A historic brick building in downtown Nantucket – one of the last vestiges of an era when the island generated its own electricity along the waterfront – will soon be torn down.
The Historic District Commission (HDC) voted 3-2 on Tuesday to allow the utility company National Grid to demolish the former Nantucket Electric Company building located on New Whale Street, following a motion to block the demolition that failed on a tied 2-2 vote in early June.
HDC Chair Stephen Welch, Vice Chair Ray Pohl, and Commissioner Val Oliver voted in favor of the motion to allow the demolition, while Commissioners Angus MacLeod and Abby Camp voted against it. Pohl previously abstained from the tied vote in June, at which point the application was held for almost a month as the HDC waited for an official opinion from town counsel on how to proceed.
“At what point is a building no longer able to be rehabilitated? When it’s literally lying on the ground, a pile of bricks? Is that the point when we decide, absolutely, there’s no way this could be rehabilitated? Oh, but a pile of bricks could actually be reassembled to create the same building that it came from. My point is, there’s no definite line,” Pohl said. “The rehabilitation of this building might, in an abstract way, be possible but…I don’t see that this building is in any way able to be practically restored.”
Commissioners opposed to allowing the demolition cited concerns about the possibility that the case represented an instance of demolition by neglect, in which property owners allow structures to deteriorate in order to obtain permits to demolish them, and suggested it could still be possible to at least partially restore the building. A town bylaw adopted in 2004 requires the owners of contributing historic structures to take “at least the minimum steps necessary to prevent the deterioration” of foundations, exterior walls, roofs, chimneys, and support structures.
“Why couldn’t this be restored to a minimum and just left there like a ruin?” Camp asked. “Athens, Rome, they have ruins, and this is part of our history. Why wouldn’t we want to save at least part of it and make it as preserved as possible, and just keep it there?”
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