The Independent Union Church was built in the 1860s under the leadership of Reuben Carver, Moses Webster, and Timothy Lane. Not much later, the Ladies Circle financed construction of a bell tower and in 1884 purchased and installed a pipe organ. The church served the community until a memorable March 23rd, 1899, when it was completely destroyed by fire. Six months later, at noon on September 27th, the cornerstone was laid for the Union Church we enjoy today. The regular congregation included 140 members and 160 attending Sunday School. In 1936, the 7’x 9’ painting, ‘Master, Is It I?’ that still hangs above the choir loft was presented to the church by the artist Leroy Coombs. In 1969, badly needed repairs of the two magnificent stained-glass windows were undertaken at a cost of $21,000. The community, year-round and seasonal, has long sustained the church and the reverse is certainly true and by orders of magnitude. Under its auspices, countless support groups have helped islanders dealing with loss, illness, hunger, hopelessness, housing, abandonment, addiction—all and every manner of distress—and the number of baccalaureates, memorials, concerts, weddings—all manner of celebration or tribute--are quite beyond counting.

In 1974, Rev. Ray Blaisdell renovated the belfry and there assembled and printed the first Wind which he then distributed himself each week to individuals and businesses.

In 1984, The Union Church was nominated to and subsequently listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The Galamander on display at the bandstand is one of many employed all around the island during the second half of the very busy and often wildly successful, half century of granite quarrying before and after 1900.  It greatly improved the efficiency of transporting large pieces of granite and it’s appearance, it should certainly be noted, was no small relief to island inhabitants who, until then, had suffered the inevitable consequences of several teams of oxen and horses, some as many as 100 yoke, moving hither and yon all day, every day, throughout the community. And it was a substantial economic relief to the companies who until then had to feed and care for hundreds of animals.

The Galamander was entirely handmade of oak and iron reinforcements. The latter, more often than not, were crafted by Charles Littlefield in the blacksmith shop once occupying the building that later became the Gem Theater and is now the Tidewater Motel’s central structure. The Galamander was equipped with a hand-operated derrick to which was initially attached a rope tackle—later replaced by steel wire—and lifted large pieces of stone—swinging them between the hind wheels before heading toward their destination—and pulled by far fewer oxen or horses than, until then, had been needed.

W. H. Littlefield, a former pastor of the Union Church but also an accomplished wheelwright, made many of the eight-foot wheels. The last Galamander, perhaps this one, was made by Wilson Whitten and blacksmith Al Lane and was, of course, painted a certain shade of blue, referred to as Elder Littlefield Blue, which had become pretty much the only acceptable color throughout the island industry. It was clearly something of an obsession.

Moses Webster—no, not that Moses—was born in Pelham, New Hampshire in 1817 and ventured into business there as a young man; but the business, about which we know little, was a failure. Not long after, hearing about Vinalhaven, of its newly discovered and bountiful granite, and of the corresponding demand for that granite, he and an equally adventuresome and entrepreneurial young friend, Joseph Bodwell, fled to the island and for $300, the two bought shares in East Boston Quarry, a company then held by William Kittredge, who engaged in quarrying elsewhere as well. (Armbrust Hill was formerly known as Kittredge Hill.) Webster and Bodwell did very well and, in 1872, formed the Bodwell Granite Company, a prestigious and wildly successful company which Moses served for years as vice president. Joseph eventually became governor of the state of Maine.

During his fifty years on the island, before his death in 1887, Moses was regarded by everyone as a compassionate man who took a deep interest in the town and in the welfare of its people. In those fifty years, he served on the board of selectman and later, in our state legislature, first as representative, then as a senator. In 1873, Moses undertook the construction of this towered Second Empire mansard on an Atlantic Avenue perch, land he’d acquired earlier, that rather lorded over the community below. Judging from the care of and compassion evidenced for that community, it seems unlikely that siting this magnificent home on such a lofty spot was a condescending exercise, but rather a benevolent one.

The property included much of what was known as Wyvern Coombs Square, the area south of and adjacent to the sidewalk that runs in front of the Block from Atlantic Avenue to Main Street. In 1911, the fountain there today was erected at the bottom of the Square in honor of Moses Webster and lovingly inscribed by his daughter.

