This is our new space to announce EC updates and news, and to share our favorite parts of life on Martha’s
Vineyard! For this first post, we’re highlighting the history of Edgartown Commons’ buildings, which have been
a part of Edgartown for well over a century.
Did you know our two cottages, Units 17 and 18, are original fishermans’ cottages built in the 19th century?
The rumor in Edgartown is that these cottages were originally built in Nantucket, and later hauled across the
water to where they stand today.
Our historic schoolhouse building was constructed in the early 1840s, around the same time as the nearby Old
Whaling Church. Called the North School, it served students from the North side of Edgartown until the
1920s. This original photo was taken from up in the Whaling Church steeple in the 1860s (note how the
original door was on the side facing Planting Fields Way). And check out that windmill just behind us!
Agriculture and milling thrived in 19th century Martha’s Vineyard… Edgartown alone was said to have four
windmills.
Our most modern buildings are the midcentury motel-style structures facing the pool and Peases Point Road,
but we’ll save that story for another day.

View from the top of the Whaling Church, Edgartown, in the late 1860s. The white building on the left is the North School, serving half of the village’s pupils; on the right, the Jernegan Mill on Planting Field Way gave Mill Street its name.