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Originally published in the Historic Nantucket, Vol 50, no. 3 (Summer 2001), p. 15-17


Salvaged Materials: Unique Artistic Visions and Economic Constraints Lend Historic Context to Two Special Nantucket Homes
by James Sulzer

Two SPECIAL NANTUCKET HOMES, THE products of the strong artistic visions of their creators, share an unusual feature: they were both built and furnished largely with materials salvaged from the Nantucket dump.

After poet Ole Lokensgard bought a piece of land on Derrymore Lane in 1976 (a "virtual gift," he says, from his friends Matilde and Louisa Pfeiffer), he knew he could afford a house only if he built it himself — with the help of his wife Mary Heen and a few friends and with a tiny budget for materials. He had built nothing at all since the few forts he had made as a child, but his lack of experience didn't daunt him. He knew that one way or another he would complete his dream home.

Lokensgard didn't know at first that salvaged materials from the dump would not only make the house affordable but would give it its unique soul. He arrived at the building site with just one tool, an axe, after hitchhiking down from Cambridge, where he was a student. The idea of salvaging came to him gradually as he hauled off load after load of brush and debris to the dump in an old jeep borrowed from the Pfeiffers. "I would come back with more stuff than I took to the dump — stockpiles of things . . . windows, bricks for the fireplace, chests of drawers

Knowing almost nothing about building, he found some books on home construction and sketched out a very simple plan, based on a "tic tac toe" square design of nine boxes measuring 10 feet by 10 feet each. As they began work, he and his wife realized they wanted the house to be simple (so they could build it), efficient in the use of space (which a square design allowed), and historic.

Lokensgard and Heen came up with a modified salt box design, employing a gable front and a shed dormer in back. With their small budget they bought framing lumber, plywood for sheathing, and cement blocks for the foundation.

As they began building, Lokensgard kept looking for salvageable materials at the dump. While he found many windows, he never located more than three of a kind that matched. As a result, each wall of the house ended up with its own window style.

Lokensgard decided to build the interior of the house "on a ship model," with three "masts" or supporting posts, a captain's ladder to an upstairs sleeping and storage area (which became the "bridge"), and a "crow's nest," or small reading area at the top of a reverse bowsprit. Using a space-saving design he had noticed on boats in the harbor, he hand-cut semicircles of bronze as little handholds and footholds for climbing up to the crow's nest.

As he incorporated the salvaged materials — windows, doors, stained glass, old metal, and eventually pieces of furniture — Lokensgard claims he did not have "a purist's attitude." The process was "serendipitous," he says, and he felt he was "kind of editing in terms of what we were able to find ... we would have various design problems to solve, and there was this stuff, and that stuff . . . what would work?" But a look inside the house confirms that his "editing" was guided by a masterly sense of space and proportion. The upward sweep of masts and captain's ladder toward a cathedral ceiling of dark-stained pine, the artful placement of stained-glass windows between interior walls, the juxtaposition of painted wooden fish with a plastic dinosaur as window ornaments, all create a home as comfortable as it is lovely.

In their work on the house, Lokensgard and Heen developed a personal, authentic understanding of the term "historic." For them, Lokensgard says, "historic" meant that the house should not be too complicated, that it should not be beyond their skill means, and that it should meet their living needs. More than anything, perhaps, the term defined the scale and purpose of their project: "It was the simplicity of early history, a life style inherent in the story of the pieces," he explains. He says the pieces that he found dictated how they were to be used. ''Once you have these objects, it's as if they have their own auras of history. They become part of the fabric, of the structure. For instance, the windows, which are the eyes of the building, have the slightly rippled effect of old glass."

Given the beautiful result, it is no surprise that Ole Lokensgard discov ered his life's work in the course of this project and later went back to school to become an architect.

Quidnet Retreat

Ten years later, Doug Pinney came to the construction of his home in Quidnet from a different direction. He was already a master craftsman working as a furniture restorer in his shop, with his own table saws and two lathes. The exquisite home that he would design and build reminds visitors today of a ship — though he was not consciously guided by a ship model as was Ole Lokensgard.

In 1986, a few years after purchasing a piece of land in Quidnet with his wife, Karen Pelrine, Pinney began construction of their home. At first it was "just a pile of stuff in the yard," he says. He had already built his shop entirely out of salvaged materials; and in building his new home, for both economic and aesthetic reasons, he would again rely on salvaged material from the dump. "I would be there first thing in the morning; it was all hit or miss," he remembers. "I was spending more time than I would like at the dump." There he not only found "more historic architecture than I could bring back in my truck," including doors and wall sconces and a sterling silver doorknob, but also the two-by-six pieces of lumber that he used for framing and the boards he would use for diagonal sheathing. He also rescued a generator from the dump — once he put in a new set of rings, it provided his electricity before he was hooked up to town power — and a gas stove about to be discarded by the Upper Crust restaurant.

Pinney designed the house as a T when seen from the air, with the living room forming the stem of the T and the dining room, kitchen and small guest bedroom filling out the cross stroke. Winding stairs with mahogany treads and matching rails lead up to a small second floor with a master bedroom and bath. Pinney was guided in his sense of the historic by what he had learned while doing restoration work; for instance, borrowing a design from the Hadwen House, he incorporated a curved detail at the turning point of the stairs to avoid an acute corner.

The interior of Pinney's home has the perfect inevitability of an artistic vision so strong and so painstakingly rendered that every detail, paradoxically, feels completely natural and unforced. The fact that most of the materials were salvaged from the dump somehow enhances this natural feeling. For instance, the marble tiles on a kitchen counter came from a large piece of marble he found at the dump and later cut into squares, giving texture and beauty to the counter. The mahogany leaves from a table that he found at the dump, stripped and cut to size, now serve as panels in cabinet doors. He turned other salvaged pieces of mahogany on his lathe to create the delicate balusters for his stairway. The rippled old "seed" glass that he found lends charm to the glass cabinets in the kitchen. Brass hooks by the fireplace also came from the dump, as did most of his furniture. Much of the exterior cedar trim came from packing crates from Island Lumber, which he beaded and installed with the one good side facing out.

Built-in window seats, reading nooks, and numerous closets create a sense of space in his original 1,000-square-foot design. To make sure he met code, while preserving the low ceilings he wanted, Pinney cut a bow into the joists so that the ceiling of the living room curves upward toward the center of the room. The thick walls define a deep sill for the windows, allowing a place to display some of the treasures he has salvaged; and the amber pine floors, painted and shellacked over, complete the sense of elegance and age.

In the mid-90s Pinney crafted an addition to the house — a new, larger living room and another guest bedroom complete with an "eyebrow" window. The original T design is now an H. By this time Pinney could afford to specially order the unusual curved window for the bedroom. "I'd paid my dues," he says, adding, "It was my first house — I never want to do it again." But he still thinks fondly of his days at the dump: "It was a wonderful era, born out of necessity and excitement and curiosity."
Access to the dump (renamed a "landfill" in the 1980s and a "recycling center" in the 1990s) is restricted now. Sadly, it is doubtful that homes will ever again be built on Nantucket using salvaged materials. The beauty and depth of feeling of these two buildings remind us that the soul of a home can be found as much in our interaction with the past as in our dreams for the future.

 

]ames Sulzer is the author of the novel Nantucket Daybreak and has written a number of articles for local and national publications. Currently a producer for NPR stations WNAN and WCAI, he has also taught at Nantucket Elementary School for the past fifteen years.