On May 17th, 1958, four boys, aged two to fourteen, who’d been bouncing around the island from one rent to another, and most recently sharing one bedroom for far too long, were brought to the Moses Webster House by their parents, who’d been saving for years, and told it would be their home and that each boy would have a bedroom of his own. It was a moment the boys, in particular the oldest one, would remember as the most luxurious and liberating moment of their lives.

In 1998, the Moses Webster house was nominated for inclusion in and was subsequently added to the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1887, J. Bodwell, president of Bodwell Granite Company, decided to provide a reading room in order that the men working for him could sit and read the papers, peruse magazines, and become better informed. He required the workers to first agree to contribute a modest amount toward the purchase of material, perhaps to affirm his belief that there was, in fact, an appetite for such an opportunity. An amount far exceeding what might have been forecast was collected and the Reading Room opened in what we now know as the Old Engine House.

The following year, the town took advantage of Bodwell's initiative and voted to make the Reading Room an official town library, open every evening and Saturday afternoons. 337 books were available, and in no time, annual circulation topped 5,000. In 1890, the ladies of the Vinalhaven Circulating Library, about which little is known, contributed their surprisingly comprehensive collection of 800 or so books and the Rockbound Assembly of the Knights of Labor made a significant cash contribution as well.

The library soon outgrew the available room and moved around town from space to space, finally settling in the first floor of the Memorial Hall. By 1895, it too had become insufficient and in 1906 the town voted, some reluctantly, to accept a $5,200 gift from steel magnate Andrew Carnegie to build a new library. The reluctance was from a vocal few who resented accepting money from someone they presumed had become rich on the backs of workers like themselves. Work commenced on October 1 and when the new library opened the following year, circulation which had been 7,000 ten years earlier, doubled.

The first librarian, Laura Sanborn, was paid $120.00 a year and was also the first woman involved in island library administration on any level. She undertook removal and reinstallation of material from the old Reading Room at the Memorial Hall and served for seven years, just before gas lamps were replaced by electric lights. A dozen or so devoted men and women have served as librarians since, many of whom have been quite remarkable and each deserving of more space than is available here.

By 2004, it had become apparent that the available space was entirely inadequate. Architect Marty Stein designed, and Andy Creelman built, the wonderfully complementary space we enjoy today. The new library was dedicated to the memory of long-time supporter and Friend of the Library, Pat Crossman, who had passed the year before and, ‘Whose love of the library began in childhood and never ended.’

In the early 1800s, horses towing carriages or wagons were so besieged by flies that they frequently went mad, often to the great detriment of those being transported. What to do? Although there’s no reason to think he patented the process, in 1843 James Fernald began a ‘horse net’ knitting business here in Vinalhaven and ten years later—then in the hands of who else but Reuben Carver—83,000, nets, some truly stunning, fashionable even, head, body, and ear tip horse nets were produced annually for Boston’s American Net Co. by over 400 island men and women, some in their homes and some in small buildings here and there designated for that purpose.

In 1898, a new three-story net factory building was constructed on the former site of the Black Quarry. By that time, American Net Co. had been purchased by L.C. Chase Co. and the building housed a spooler, two looms, and a small oil engine, a sign of things to come, and employed 75 women and girls. Until then, net knitting was one of the chief employments of nearly every adult inhabitant, men and women, of the island and for many it was their only employment.

In 1916, the newly formed Vinalhaven Net Factory Building Co. voted to raise $4,500 for construction of a 60’ x 38’ three story addition to the north of and perpendicular to the existing structure. The addition was built by Rockland’s E.L. Spear but closed ten years later, as fewer horses and more automobiles took to the road. It opened again before long but now focused on huge seines, nets as long as 170’, for beam trawlers and made with a heavy, coarse, and difficult to handle sisal twine. Most of the ladies retreated to their homes to produce a much more fun product with a far more comfortable material: basketball nets, pool table pockets, pot heads, eel nozzles, bait bags, and dipnets.

In the 1930s, the original structure was badly damaged in a fire and later demolished and by the 1950s, a small addition, now home to the Vinalhaven Water District, had been added to the remaining structure to house Peaslee’s Garage, gas station, and automobile (one automobile) showroom.

