3 Whalers Lane
Whaling captain's house, once an antiques restorer's shop serves as dormitory
BY PETER B. BRACE INDEPENDENT WRITER
Three Whalers Lane looks like its interior should hold some deep, dark, intriguing secrets of Nantucket's past.

Walking past the post-Great Fire of 1846 house with its ornate gothic details conjures images of opulence during the island's version of the gold rush when whaling captains were the pillars of Nantucket society.

For William S. Whippey, who was captain of the whaling vessel James Loper from 1846 to 1855, 3 Whalers Lane was the homeport embodiment of his high seas achievements.

Today, it's easy to write off this magnificent example of post-fire architecture as just another old house in Nantucket Town. Because of the island's whaling prosperity, wealthy islanders of the time soared past the prevailing utilitarian Quaker style of architecture of early Nantucket.

Federal, Victorian, Greek and Gothic building styles were all reincarnated in downtown Nantucket. W.S. Whippey, as he was known, probably built his house to keep up with the Joneses of his time.

For those who lived in this house after the whaling days, it was just a house. For the last 31 years, seasonal employees of the Nantucket Yacht Club have bunked where W.S. Whippey's family lived. Wanting to preserve the house for the foreseeable future, the NYC got going last week on a restoration of the exterior of 3 Whalers Lane, something all of its past residents would likely appreciate, including former owner Sally R. Johnson, who loved the views from the kitchen windows.

ROB BENCHLEY/The Independent

"I'd sit in the kitchen. I just enjoyed watching the tennis matches and I enjoyed the scenery in a downtown location," said Johnson.

FUNKY GREEK WITH A HINT OF GOTHIC

From the side, 3 Whalers Lane looks like thin slices of three different houses joined together to make a whole. But look at it dead-on facing its south elevation and one sees what Whippey must have requested: a proper front with a formal entrance. At the center of its five-bay façade is a covered porch with steps on the west side.

In his book, "The Architecture of Historic Nantucket," Clay Lancaster describes the style of Whippey's former home as Greek Revival Eclectic, although it does share some gothic detailing used by a neighboring house at 4 North Water St. that Lancaster called "battered window enframements with Greek ears, 'Gothic' corbel-arch double window over doorway."

Yacht club wait staff, a whaling boat captain, a boarding house maven, an antiques restorer and many children took shelter under rafters at 3 Whaler's Lane. Built sometime after the Great Fire of 1846, this Greek Revival structure was an expression of its original owner who spent more time at sea than at his downtown digs. COURTESY OF NHA

Lancaster is speaking of the trim around six of the eight windows on the front of the house and the two, narrow, six-over-six light windows with diamond and triangular lights above them and the diamond shaped top of their trim that are between regular windows on the second floor. What he did not list in his description of 3 Whalers Lane are the extra wide corner boards, soffits, fascia boards and eaves.

"Whalers Lane, connecting North Water and South Beach, a block above Broad Street, is in the section of Nantucket denuded by the ravenous fire of 1846," said Lancaster in describing Whippey's former neighborhood. "Its one pre-Civil War building is a notable attempt to surpass the architectural grandeur of the earlier pure Greek Revival style."

COURTESY OF NHA William S. Whippey

RETIRE AND RESTORE

It was the "high brick basement" briefly noted by Lancaster in his book that former owner Peter M. Wilson remembers most about 3 Whalers Lane. He could easily walk into the basement from street level, taking just a couple of steps downward rather than hunching over in contortions to squeeze down stairs through a modern-day bulkhead.

Wilson and his then-wife, Annie Y., bought Whippey's once-grand domicile from Hermon E. and Sally R. Johnson on Dec. 6, 1972 for $65,000, as the Johnsons decided that there was too much traffic in their neighborhood for their children to roam safely outside the house.

Sally couldn't remember from whom she and Hermon bought the property in the 1960s, but she does remember why.

"We bought it because we liked the location and I had rented rooms for quite a few years down at Captains Corners and decided that it was time after my fourth child was born that I take the summer off," Johnson said. "It was just a family home."

For Wilson the retiree, the large basement and its easy access held promise.

"It was a residence and we were able to set up a little shop in the basement which is the typical Nantucket half cellar with fenestration (windows)," said Wilson. "I restored antiques. We re-shingled the whole house and modernized the kitchen."

Wilson, who had been the CEO of the National Association of Engine and Boat Manufacturers based in New York City, which put on the first major boat show in the U.S, in 1905 in Madison Square Garden, first came to Nantucket in 1926 when he was two years old. Although he would spend decades of summers on the island, he returned for good for a permanent vacation at the end of his career.

"In 1972, I resigned my position and came down here to restore antiques," said Wilson. "We used the rooms as they were. The side yard we fixed up and brought in loam and put in a fence. All of the exterior

work we did through the HDC."

Prior to moving to 3 Whalers Lane, Wilson summered in the 'Sconset Cottage "Heart's Ease" between Shell and Center streets, a former fishing shack moved inland from the Bluff to which four bedrooms were later added. He purchased that cottage in 1969 after spending all his summers up to that point at his aunt's cottage on Front Street in 'Sconset.

Wilson's family came to Nantucket not long after Whippey built his house at 3 Whalers Lane.

"My mother's family, who were from Longmeadow, Massachusetts and Boston, first came to the island in the 1870s and part of the family built a house known as Bluff Cottage on Front Street in 'Sconset," said Wilson.

Wilson's great aunt, Eliza Harding Walker, a missionary who followed her calling to the City of Mosul on the Tigris River in the former Ottoman Empire in 1857 before the area was ceded to Iraq in 1926, built Bluff Cottage with her sons in 1875 after living first in a nearby cottage called "Nonantum."

"The house in 'Sconset was inherited from Harriet Walker through her mother, Eliza. As a spinster, she entertained all of us there and that's how we started coming to the island," said Wilson.

LIKE WITH LIKE

In the shadow of the Whaling Museum, the law offices of Vaughan, Dale and Hunter, Nantucket House Antiques & Interior Design and “ran Mór restaurant, 3 Whalers Lane is hemmed in by Denby Real Estate to the west, Nantucket Yacht Club's tennis courts to the north and two single-story cottages to the east.

A relatively new deck extends off its east side and a set of exterior stairs facing the tennis courts reaches the second floor. The house contains five bedrooms each on the first and second floors, with a utilities/maintenance room and television-watching area in the basement. Though much of the interior woodwork detailing, walls, trim and flooring remain in place, the inside feels decidedly hollowed out for only the essentials of summer staff quarters.

Nantucket Yacht Club general manager Peter McEachern said the club is replacing what is rotted or non-functioning with original materials.

"We're doing a major restoration project on it right now and we're starting to completely redo all of the woodwork, the siding and re-shingle the roof," said McEachern, adding that Jamie Cabral is the contractor working on the building. "Some of the siding and boards are going to be close to the original boards."

Siding and boards that W.S. Whippey himself

likely picked out when choosing how secure his I