This shows what was once a perfect Nantucket house but successive owners have altered it till nothing of the original remains in view except two windows. Somebody raised the house and used artificial stone cement blocks in the foundations as well as in the battlemented steps to the piazza which has giant columns resting on miniature anti-rot pipe supports holding up a large flat roof which but partly conceals a huge exterior cobblestone chimney. Cement steps and galvanized iron pipe hand rails lead up to the golden oak front door containing a large beveled plate glass, all surmounted by a hood held up by supporting brackets of jig-saw design. A belt of fancy scalloped and diamond-shaped shingles extends across the front wall and large sheets of glass replace the small window panes. There is a large bay window. At the far side a “sun parlor” transforms that end of the structure and a wide shed roof dormer completely changes the main roof. We do not intend to comment adversely on these changes in respect to their individual merits, our purpose being to point out that one cannot make them and retain an old house. [Illustration: SECTION OF TOWN DESTROYED BY FIRE 1846 NO. 17] ALTERATIONS We have a precious inheritance in this large group of old houses. Every effort should be made to keep from harming them when making changes, and to keep from building dissimilar types of new houses in the old built-up sections. There is ample room outside of the old districts or elsewhere on the Island for those who determine to build a place of modern appearance. Yet one can ride a hobby too hard. The complete purist is often impracticable. One living in an old house wants to be comfortable and to have adequate space. There is hardly an old house in town which has not on its visible exterior--at least somewhere on its four sides--the marks of modernizing as made by succeeding generations. Fortunately the fronts as a rule have been but little marred. Nantucket can be kept “95% perfect” only by not adding to the visible detractions on its old houses, and by not building new types amidst the old. Thus this priceless inheritance will be preserved--and incidentally the values increased--as such houses become less and less procurable here and elsewhere. We even venture to hope some of the present detractions will be removed as time goes on. So far as more room and modern comforts are concerned, an architect or builder knowing his old Nantucket can usually plan to provide them in “doing over” an old house and still not harm its exterior. But all hope is lost if the roof lines are spoiled by large shed-roof dormers or a dormer room, and only less disfiguring are large “sun parlors,” piazzas, exterior chimneys, or flat roofed ells or projections, built where visible from the front.