This modest structure was built in the mid-1800s, before the first of several Millstream bridge iterations—those which essentially created Carver's Pond—connected the west side of Carvers Harbor with the east side; back when Downstreet was just beginning to become the architectural and retail wonderland that was soon our reality and good fortune.

Women's hats were then, as they remain—though the interest today is certainly diminished—an item of significant fashionable appeal, and the C. F. Noyes Millinery shop, which may have been the first to occupy this space, was only one of several millineries which thrived then and for decades along Main Street. Cheney Noyes and his extended family had other Downstreet retail interests over the years as well, and he, his wife Sarah, and family lived in a house he had built and which, to my good fortune, stands today at 14 Carver Street.

By the mid-1900s, C. F. Noyes Millinery no longer existed, and the space had become ‘Tibbs’, a sort of convenience store, selling the bare necessities: milk, beer, bread, eggs, cigarettes and tobacco, and so forth. Additionally, Proprietor Raynald Tibbetts, who was also our sheriff, had a modest grill or perhaps it was just a stove top, and whipped up a hot lunch—hot dogs and hamburgers—in a little backroom kitchen that is now Amy's office and about which we were reminded when Bill Chilles encountered the greasy residue of that enterprise behind the wallpaper when remodeling the area.

By the late 1800s, it had become obvious to everyone that the wide chasm of Carver’s Harbor, that area between the settlement west of today's emergency services building and the community east of the fountain, needed to be breached. There was just too much and too necessary economic, social, and industrial activity between one side of the harbor and the other to continue trying to make do by rowing or towing across or driving a team of oxen up and around the north end of today’s Carver’s Pond, just to get from one side to the other. Dumping prodigious amounts of grout (Scottish for waste) next to the shore or overboard was common practice among quarrying operations all around the island to avoid simply dumping it on site, thus creating an obstacle to further adjacent excavation. Various of those enterprises on either side of the gulf began to cooperatively dump that grout in the water to close the gap and as that work proceeded so did the realization that an opportunity was being created and accommodations would be needed. One of the first of these was the Bodwell Granite Company Store: the building—since significantly modified—that’s now the Sand Bar. Later the Bodwell Store moved to the center of what became Main Street. The Sand Bar property has changed hands many times and numerous businesses have occupied its several available spaces at once. Early on, from east to west, it was simultaneously home to the Christian Science Reading Room, Annie Coombs Barber & Undertaker, a coffin making shop, the Charles B. Smith Bakery, and E. P. Walker Tobacco and Pool Room. In 1947, it was purchased by Clyde Bickford and Ted Maddox, which made it possible for a little family (mine) to move into its second-floor apartment and for my mother to create the Seadrift Gift Shop in the area below, next to Sim’s, later Tibb’s, Pool Room. After the huge fire that destroyed the downtown Masonic Hall in 1967, the Moses Webster Masonic Lodge moved to the second floor, over the Sand Bar, where they remained until recently.

In the early 1950s, a certain someone, a youngster, tried to pocket something, maybe a candy bar, from Ed White’s Drug Store and Soda Fountain at 64 Main Street. He wasn’t very stealthful. Ed caught the boy, but rather than humiliating him in front of his friends, he went across the street and told his mother. The boy was back in an hour or so and apologized and, while he wasn't entirely reformed by that incident, he did behave himself at Ed's soda fountain thenceforth.

This building has a pharmaceutical history, beginning in 1870 with Lovejoy’s Drug Store and later, before the turn of the century, the George P. Ginn Drug Store, and in 1909, Frank White established the F. M. White Drug Store and Soda Fountain which became Ed White’s in 1946. Interestingly, although apparently no problem, Ed’s deed and presumably those of his predecessors, provided no right of way to the back door. Upstairs, over the Drug Store, was Wyvern Winslow’s barbershop, home, I think, of my and my peers’ first haircut not administered by our mothers.

After Ed's closed some years later, the property changed hands often for a while until 1973, when Elizabeth Clayter (now Hunter) began and for over a decade, ran the popular Old Drug Store. The front room offered natural foods and fresh garden vegetables, consigned local crafts, and Liz’s own weaving. A smaller back room was a gallery for local artists.

Subsequently the building hosted various businesses; several were eateries, including the equally popular Nighthawk, operated by Mary Hurtubise and Cynthia Young.

