A Sustainable Future for Nantucket’s Built Heritage :
Disaster and Climate Risk Assessment for Built Heritage Conservation & Management
Latest Announcement
The Nantucket Historical Association is pleased to launch this web platform to disseminate the proceedings of multi-year disaster and climate risk assessment of the built heritage of Nantucket. We will announce our weekly activities here.
Nantucket's Heritage is at Risk
Thirty miles off the coast of Cape Cod, the island of Nantucket offers the “finest surviving architectural and environmental example of a late 18th-early 19th-century New England seaport town.” (NPS National Register of Historic Places). Despite the hostile maritime environment, the island has survived several centuries of extreme weather with a resilience supported as much through its traditions of local knowledge as well as more recent technological advances. But the island and its cultural landscape now faces unprecedented challenges as increased cycles of hazards due to climate change such as storms and a rising sea level overwhelm its historic built environment, irreparably damaging what has survived for over 300 years.
Heritage professionals have long sought and practiced solutions to the preservation and management of historic properties,
yet the increased fluctuations in environmental conditions and cycles of extreme weather, treatment obsolescence, and reduced human and financial resources present new risks unanticipated in the current moment. More integrated and holistic approaches for risk management that invest in the identification and mitigation of disasters and climate change impacts hold the promise for greater success and long-term sustainability. Architectural and environmental monitoring and analysis of historic property vulnerabilities and capacities hold the key to deliver the kind of resilient solutions that are far more sustainable and cognizant of escalating risks and shrinking budgets that climate change will bring.
A Plan for Action
The Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) has partnered with several heritage conservation organizations: International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), Integrated Conservation Resources Inc. and Integrated Conservation Contracting, Inc. (ICR-ICC), and the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania to assist in developing a disaster and climate risk management plan for its historical assets. This new initiative brings private and public partners together to apply an integrated framework for the assessment of Nantucket’s most important historic properties and by extension, all such assets on the island.
A graduate student internship program has been created for Summer 2023 to begin a preliminary survey and assessment of the approximately 20 historic properties of the NHA, (in addition to several other representative historic properties on the Island) including past site (legacy) records and structural and material assessments as well as environmental context. Together with regional climate data, this survey will identify the critical factors that are threatening each site and define site vulnerabilities and risks . Such analysis holds the key to more sustainable interventions and long-term preventive conservation and management of these sites and their collections.
The program recognizes the unique island laboratory of Nantucket and its potential as a training ground for students and young professionals who will confront these issues in their professional careers. It will also allow the NHA to move forward quickly in a manner that not only protects its historical assets but also satisfies its mission to promote and to educate in heritage conservation and transform those activities into narratives worth sharing with the local community, and other communities both national and international.
Together we can make a difference
We have the power to save the rich cultural heritage of this island from the threats of climate change and disasters. Together, let’s take action and protect its future.