Nantucket Current | The island of native leads the restoration of surfside …

After years of wear, the historic former life -saving station and star of the Sea Youth Hostel in Surfside received a great restoration.

“It was neglected as a youth hostel, but the history of the building itself is really cool,” said Hollis Webb, the owner of King Post Preservation, Inc., who led the restoration project. “The decorated giebelbow work obviously collapsed from the street. When I had the opportunity to work on this building, I jumped on it.”

The building goes back to the 1870s when it was built as one of four US life -saving employee buildings in which the crews monitor the ocean from the beach of Surfside from the beach of Surfside and reacted to emergency calls. The structure is the last of these four buildings that remain on Nantucket, although parts of the former Madaket station were relocated to Brant Point in the 1940s after opening the Brant Point station in the 1940s.

The Surfside building has a specific style that was common for US life -saving stations and is complete the legendary giebel arch. The restore meant hours at the end of the end in the white oak in webbs shop. Old pieces of wood that worsened were replaced. Others who had fallen were saved, some serve as templates that could be reproduced.

“That is exactly in my alley,” said Webb. “I had never worked on something so complex. It was something I really wanted to jump on.”

Webb and Kevin Green – who also worked on the restoration project – was involved in several restoration projects on Nantucket. Both Webb and Green visited the North Bennet Street School in Boston on Mary Helen and Michael Fabacher Scholarship of the Nantucket Preservation Trust.

The restoration has become a passion for webb that came from Afghanistan and a veteran of the war. For this project, WebB estimates that 60 percent of the material has been replaced. The rest was original. While he was able to use modern power tools in the restoration, he said that his goal was to remain true to the architectural integrity of the original work.

“It does not mean that new buildings do not have their own elements of craftsmanship, but these buildings were largely produced by hand,” said Webb. “It was after the civil war, and real rudimentary electric tools just started, but they did this as efficiently as possible with hand tools and did it with an ability that is no longer finished.”

The property has a restriction of conservation, which means that no exterior changes can be made that would change the architectural integrity of the building of 1872. The Nantucket Preservation Trust is this restriction.

The restoration work is paid by Blue Flag partners to comply with the existing restriction of maintenance.

The building in Surfside has also had a turbulent story recently in the history of promotion agreements, great ideas for hotels, employee apartments and a suggestion that would have used it as an educational center.

From 2020, it fell on the attention of several units than was launched after decades of ownership. Finally, Blue Flag Partners won a bidding war for the surfside property and ruled out a competing offer from the EGAN Maritime Institute, which had hoped to use the building as an expansion of the shipwreck and lifesaving museum in Polpis. Blue Flag partner had hoped to convert the hostel into a hotel.

By February 2023, Blue Flag Partners said that it was planned to sell the property and demanded $ 7.9 million for the 0.69 hectare site. A few months later, the city achieved a contract for the purchase of the Western Avenue property for 6 million US dollars, hoping to use it as an employed housing construction, although the purchase contract was dependent on an appropriation at an annual city assembly. This vote failed and the city went away from the purchase.

Blue Flag has launched the property again. It is now listed by J. Pepper Frazier Co. for 5.49 million US dollars.