Its most recent occupant was Salt, a lovely and—although no one could quite say why—exceedingly comfortable restaurant, which closed several years ago to everyone's dismay. Today the ground floor remains sadly thus……Vacant and empty.   

As the expanse of grout (quarrying debris) being cooperatively dumped in the 1000-foot span between the east and west sides of Carvers Harbor—to create at least a modest connection between one side and the other—grew, it dawned on some and soon on many, that opportunity was presenting itself. In 1850, when a contract was awarded to John Carver to build a modest bridge, for $300, across what by then, had become Carvers Mill Stream, that enlightenment was manifest. By the late 1800s buildings were popping all along ‘Downstreet’.  

Probably the modest structure, now home to Island’s Closet, was initially constructed with something less grim in mind but A. B. Green - Undertaker, Casket and Coffin Maker may have been the first retail occupancy.

Eventually Til Turner’s Ice Cream Parlor brightened it up a little as did, I’m sure, Lincoln's Home Bakery which was in residence until around 1940.

For the next ten or fifteen years, Keith Carver ran his plumbing business here and it was a very popular spot for kids my age because it had a freight elevator and Keith let us ride it up and down. I recall he would sometimes transport one or two of us to the second floor and then turn off the power and say there was no other way out and we were prisoners.

In 1983 Keith sold the building to Jim Clayter who ran Vinalhaven Pottery there for the next decade. In 1992 the building was purchased by Gus Bickford, its current owner, and over the following decades has been home to assorted island enterprise including Cathy Kulka’s Island Home and Gardens in the 90s, Sea Escape Kayak and, since 2015, the rather astonishingly encyclopedic utility offered by Island’s Closet.

Where once had been nothing but a little piece of the Atlantic Ocean and some rocks, by the late 1800s had become a 1000-yard stretch of grout and possibilities and had easily enticed a dozen property owners to rise eagerly to the call and begin construction of quite an architectural assortment of buildings. One of these was this simple two-story cape, and one of its first occupants was the United States Post Office.

Later, when the post office moved to the Memorial Hall, this was home to one short-lived enterprise after another, but by the mid-1900s it was ‘Jack's Place’, a very popular restaurant run by Mary Wentworth and named for her son. Mary was famous for her codfish cakes, mouthwatering creations served three at a time with a little pile of homemade sausage and home fries, sauteed and finished off with peppers and onions. There were four or five tables, always full, particularly those at the window, and particularly around 4:30 in the morning, when the restaurant opened, and from where the fishermen and lobstermen could watch the harbor and talk about weather conditions. Mary lived in an apartment above the restaurant with her helper, Florice Young. She was closed one day a week and on one of those, a frigid February 22nd morning in 1956, she smelled smoke and went downstairs to investigate. As she opened the door at the bottom of the stairs, there was an explosion, blowing her off her feet and igniting her hair and clothing. As she stumbled out the front door, according to the next day’s Courier Gazette, a passerby, my grandfather Ted Maddox, ‘smothered the fire in her clothing with his bare hands.’ A flooded oil burner was found to be responsible; Florice escaped unharmed, but the building was destroyed.

Growing environmental awareness and consequent zoning prohibited building anew on this lot because its direct overboard discharge was no longer allowed, and the lot was not big enough to accommodate a subsurface chambered system. A half-century later, a town installed sewer system rendered that prohibition irrelevant. Two entrepreneurial and industrious women bought the property and the building to its west and engaged Marty Stein to design and Conway & Sons to construct the building that’s now home to the New Era Gallery. Marty’s dogged research and determination are reflected in the facade which intentionally mimics that of ‘Jack’s Place’.

The late 1800s building boom following the successful effort to connect the opposite shores of Carvers Harbor—now Main Street— included this 2 1/2 story Cape, which, early on, housed a barber shop on the right and a clothing, perhaps millinery, shop on the left. In 1899, it was purchased by D. Rovinsky, one of several entrepreneurs engaged in the netting business, and he quickly filled it with islanders busily creating horse nets and, to a lesser degree, things like dip nets or billiard table pockets. He had the big facade built that still uniquely identifies the building. L. R. Smith began business here in 1900 and by mid-century was the single reliable provider of every type of clothing any of us might require, from oilskins and overalls to evening dress and lady’s hats. L.R. Smith—by then known as Leo’s (after proprietor Leo Lane)—was perhaps the busiest retail on Main Street and the last to succumb to the growing availability of mainland alternatives offered by the recently formed Maine State Ferry Service and awakening on-line options.

