Widows' Walks: Iconic Architectural Symbols Of Yankee Yore

Widow's walks fall into the lexicon from the sea which has given us "three sheets to the wind," "deep six" and "knowing the ropes."

"Legend has it," writes Lia Picard, a freelance writer and journalist, "that the wives of 18th and 19th century whalers stared forlornly out to sea from rooftop platforms in search of their husbands' ships. Over time, as sailors failed to return home, those platforms became known as widow's walks." That's the romantic version.

The more prosaic description of the wooden structures, found on the roofs of wealthy whalers (in most New England whaling towns) formally refers to them as "roof walks," accessed by a steep ladder to quell common chimney fires.

I don't know if my Nantucket fishermen/whaler great-great-great grandfather, Thomas Jones, had a widow's walk for my long-suffering great-great-great grandmother on his harbor-side house (it was consumed in the devastating fire of 1846). But my mother-in-law Tibs Krauthoff's house on 'Sconset bluff did, as did Robert Benchley's next door. What is clear is that, on most days, one could see 15 to 20 whaling ships tied up to Nantucket town's wharf, hiring crews (the largest whalers needed a crew of 20), stocking their holds with provisions that needed to last three, maybe four years while these sea-worthy 80-foot "self-propelled tubs of high-income lard" sailed the world's seas in search of bloody money.

Today's woke women might find those wistful women on their roofs laudable for their independent spirit. As a recent widow, I find nothing laudable or laughable about having to carry on.

Apparently there was a secret society of young women on the 14-mile-long crescent island, 25 miles in the Atlantic from anywhere, whose members vowed to wed only men who had killed a whale. I suppose that included widows who would rather turn their freezing faces to harsh, relentless winter wind and sleet on their roofs for years than be without a weathered spouse. To help identify the courageous, single sailors (including the helmsmen of the 25-foot whaleboats that were dropped into the frothy sea to slay with harpoons their 50- to 60-ton "Moby Dicks" in a 20-mph "Nantucket sleighride) they wore a lapel pin (chockpin) made of oak and used to secure the harpoon line in the bow groove.

Widow's walks were also excellent places for star-gazing astronomers to help ship captains calibrate their chronometers, when all they would see for years were stars, whales, other whaling vessels following the same routes. They added charm to whaling mansions of yore. Now, New England builders will add widow walks (at a price) for daytime picnics and nighttime poker games.

Phyllis Nickerson Power, a Chatham realtor and a direct descendant of William Nickerson, an English immigrant who came to Chatham in 1656, says, " My great grandfather lived in a charming Victorian home with a turret and would go to the highest window with his telescope to check all ships heading for Boston. He would identify a ship that had a Chatham crew and tell the wives that day that their husbands would be home that night." Nickerson says it's very difficult to find old homes now on the Cape that have widows' walks and that builders often build McMansions with roof decks where they can hold cocktail parties. She is on the board of Protect Our Past, a non-profit that helps owners of old homes to keep their historical properties.

My good friend Webb Green, a bi-coastal architect who has dealt with fussy historical societies' permits for decades, told me that 40 years ago, he was designing a traditional home with a widow's walk for a client in Madechechem on Nantucket The historical commission, known for its persnickety view of what can and cannot be built on Nantucket, turned his plans down because "a great architectural idiom shouldn't be squandered."