Eliza Starbuck Barney House 1873
Nantucket MA
2009

Another of the less common Victorian-era houses on Nantucket is this beauty located right on Main Street, named after its first owner. Eliza Starbuck was the third child of Joseph Starbuck and Sally Gardner, a Nantucket family that had become wealthy in the whale oil industry. At 18, Eliza married Nathaniel Barney and despite their wealth, the couple shared a home with Eliza’s sister, Eunice, and her husband William Hadwen. The husbands became business partners, opening a whale oil refinery on the site of the current Nantucket Whaling Museum. This house was built around 1873 for Eliza Starbuck Barney after the death of her husband. Mrs. Barney is best known as an abolitionist, a temperance and women’s suffrage advocate, and a local genealogist. The home is a fine example of Italianate-style architecture. Note the round-arch or Roman windows and bracketed cornice typical of the style.

Nantucket, a tiny, isolated island off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is a summer destination with dune-backed beaches. It’s marked by unpainted cedar-shingled buildings, many surrounded by manicured privets. The wharves and cobblestoned streets of the Town of Nantucket are lined with restaurants, high-end boutiques and steepled churches. The town’s Whaling Museum recounts the island’s role as a 19th-century whaling hub.