After development of the telephone early last century, a ‘switchboard’ or ‘exchange’ was necessary in each town to make and complete a call. Vinalhaven’s was located on the second floor above Leo’s. One or two island ladies—I remember Mabel—manned the switchboard all day and night behind big windows overlooking the village. Each home had a three-digit number (ours was 356). A call required cranking the ringer on one’s home phone and waiting till one of the ladies was free. Then perhaps, “356 please”, whereupon they were connected. Or, among intimately acquainted islanders: “Operator?” “Good morning, Mabel. Could you connect me with Olga?” “Olga ain't home Pat. She just walked by bringing hake over to Brud’s (E.G.Carvers).” “OK thanks; well now that I've got you, I also need to talk to Cynthia.” “OK, let's see if she's home.” A phone rings and Cynthia answers, “Hello?” “Cynthia, is the Circle at your place tonight? I’m bringing pie” (The Circle was a lady's group). “Yes, it is.” Mabel chimes in, “And I’m bringin’ tea. Oh dear, Pat”, says Mabel, “Phil and JoJo just went in the alley down below smoking.” “Land sakes, Mabel”, says my Mom. “I'll send Bud right down.” 

There was a very busy period of building activity right after a rudimentary Main Street connected the east and west sides of Carvers Harbor in the late 1800s. Many of the buildings still there today were constructed during that time, including this one, which Edward Graffam Carver opened as E.G. Carver and Sons Grocery in 1895 and which was still in business and in Carver hands a century later, having passed from Edward Graffam to his son Albert Edward and then to his son Albert Edward Jr., known to us all as ‘Brud’ Carver. Brud was a wonderfully congenial man, an active community member, and an industrious and imaginative proprietor, hosting a couple of memorable social hours toward the end of the day each Christmas Eve. ‘Carvers’ coexisted happily with three other groceries, Macintosh Grocery next door, Vinalhaven Grocery across the street, and the A&P, a branch of a national chain of groceries where Carvers Harbor Market is today. Brud sold the store in 1977 but remained very active and on site for years. In 1987, the building sold to Chet and Cheryl Warren. They divided it into spaces, installed their own Alternative Oil business office on the right front, now Second Hand Prose; opened The Village Deli, a very pleasant restaurant and bar in the back half of the building and leased the left front to Just Teasing, whose proprietor Jill once responded memorably to a very exasperated salesman trying unsuccessfully to convince her to accept credit cards. “What kind of business are you running anyway?”, he asked. “Well,” she responded, “it's called Just Teasing and I only accept cash. What do you think?” The building sold several years ago and excepting Secondhand Prose, is now, sadly, vacant.

In 1776, Thaddeus Carver, then aged twenty-five, bought almost all of the 700 acres surrounding Carver’s Harbor. Nearly a century later, his grandson, also Thaddeus, owned the property on the south side of Main Street most recently the home of Harrison Realty. He may have built the structure as well but did use it as a barn and hay loft. Records indicate that in 1872, the town owned or perhaps rented the building and used it as a fire station to house its new steam fire engine, the E. P. Walker, named for the man who arranged its acquisition. At the time, we had two fire departments–one rallying around the Walker; the other around Old Reuben–that participated in regular competitions, but which fought fires as a team.  Around 1880, the building served as a Reading Room, a predecessor—one of several—of today’s library. During that time, there was a photographic studio on the second floor. By the turn of the century, it had become home to an undertaker/coffin maker, who may also have served as a barber. 

In 1912, the building was sold to and served as the lodge for the Loyal Order of Moose, an order restricted—as were many—to “white men of sound mind and body, in good standing in the community, engaged in lawful business who are able to speak and write English.” The Lodge added sixteen feet on the south end and created a dance hall on the second floor, accessed by a nicely circular staircase. In 1946, the property was purchased by W. W. Bunker, Inc. and served as storage for plumbing and electrical hardware and, on the second floor, lumber. Transactions were handled across the street at Bunker’s office, now home to WindHorse Arts. 

