884 and apparently loved being on the open ocean. The next year he married Parnell Pease and she sailed with him to the Pacific on a whaling voyage, lasting five years! At the time of their marriage, Fisher was in his 50s and his new wife in her 20s. Upon their return, Fisher built his wife this “modern style house on the pretentious side with Victorian ornamentation.” Unfortunately, his wife preferred her former house, which was a block a way and obscured any views of the water. Tradition states that apparently, Mrs. Fisher had seen enough of the water during her voyage, as her diary on the five year trip detailed her many unfortunate bouts with sea-sickness, a stay on an island, and dangerous storms.

Edgartown Town Hall // 1828

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Located on the idyllic Main Street in Edgartown, on Martha’s Vineyard, this historic building stands out for its design. It was built in 1828 as the first meeting house for the Methodists of Edgartown, the former building was shared with the Baptists there, but was quickly outgrown. Ten years after this church was built, the space was already becoming too cramped with the booming population of the town due to the success of the whaling industry here. The Methodists then constructed a larger church (known as the Old Whaling Church nearby and sold this structure to the town as a new Town Hall. After the Town bought it, the first floor was remodeled to accommodate the fire engine and also the Town’s police station. Today, it contains town offices on the ground floor and the former upstairs church
auditorium is now used as a movie theater. The infamous nails on the chalkboard scene in the movie Jaws was filmed in this building!

East Chop Light // 1878

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Is anything more “New England” than a historic lighthouse? Whenever I think of symbols of New England, lighthouses, Saltbox colonial homes, and lobster comes to mind. Located just north of Oak Bluffs, the East Chop Light was built to guide the hundreds of ferries every summer, picking up and dropping off passengers to the island. One of the many definitions of “chop” is the entranceway into a body of water. Knowing this, it seems natural that the two lighthouses flanking the entrance to the harbor at Vineyard Haven on the north shore of Martha’s Vineyard are respectively known as East Chop Lighthouse and West Chop Lighthouse. In 1878, a one-and-a-half-story dwelling and a cast-iron tower were under construction at the station. The forty-foot-tall, conical tower was similar in style to several other New England lighthouses constructed during the late 1800s. The lighthouse was painted white at first, but in the 1880s it received a coat of reddish-brown paint and became popularly known as the “Chocolate Lighthouse.” In 1988, it was returned back to white, as the dark color was causing excessive heat and condensation in the tower. East Chop Lighthouse remains an active aid to navigation, although the Fresnel lens was replaced by a modern beacon in 1984. The land surrounding the tower was sold to the town of Oak Bluffs in 1957 for use as a park.

Trinity Methodist Church // 1878

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Located on Trinity Park in Wesleyan Grove (aka the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association), this 1878 church served the year round Methodist community in Oak Bluffs. The Trinity Methodist Church is a towered, Victorian Gothic structure of some distinction. Edward M. Hyde, a Methodist minister who had trained in architecture and art, designed it. The property that the church and Parish House sit on belongs to the Association, but the buildings are maintained by the congregation. Interestingly, should the congregation disband, the buildings would return to the Association.

Methodist Camp Meeting Association Office // 1859

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Located at the center of the Wesleyan Grove, – the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association – this Italianate building has long served as a hub of the active summer community. The building was constructed in 1859, before any cottages were built in the newly formed summer colony. The office building was not only the headquarters for the Camp Meeting Association, it also served as a storage space for the baggage of the many who stayed in tents, many who didn’t have the means to purchase or rent a cottage. The building even was home to the associations’ post office. It now houses the Association director’s offices and contains the lease holders records back to 1864, a great way to learn about the diverse groups of people who visited and worshiped in this camp.

Jones Cottage // 1876

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This charming little cottage in Oak Bluffs was built in 1876 for Charles N. Jones, a resident of Medford, MA who had a home built there in 1872. His family’s summer cottage on Martha’s Vineyard was designed by the Ripley Brothers, Alonzo and Walter, carpenters who lived in town and designed and built many of the charming little summer homes there. The home features a wrap-around porch, a covered balcony at the second floor, and pierced board balustrade and cornerboards. Oh, and the paint scheme is perfect!

Governor Oliver Ames Summer House // 1878

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This stunning Victorian home in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard was built in 1878 as a summer home for Oliver Ames (1831-1895), a businessman, investor and Governor of Massachusetts. Oliver Ames was the son of Oakes Ames, who is credited by many historians as being the single most important influence in the building of the Union Pacific portion of the transcontinental railroad. After his father’s death in 1873, Oliver Ames became the executor of his father’s vast estate and business dealings, and spent vast sums of money on properties in the places he lived including North Easton, MA, Boston and Martha’s Vineyard. He summered at this large home fronting the ocean in Cottage City, then a part of Edgartown. He decided to run for state senate in 1879, after he was unsuccessful in securing passage for the separation of the Martha’s Vineyard community of Cottage City, where he owned a summer house, from Edgartown. Winning election, he saw through the incorporation of the town (now known as Oak Bluffs). Ames served as the Governor of Massachusetts between 1887 and 1890, and continued to summer in his beachfront home during that time. The eclectic Victorian home blends many popular styles at the time from the Shingle style with the continuous shingle siding, the Stick style with the delicate stick-work at the veranda, to Queen Anne with its asymmetric massing and square tower.