Banking Under the Stars
by Frances Karttunen
Here on an island thirty miles out to sea in the Atlantic Ocean, at the head of Main Street Square, opposite the Pacific Club stands the Pacific National Bank. The juxtaposition of the two institutions shows just how important that other ocean has been in Nantucket history.
The connection began in 1791, when in the course of one year seven Nantucket whale ships rounded Cape Horn and made their way into the vast waters west of the Americas. With the depletion of the whale population in the Atlantic grounds to the east and south of Nantucket, the ships had traveled further and further in search of oil to fill the barrels in their holds. Once they beat their way into the Pacific, the ships typically stayed out for years rather than months. Eventually, captains’ wives started accompanying their husbands and raising their children shipboard. Women left behind on Nantucket learned to make do without their menfolk, and many of them became accomplished business managers.
Money from the Pacific voyages flowed back to the island, which soon required real banking facilities. In 1795 the Nantucket Bank was incorporated and was immediately robbed of $20,000. Up until that moment, Quaker Nantucket had operated on an honor system, and the ripples of distrust generated by the robbery poisoned relations among a whole generation of Nantucket businessmen.
Shattered confidence notwithstanding, incorporation of the Pacific Bank followed in 1804. The bank prospered, and in 1818 the corporation built the handsome brick building with slate roof and fireproof vault right where it stands today at the head of Main Street square. The total cost for building and vault was $7,000, only about a third the amount that had been stolen from the Nantucket Bank less than a decade previously.
By the 1840s, Nantucket had four banks, one of which was prophetically named the Phoenix Bank.
By then William Mitchell had become cashier at the Pacific Bank, a position he held for nearly a quarter of a century. The cashier’s living quarters were upstairs over the bank, and in 1836 Mitchell and his wife Lydia moved in with their many children, including eighteen-year-old Maria. Maria had already tried her hand at apprentice school teaching and was now employed as librarian at the Nantucket Atheneum.
From the front windows of the upstairs apartment the view is of Main Street straight down to the Rotch building at the foot of the hill and beyond to the end of Straight Wharf. Beyond that lies the harbor, which in the 1830s would have been a forest of masts. One can imagine the younger Mitchell children with their noses pressed to the windowpanes, watching all the activity going on between them and the waterfront.
Even better viewing of the street scene and the heavens was available from the rooftop observatory that William Mitchell had constructed up above the living quarters. There he and Maria spent evenings sweeping with a telescope, exploring the dark night skies.
The apartment was furnished with a piano, despite Quaker objections to music. William Mitchell is said to have told the elders that he preferred that his daughters stay at home to practice playing the piano rather than going out to other less suitable places.
There was also a large dining room where the Mitchells entertained visitors to the island, among them Herman Melville. It was during one autumn dinner party, grown tedious to Maria, that she escaped to the roof for some fresh air, turned the telescope skyward, and saw for the first time the comet that would make her famous.
Whatever else of truth or fancy that Nantucketers may tell their visitors today, just about universally they will point to the roof of the Pacific National Bank and say that from up there, Maria Mitchell discovered a comet.
They may also tell another story about Maria that has no known basis in truth. The night that Maria discovered her comet, much of the town’s business district lay in ashes from the front steps of the bank to the bottom of the hill. The wharves had burned to the waterline, and the harbor was still full of the hulks of burned ships. It was just a bit over a year since the Great Fire of 1846.
Before the fire, few of Nantucket’s buildings were built of anything but wood. At the foot of the square was the Rotch building, built of brick in 1772. It was gutted by the fire, but the walls still stood. After reconstruction, it would become home to the Pacific Club. The handsome Folger block, close to the Pacific Bank, on the south side of Main Street had been built of brick in 1831, and it survived. The fire burned right up to the front door of Jared Coffin’s brick mansion on Broad Street, left it unscathed, and burned the wooden Episcopal church next door to the ground.
Also built of wood, the colonnaded Methodist church right next door to the Pacific National Bank survived. Much later, the story was told that in order to stop the advance of the conflagration, firefighters were preparing to blow up the church when Maria Mitchell mounted the steps, folded her arms, and dared the firemen to set off their explosives. She predicted a change in the wind’s direction, and sure enough, the wind did change, taking the flames off in another direction.
Unfortunately, there is nothing to substantiate this story, which has become part of Nantucket folklore. What is known for sure is that although its brick walls and slate roof protected the bank itself, the Mitchells’ rooftop observatory was destroyed. Maria’s sister Anne wrote that during the fire, the family feared that they themselves would be blown up and so obeyed the orders of the firewards to the letter.
Of Nantucket’s four banks, two survived the Great Fire: the Pacific Bank and the Phoenix Bank. Ironically, the Phoenix Bank subsequently failed. In 1865, at the end of the Civil War, the Pacific Bank became the Pacific National Bank.
Over the years, there have been periodic remodelings of the Pacific National Bank. In 1954 murals of Main Street scenes from the height of the whaling era were painted on the walls facing the front door. Artifacts of whaling and banking, including photos of 19th-century bank directors have been put on exhibit, so today it is well worth a visit inside even if one has no business to conduct.
In the 1990s the Pacific National Bank slipped from local ownership, sold first to Fleet Bank and then becoming an outpost of Bank America. Still, purely local history is palpable within the walls, and the view of Main Street square from the front steps is as fine as ever.
Frances Karttunen’s books Nantucket Places and People 1: Main Street to the North Shore, Nantucket Places and People 2: South of Main Street, The Other Islanders: People Who Pulled Nantucket’s Oars, and Law and Disorder in Old Nantucket are available at local bookstores.
