About Nantucket's Cobblestones
Nantucket’s Main Street on a summer day.
The people of Nantucket, Massachusetts are passionate about preserving their history. They maintain the island’s streets and original buildings with a special rigor, and almost every corner of their downtown pays homage, in some way, to the island’s history as a Quaker settlement and as the capital of the whaling industry. Nantucketers believe that the past is a sacred vessel that guides us through the waters of the present.
Perhaps nothing on Nantucket embodies this belief more than the cobblestone streets. According to historians, the downtown streets of the island were paved with cobblestones sometime around 1836. Thanks to the robust whaling economy, Nantucket was a bustling trading center at the time, and the islanders wanted to turn their muddy downtown into a glistening hub. But as the decades passed, and the town modernized with new plumbing and water lines, the stones quickly found themselves dislodged. The once beautiful roads were pockmarked with ditches and holes.
The advent of automobiles almost put an end to the cobblestones.
In the 1910s, as automobiles rolled across the nation, Nantucket made the decision to pave its downtown streets with concrete. But in 1919, a group of concerned citizens stopped the planners, just in time, from paving over Main Street. They further demanded that all recently paved streets be returned to cobblestone.
This seemed like a victory for preservationists.
There was only one problem. Nobody knew how to lay cobbles. Paving with cobblestone is a precise skill and one that had all but died out. The island could not find a single person—on or off island—who could do it. Finally, two immigrant tradesmen on the island took the task upon themselves: Antone Sylvia from the Azores Islands and Thomas McGrath from Ireland. Both men had grown up amidst cobbled streets and knew just what to do.
Nantucket Looms in 1968. This building now houses Ralph Lauren, and Nantucket Looms lives just up the street.
As tourism grew throughout the 20th century, it became clear that Nantucket’s cobblestone streets were not going to detract from the island’s economy but were going to do just the opposite. Today, Nantucket’s cobblestones attract thousands of tourists each year, and the island has become a leading resource on cobblestone preservation for historic towns around the world.