Lecture: A Storied Site: The Possibilities of Historic Interpretation at the Andrews Scallop Shanty with Michael J. Chiarappa

Nantucket’s built environment, and the historic preservation movement that has gripped it since the early twentieth century, has made the island one of America’s most historically charged venues. These curatorial priorities have made Nantucket’s historic landscape a compelling gateway for those seeking a greater understanding of America’s maritime history, particularly the role whaling played in shaping it. However, as much as the far-reaching ripple of Nantucket’s whaling history is inscribed in the island’s historic structures, the same can also be discerned in buildings and artifacts used by those who scalloped, clammed, oystered, and fin fished in Nantucket’s nearby waters. Modest fish shanties and watercraft lined the island’s wharves, providing food for Nantucket’s dinner tables, fish for wider regional and national markets, and a sense of collective affiliation for all who shared a stake in the island’s marine environment. The preservation of the Andrews scallop shanty on Old North Wharf as both a historic site and working waterfront makes it a touchstone of the enduring legacy of commercial and recreational fishing in Nantucket’s waters—a fishery building continuously used for over 150 years. The recent actions of Ginger Andrews to preserve her family’s Nantucket scallop shanty, and the press attention they have received, underscore one of the most pressing concerns of historic preservation and historical representation in America today: the necessity of maintaining signature structures that archive and curate memory and moor a community’s historical, cultural, and ecological identity. This presentation offers some initial insights on how the historic interpretation of the Andrews scallop shanty can be informed by stories of the Andrews family’s multi-generational use of the site, and, in turn, can make the site’s storied past a vehicle for understanding the reach of commercial fishing in Nantucket’s wider social life.