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Originally published in Historic Nantucket, Volume 48, Number 1 (Winter 1999)

"Showing you the house restored": Edward E Sanderson and Moor's End
by Aimee E. Newell

EDWARD F. SANDERSON is PROBABLY BEST known on Nantucket as one of the "earliest benefactors of the Nantucket Whaling Museum." Many Historic Nantucket readers will be familiar with the story of his generosity in 1929 when he donated his extensive collection of whaling tools and implements, forming the core of the NHA's whaling exhibits. Shortly after making that donation, Sanderson assisted with the purchase of the Hadwen and Barney candle factory on Broad Street, protecting it until the NHA could raise the : funds to buy the building and open it as a museum. The Whaling Museum's Sanderson Hall, site of countless lectures and annual meetings over the years, continues to display the tools and implements that he carefully collected. However, Sanderson's interest in whaling history and artifacts grew out of his initial attraction to the island's architecture.

During the 1920s, Sanderson purchased three historic homes on the island and oversaw restoration of the exteriors and interiors (see sidebar). But, it wasn't until after he purchased the house known as Moor's End at 19 Pleasant Street that he started collecting the "tools of the trade," such as harpoons, boarding knives, cutting spades, and bomb lances, as part of a careful interior restoration of that house. As Historic Nantucket reported in a twenty-fifth anniversary report on the Whaling Museum, "In renovating and furnishing the large mansion so that each room would be authentically representative of a period in its history, [Sanderson] became interested in the island's history as a whaling port and began ... to collect implements and material relating to whaling." Nantucket lore has it that his col lection grew so large he could no longer store it conveniently. Promotional material on the opening of the Whaling Museum in 1930 explains Sanderson's motivation: "As Mr. Sanderson's collection grew far beyond his hopes or anticipations, he decided that its extent and value warranted its permanent establishment as a public museum for the enjoyment of all who might be interested." This generous gift is proof of Sanderson's belief in the importance of the past. The restorations that he undertook for living spaces are part of that same interest. Sanderson followed similar steps in amassing his whaling collection as he did when overseeing the restoration work on his house: he consulted experts for advice. Frank Wood, curator at the Old Dartmouth (New Bedford) Historical Society; Clifford Ashley, author of Yankee Whaling', and Dr. Robert Cushman Murphy, assistant curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, all assisted Sanderson in his quest. In 1930 the process was explained this way: "His emissaries searched the markets of the world, buying lavishly, but with discrimination, until they had assembled one of the largest and best collections of this kind of material to be found anywhere."

Sanderson's preservation and collecting activities provide a living legacy on Nantucket, but his early life took place in the Midwest. Edward F. Sanderson was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on March 16, 1874, to Frederick Milton and Harriet P. Sanderson. He came East and graduated from Amherst College in 1896, receiving a degree from the Hartford Theological Seminary three years later. From his ordination to the ministry in 1899 until 1915, Sanderson served as a Congregational minister and pastor consecutively in Beverly, Mass., Providence, R.I., and Brooklyn, N.Y. In 1903, an article in the magazine The Congregationalist described Sanderson in glowing terms just after he took his post in Providence: "Everyone is prepossessed in his favor, on first meeting him, by his frankness and heartiness, for he has genuine personal magnetism." These same qualities probably served him well in engaging the experts who helped with his preservation and collecting activities. In 1915, Sanderson turned from the clergy to administrative positions at nonprofit institutions — Goodwill Industries in Brooklyn from 1915 to 1916 and The People's Institute in New York from 1916 to 1921. He served on numerous charitable boards and fought in the infantry during the Spanish-American War. First married to Ethel Eames in 1912, the couple had one son, David. The first Mrs. Sanderson passed away in 1917 and Sanderson was remarried in 1934 to Grace (Jarvis) Schauffler. In 1921, Sanderson retired from his full-time career as minister and administrator and turned his considerable energies to historic preservation and collecting antiques. Traveling between New York and Nantucket, he was known on the island as a "summerite" until 1934 when he and his wife took up year-round residence in Quidnet. Sanderson passed away on October 31, 1955, causing the NHA to suffer "the loss of a principal benefactor, a loyal friend, and a life member."

The best known house that Sanderson restored on Nantucket is Moor's End. The house was originally built for Jared Coffin between 1829 and 1834. Coffin was a mariner and shipbuilder who made his fortune in whale oil. At that time the house was on the farthest outskirts of Nantucket town and, the story has it, Mrs. Coffin felt that it was too far away. So, Coffin built a second home at the corner of Broad and Centre streets, still standing today as the Jared Coffin House, and sold Moor's End to Reuben Hallet in 1851. When originally constructed, the house was a simple, square brick structure with chimneys at the end walls. Between Coffin's first sale of the house to Hallet in 1851 and its purchase by Edward Sanderson in 1925, the house underwent several additions and the land taken up by today's magnificent formal garden was added to the lot in 1899 by Henry B. Williams. Presumably, the famous brick walls around the grounds were added around the same time.

