Sherburne Hall
under the eaves

Rob Benchley

Independent chronicles

of Nantucket’s

historic buildings

By Liz Kronick

Independent Intern

An example of a juxtaposition of old and new, Sherburne Hall has retained much of its original style and purpose, but has also evolved into a modern institution. The only five-part Greek revival building in Nantucket, located at 7-21 Centre St., Sherburne Hall was the home for the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a secret society like the stonemasons, for nearly all of its existence. Within the last 20 years, it has been used as the headquarters for Preservation Institute: Nantucket, an extension of the University of Florida.

Views of Sherburne Hall on Centre Street, both from the early 1900s.

Early Sherburne Hall

The site of today’s Sherburne Hall once belonged to Dr. Paul Swift. His house and outbuildings sat on the property until he sold the property in 1844. The land changed hands a few times in the two years before all the buildings were burned and destroyed during Nantucket’s Great Fire of 1846.

Photos courtesy of Nantucket Historical Association

George Harris and Benjamin Riddell, owners of Swift’s former land, built Sherburne Hall with the help of theIinternational Order of Odd Fellows immediately after the fire. The new building was completed either in late 1846 or early 1847. It was built over Swift’s original charred house, of which ruins were discovered in the 1960s. Sherburne Hall was designed in almost the exact state of the current building, undergoing only moderate renovations during the 1980s.

“This building was one of, we think, the first built after the fire. The first was the Atheneum,” said Peter Prugh, director and associate professor of architecture of the Preservation Institute.

Sherburne Hall was built to house five shops at street level, and the Odd Fellows built the second floor hall and reception area for the express purpose of their meetings and rituals.

The Nantucket Lodge No. 66, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, was founded in 1845. To aid in the construction of their new home, the Nantucket Lodge of Odd Fellows received over $6,000 in relief from mainland Odd Fellows chapters. They held their first meeting in the building on Dec. 29, 1846.

“We don’t know exactly where the Odd Fellows were before, but they built this building,” said Prugh.

On the first floor of Sherburne Hall, three grocery stores and Sweet and Starbuck’s boot, shoe and leather shop were the original tenants.

Petticoat Row

The shops below the Odd Fellows’ meeting room soon came to be known as Petticoat Row. Many of the male shop owners spent much of the year on whaling ships or went away to fight in the Civil War, so their wives, sisters and daughters, wearing their petticoats, kept shop for them.

Center Street was also known as Petticoat Row because it was the ‘proper’ street in town and contained many fashionable shops, including women’s clothing stores. Everything from Centre Street to the harbor was the sailors’ territory and not an appropriate place for the ladies of the town.

Beginnings of Preservation Institute: Nantucket

Prugh spoke enthusiastically of Walter Beinecke, “the father of Nantucket,” who played a monumental role in restoring and preserving downtown Nantucket. Nantucket became isolated with the relocation of the whaling and fishing industries, and eventually it became impoverished. “The smart money started to leave” to New Bedford, he said.

Beinecke summered on Nantucket as a child in the 1920s, and later established an investment group made up of New York investors, which he called the Sherburne Investors. These men helped restore old buildings and bring tourism to the once prosperous island.

During the 1930s, Roosevelt created many jobs with Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects, one of which was the Historic American Building Survey (HABS). HABS employed architects and is the only WPA project still in operation today.

HABS sent students to draw and measure historic buildings on Nantucket in the 1930s and 1950s, and at Beinecke’s request, they returned to the island in the 1960s.

Beinecke helped find housing and jobs for HABS since he owned many of the buildings in the downtown area. The leader of the HABS team, Blair Reeves, worked for the University of Florida and teamed up with Beinecke to create Preservation Institute: Nantucket, in 1972 after HABS decided not to continue their work on Nantucket.

“For years we were sort of vagabonds … we drifted to different things,” said Prugh of Preservation Institute.

The Current Building

Preservation Institute finally found a home in 1986 when Beinecke bought the dilapidated Sherburne Hall from the Odd Fellows. The Odd Fellows moved out of Sherburne Hall and into their new meeting place — on Bartlett Road. Preservation Institute bought the building to enxsure its survival.

The mission of Preservation Institute: Nantucket is to provide a “unique educational experience in a broad range of historic preservation issues, while helping to research and document the historic environment of the island.”

“It has all the qualities of an old building. The floors tilt,” said a delighted Prugh. Though these quirks of an old building still exist, Sherburne Hall was marginally renovated in 1986 to accommodate the students from Preservation Institute and the University of Florida.

“The building you’re looking at today was restored by Walter Beinecke. It was restored and adapted for us.” The interiors were restored but the pressed metal ceilings are still original from the 1840s. Underneath the pressed metal, the original ceiling of the hall supposedly is a stenciled plaster ornamentation bordering a wallpaper sky mural that has been estimated to be very expensive to restore. Some of the molding and trim has been changed, but much is still original.

“We have bathrooms in the building now,” Prugh joked.

The building now has been “condominiumized.” Preservation Institute owns nearly 30 percent of the building and shares the top floor with the Nantucket Community Music Center (NCMC). The shops at street level are rented from individual owners.

Preservation Institute uses their space for the entire summer but often uses the hall for island oriented events and art shows in the spring, fall and winter.

“That’s how we function happily here on Nantucket,” said Prugh.

The space that Preservation Institute uses is an open, lofty area filled with workstations with laptop computers and top of the line technology, including wireless internet, and a grand piano owned by NCMC. Also, Preservation Institute owns one of the only darkrooms on Nantucket. The Institute sponsors research, public presentations, seminars, exhibitions, and educational programs and workshops throughout the year.

Downstairs, still-fashionable stores Best of the Beach, Trillium, Kiwi Cottons, Ceri, Haberdashery, and Stephanie’s Nantucket have replaced the old stylish stores of Petticoat Row.

Though these new, 21st century companies and organizations occupy the building, the upper façade of the building still reads “Sherburne Hall, I.O.O.F, 1846.”