Nantucket’s Main Street includes some of the best-preserved antique architecture in New England.
The historic district, which covers all of the island, is on the National Register of Historic Places and includes more than 800 pre-Civil War buildings. One of the most recognizable of these is the George C. Gardner House at 141 Main Street, which recently came to market for $32 million.
The clapboard house was built around 1834 for the sea captain George Gardner, a descendant of Richard Gardner, one of the island’s early English settlers, whose own house stands next door. Its five-bay facade is characterized by a columned portico and, above it, a widow’s walk, the rooftop platform named for the captains’ wives who watched for ships that never came home.
Gardner made his money in whaling, and at some point after taking over the family homestead he demoted it to a carriage house in favor of building a larger mansion closer to the road.
By the 1920s that original house was in disrepair, when a woman named Gladys Wood bought it, moved it to Main Street and hired the architect Alfred Shurrocks, then at work on the island’s oldest house—the Jethro Coffin House to restore it.
The home got its second revival in the early 2000s, when new owners hired a New York preservation specialist known for Liberty Tower and the Armour-Stiner Octagon House. Joseph Pell Lombardi drew up specifications for conserving both the exterior and the interior. That restoration wrapped in 2005, and the house later sold for $9.5 million.
Today, the 1830s bones and a century of meticulous caretaking are visible from nearly every angle, though the rooms feel more modern than period.
A central hall with the original turned staircase opens to a sunroom, and fireplaces adorn the parlor, library and dining room. A double staircase, often called “friendship stairs,” leads from the sunroom into the garden.
The current owners moved the pool to the rear of the 0.56-acre lot, where it now serves both the main house and a three-bedroom guest cottage.
Four en suite bedrooms reach it directly. The third floor is entirely devoted to the primary suite, which includes an office space and a deck overlooking the gardens and a privately held, unbuildable parcel just beyond.
All of this sits just 10 minutes from the water, with all the restaurants, galleries and boutiques of Nantucket’s Main Street tucked among the cobblestones in between.
Get real estate news in your inbox
Larissa Runkle is a seasoned real estate writer, lifestyle journalist, and marketing strategist with over a decade of experience and 2,000+ published articles. Her work covering housing, personal finance, and lifestyle has appeared in major publications like Bankrate, MarketWatch, Yahoo Finance, and New York Post. In 2023, she launched a boutique copywriting studio to partner with land developers and top brokerages, creating strategic content that builds lasting brand authority. When she isn’t writing, Larissa enjoys the outdoors from her home in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, where she lives with her husband, son, and German shepherd, Yoko.