Almost immediately after his purchase, Sanderson undertook a meticulous restoration of the house, inside and out, in consultation with Philadelphia architect Fiske Kimball and the creator of the Metropolitan Museum's American Wing, R.T.H. Halsey. Halsey opened the American Wing at the Met in 1924 and caused quite a stir with its aesthetic of simplicity, a sharp contrast to Victorian style with its overstuffed furniture and elaborate knickknacks. As several historians have documented, the rise of the "colonial revival" style (and probably a motivation for Sanderson's preservation activities on Nantucket) was a reaction to the increasing urbanization and immigration taking place in America. Citizens like Halsey and Sanderson turned to the past for "solace and inspiration."

Sanderson also indulged his own aesthetic sensibilities, although, according to Fiske Kimball, he was "an owner in a thousand . . . who, while wisely insisting the result should be thoroughly livable, was eager to respect the style of the house and accept its farthest implications. ..." William Sumner Appleton, founder of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA), and another expert consulted by Sanderson, sent his congratulations after Sanderson's purchase of the house in April 1925, "You may imagine how much pleasure it gave us to know that Moor's End had been bought by somebody interested in its proper upkeep. . . . You are no more fortunate in having acquired it than the house is in having come to so appreciate [sic] an owner."

With the structural renovations in the masterly hands of Fiske Kimball and his associate, Erling H. Pedersen, Sanderson pursued the proper interior furnishings, again relying extensively on specialists. These advisers, who suggested everything from window treatments to rugs, are acknowledged in Fiske Kimball's description of the project, which appeared in the September 1927 issue of The Architectural Record. Kimball characterized his work this way: "The architectural task in the recent work was to preserve the amenities of some of these features [additions and changes made during the nineteenth century], while restoring the character and atmosphere of the old work. The new features had to be pulled off and put back again, with a difference." These "new features," added over the course of the nineteenth century, included a two-story porch at the rear, a fake Palladian window over the garden door, and three dormers at the back of the house. KimbalTs language in describing these modifications provides insight into the changing stylistic beliefs regarding America's historic structures, "The simple old stable was glorified into a model of some admired Venetian church. . . . Inside the house, two of the old mantels were replaced with pretentious "Colonial" ones. ..." Like Halsey, who wrote of his American Wing, "the furnishings should be restrained and no semblance of crowding permitted," Kimball was also reacting to the overblown Victorian styles of the previous century.

Structurally, the "principal fresh modification" was to lengthen the upstairs ell to accommodate Sanderson's large library. "By the aid of shoehorns," Kimball writes, bathrooms were "squeezed in" and bedrooms with closets were restored on one side of the house. The rear dormers were reduced in size and painted the same color as the slate roof so that they would blend in inconspicuously. Several other modifications were completed, all in an attempt to simplify the nineteenth-century changes and return the structure of the house to its original style. The restoration process was lengthy, beginning in 1925 and ending in 1928.

Kimball also recounted the interior design changes of the house in his article, illustrating the importance that both he and Sanderson attached to the house as a whole — inside and outside. While "no attempt was made to keep everything exactly of one precise moment of the early American style ... in general [pieces from the same period] have been grouped in different rooms." Efforts were undertaken to avoid English pieces, except for articles "which were scarcely produced in early America and were always imported," and to avoid modern works or reproductions, except for some textiles and lighting devices.
Perhaps Sanderson's most spectacular change to Moor's End are the murals painted on the dining-room walls. Artist Stanley James Rowland presents a Nantucket whaler's voyage from home port to the Pacific Ocean. The murals were designed using Sanderson's collection of whaling implements and documentary sources from the NHA's library. In a description of the murals for the February 1927 issue of House Beautiful, Joseph Husband explained their function: "It is a marvelous panorama of a bit of American history. ... And it is appropriate that it should be housed here — not on the cold walls of a museum or some other public building, but in a house built out of the very industry it depicts. . . . More than a decoration, this scenic paper is a record of an epoch; it is an historic document."

Unfortunately, there is little extant documentation of the Moor's End restoration from Sanderson's perspective. An April 1, 1925, letter from Sanderson to William Sumner Appleton suggests his enthusiasm for the project: "Professor Kimball has prepared most interesting plans for the restoration of the whole place, and I hope that some day I may have the opportunity of showing you the house restored." Undoubtedly, Sanderson was pleased with the end result, which used architectural features and historic furnishings to create a sense of the past. His attention to detail and his overwhelming generosity through the gift of his whaling collection to the NHA suggest his commitment to education through preservation. And this commitment was not solely personal: Moor's End and the Whaling Museum's Sanderson Hall still allow the island community to learn about and take pride in their past.