The Landmark House
BY MARY LANCASTER INDEPENDENT ARTS EDITOR
Throughout history the stately building at 144 Orange St., originally built in the early 1800s as the Quaise Asylum, has remained just that - a place of refuge, retreat and security. Now Landmark House, a 26-unit, secure, affordable residence for senior citizens, the three-story structure was formerly Our Island Home after it was moved from a knoll near Bellows Pond where it protected the indigent, intemperate, ill and a few orphans and insane in a tranquil agricultural setting thought to be therapeutic.

Sited so that most of its windows overlook either the harbor or an expansive front yard holding mature trees where several bird feeders are hung, Landmark House continues to offer a sense of community and serenity.

"We do feel safe," said Marian Gibbs, who moved into her onebedroom apartment in 1986 and is president of the Landmark tenants association. "It's a very nice location. We just feel comfortable. They are all very nice here; it's well taken care of, we're never alone and we have lots of safety measures. We don't feel we can be harmed in any way by any outside people. We really feel quite at home. It's very comfortable and we meet once a month and have pot luck suppers or pizza. We get together socially more than for business, and we do have guest speakers. It's like an open home for us."

162 years old and still kicking

Nantucket Historical Association documentation of the building, which contains a tragedy long remembered after the event, begins with the April 13, 1822 annual Town Meeting. That was when the concept of a permanent poorhouse and asylum in Quaise far from the temptations of town taverns in a location that would generate employment and income from sales of milk and crops, became reality. It was decided that the town would purchase the once summer home of Mark Coffin and a farm then occupied by Daniel Howland at $2,000, with a subsequent $4,700 spent to buy its 273 acres.

The rather massive asylum, with its somewhat stark, unadorned appearance yet having numerous small windows providing soothing views, was constructed in 1823 when its inhabitants, either sent there or who applied to live there, began their tenancy. But on the frigid, snowy and windy night of Feb. 21, 1844, fire broke out in the basement level cook room as 59 inmates and the asylum's keeper and his family slept.

The old Our Island Home, now the Landmark House, was once the Quaise Asylum.

The smell of smoke was first detected at 2 a.m. by resident Frederick Chase who tried to get buckets of water from the property's cistern. The keeper's daughter-in-law, Sarah Bunker, rang the warning bell but since roads were essentially impassable that morning and Quaise was so far removed from fire apparatus in town, only neighboring farmers could try, vainly, to save all the people inside. Despite their efforts and those of able asylum residents, a total of 10 inmates died in the blaze, known as the "Quaise horror."

In a newspaper account printed the week of the 90th anniversary of the event, it was written that Nantucketers alluded to the blaze when something unusually gruesome was the topic of conversation and that the dread demon of fire "cast a pall of sadness over the island."

"The knowledge that many in the flames were crippled and unable to help themselves forced the rescuers to superhuman efforts," the account reads. "Finding their every avenue of escape cut off, many inmates uttered the most terrifying and pitiful screams imaginable...The dreadful circumstance of the fatal blaze, however, led to the establishment of the asylum at its present location, where it could be better protected in event of fire."

The year after the tragedy, the asylum was rebuilt on the same site for $12,000 and inmates assisted with care of copious livestock and planting and harvesting of many vegetables and hay. Then, in 1854, the town decided to move it timber by timber to what is presently 144 Orange St. It cost $7,500 to relocate and rebuild the structure with a dungeon on the lower level and a chapel on the top story. In 1855, the year Nantucket's last full-blooded Indian, Dorcas Honorable, died at the asylum, the town sold the Quaise farm to George C. Gardner.

In 1905, the asylum was renamed Our Island Home by the town's Board of Overseers for "the tender loving care of the infirm aged." The dungeon was transformed into a kindergarten in the 1920s. In 1981, when the building was no longer adequate to meet the needs of the increasing elder population requiring nursing care, a new Our Island Home was constructed on adjacent property near The Creeks. A reuse committee was formed to determine what to do with the former asylum, and at one point there was discussion of demolishing the structure.

The late Bernard "Bernie" Grossman came to the rescue in 1983, when he helped organize the nonprofit Nantucket C o m m u n i t y Service, Inc. to use the building to "provide urgently needed affordable rental housing in which Nantucket's older residents with limited incomes may live comfortably and independently." That April, voters unanimously backed selling the building to the corporation. After its conveyance to the corporation in 1985, more than $1 million was devoted to renovating the building into 18 apartments, each with a combination living and kitchen area, a bedroom and private bathroom. It reopened in 1986 as the island's second senior citizen housing after the Homestead, which opened as elder quarters in July 1930.

With an ever-growing senior population, in 1992 the trustees of Landmark House recognized a need for expansion. It took years to gain the necessary funding, but in 2001 the Grossman Wing, an eight-apartment addition with a sunroom and screened porch dedicated to Mr. Grossman, welcomed new residents.

Landmark House, now headed by director Cheri Goulding, receives federal funding to subsidize apartment rents so residents do not pay more than 30 percent of their income. It offers laundry and refuse facilities, has intercoms in each apartment to monitor admission to the building, houses Elder Services of the Cape and Islands, and has a comfortable common room with big screen TV, a compact disc player, an upright piano and a long dining table. Merle Campbell found a side table there under a sunny window the perfect place to piece together a jigsaw puzzle.

"It's so peaceful," said Campbell as she worked on her activity last week. She moved into the residence with her late husband two years ago.

"I like it because, for one thing, it's affordable," said Campbell. "I just like it - it's very clean and very well run. The location is quite nice. You can walk over to the drugstore and the Stop and Shop and I do that a lot. You can always call on somebody if you feel like it.

"I'm in the basement and I have a little plot of land outside and I had flowers and tomatos out there last year," she went on. "It's very pleasant. I'll probably be here for the rest of my life, and it's nice to know that you can be here. We certainly couldn't have afforded a regular place to rent, so it's

pretty neat." I