The proposed merger of the North Water Street Corporation with the Vineyard Historical Preservation Society moved several steps nearer at the annual North Water street stockholders and directors meeting yesterday.

 

The columns on the Dr. Daniel Fisher house in Edgartown could not be called fakes, because they certainly have done their job of holding up the portico for over 130 years. They are better called copies, for originally they were designed for the Tower of Winds built in Athens from 100 to 35 B. C., and they come highly recommended by Asher Benjamin, who was the godfather of this period of American architecture.

 

An Island museum and landmark changed hands on Patriots Day. The museum of the Sea Coast Defense Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, a little white building on upper Main street in Vineyard Haven, has turned over to Martha’s Vineyard Historical Preservation Society. The museum is a repository of memorabilia going back generations, to the Island’s whaling days.

 

The 300-year-old Vincent House, perhaps the oldest home on the Island, is open once again to the public in Edgartown for the summer.

 

The remarkable aspect of this house is it’s architecture. There are only limited furnishings inside, and the restorers - John Warren Norton, Anne Baker and C. Stuart Avery of the Martha’s Vineyard Historic Preservation Society - have fashioned the house in the most interesting way possible.

 

The Martha’s Vineyard Historical Preservation Society Inc. this week formally announced the launching of its campaign to raise $740,000 by Dec. 8 to purchase the land, building and business of the historic Oak Bluffs carousel, the Flying Horses.

 

As part of its agreement with the present owner of the carousel, James Ryan of Osterville, the society has managed the Flying Horses since its opening on the Memorial Day weekend. It is open seven days a week, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.

 

An agreement to sell Edgartown’s handsome Dr. Daniel Fisher house on Main street, built in 1840 for that great whaling era figure, has been reached between Island Properties, who president is Dr. Alvin M. Strock, its owner for the past seven years, and a newly formed nonprofit corporation, the Daniel Fisher Corporation.

 

It began with a gift some 17 years ago, a donation of money and at once an act of philanthropy and preservation.

 

The 1975 gift from Fairleigh S. Dickinson Jr. rescued and restored the historic Dr. Daniel Fisher house on Main street in Edgartown. It was also the beginning of the Martha’s Vineyard Historical Preservation Society.

 

The old house on Main street, Edgartown, which has been referred to as the Edson house, has received an official and appropriate christening. It is now the Desire Osborn House, called after James Coffin’s youngest child, Desire Allen Coffin, who married John Osborn in 1813, and for whom the house was moved to its present site from the neighborhood of Mill Hill.