George Harrison purchased the building in 1998 and established Harrison Realty while continually making substantial improvements. The first of these, undertaken right away, was raising a seriously sagging corner. 

In 1874 a simple three-story cape structure stood in this space and the ground floor was home to M. (Martin) H. Kiff Fruit and Confectionaries.  A tailor and some other retail occupied the second floor. Apparently, Kiff (1835-1921) was involved in a shady goldmine venture here on the island which caused him to lose favor and before long he was no longer in business.                                           

Owen (O. P.) Lyons (1839-1933) was a very busy man and during his long life on the island held many important positions including First Selectman, Fire Chief, and Town Clerk.    O. P. Lyons Jewelry and Watch Repair occupied the right side of this first-floor space not long after Kiff, and for many years until his death in 1933.

MacIntosh Grocery, run by Andy Gilchrest was one of four busy and successful groceries within a stone's throw of one another, and occupied the left space at least into the 60’s.

In 1945, the legendary Dr. Ralph P. Earle (1913-1975) was asked by the town to establish what would one day become The Island Community Medical Center. The entire 2nd floor was acquired, and he quickly set about creating a center offering preventative medicine, public health nursing, pharmacy, varied distinct clinics and a diagnostic and treatment center. He was a decade ahead of his time in developing a single community facility offering such comprehensive care, an accomplishment later acknowledged by public health officials across the state and country.

On February 16th, 1959, a faulty oil burner caused a fire that did extensive damage to the Medical Center and the stores below. The fire was extinguished within a few hours and the two adjacent buildings were miraculously saved by our very capable—as has so often been the case—volunteer fire department. The building was later restored, and the false front added.

Since then, the west side has been home to varied enterprise including Boongies One Stop Video and Snacks, The StarLight Café, and perhaps most memorably to the ARCafe then Rcafe, delightful and inviting coffee shops that opened around 2011 but which only lasted three or four years. Most recently it was home to the flourishing but short-lived Creelman Farm Store.

While the beautiful jewelry space that is Windhorse Arts continues to flourish in the east side, we all have our fingers crossed in hopes of a successful venture in the West as well. 

In 1820, a couple of simple two-story gable-end structures, side by side, stood here, each occupied by essential retail of the time: perhaps Millinery & Fancy Goods or Stoves & Tinware.

The Independent Order of Oddfellows was formed in 18th century England; it's mission “to visit the sick, relieve the distressed, bury the dead and educate the orphan.” Fraternal organizations such as the Masons, Knights of Templar, Commandry, and Oddfellows took root quickly in the United States during the 19th century for obvious reasons—all offered the essential fellowship that couldn't be found elsewhere and each also had a mission not unlike that of the Oddfellows. Those noble missions, essentially looking after those in distress, were particularly important in communities where dangerous occupations were prevalent. In Vinalhaven those were certainly granite quarrying and fishing, each too frequently resulting in crippling injuries or death.                                              

The Vinalhaven branch of Oddfellows held its first meeting on November 23rd, 1874, in one of these two structures. A decade later, the lodge had grown to such an extent that a larger space was called for. Alexander Currier, an architect employed by the Bodwell Granite Company who had designed the Moses Webster House, was engaged to create The Oddfellows Hall we know today and he, with the enthusiastic financial support of the members, went all out. The apparent result, having ill-advisedly incorporated the two structures, was a magnificent Second Empire Mansard—one of four majestic Victorians eventually on Main Street—that featured several intriguing spaces including ‘The Hall’, the group’s very ornate third floor meeting space, accessed by modestly secretive passages. The ground floor continued to house varied retail.                                                                                                                    

The Oddfellows abandoned their charter in the 1960s and the building was purchased by our Eliot Elisofon around 1970. At the time, it was in very rough shape. Elliot rented and then sold it to Robert Indiana who engaged a great deal of work improving its function and appearance inside and out. After Indiana passed, the Star of Hope Foundation—an artist-endowed foundation created by his will and left with the continued care of the building—contracted Rockport Building Partners to conduct a structural analysis which revealed that the building was not far from complete collapse due, in part to the poorly incorporated two original buildings. The same firm was engaged to undertake restoration and the result—that which we can all see and appreciate— is quite spectacular, but a great deal of work, beyond the facade remains to be done.

In 1981, the Star of Hope was included in the National Register of Historic Places.