Signs of the Times: Nantucket Signs Exhibition of the Nantucket Historical Association

21 and 23 West Chester Street
1913 to 1956

Nantucket’s first hospital was located on West Chester Street, built at the instigation of a group led by Dr. Benjamin Sharp. The facility included a surgery room, sick beds, quarters for nurses (patients often brought private nurses), and, later, space for a hospital kitchen. The hospital saw its first major increase in visitation during the 1918 influenza pandemic, in which 337 cases were confirmed, with only 9 deaths. From the 1920s through the 1950s, the hospital became an integral part of community life, witnessing the deliveries of most island babies, routine and emergency treatment, and other medical care. Hospital fund-raising took off with the organization of the Main Street Fêtes in the 1920s and 1930s under the leadership of Austin Strong. Everett U. Crosby and the Underwoods were lead underwriters of hospital additions and improvements.

Florence Clifford recalls the maternity service in the early days at the hospital, which perhaps was not as hygienic as it might have been: “Babies were delivered on the first floor and were simply carried upstairs to see their mothers, past everyone breathing on them, poking them, and chucking them under the chin. The nurses wrapped the babies in hand- crocheted shawls they had made in their spare time.”

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