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The Old Whaling Church on Martha's Vineyard is a historic Edgartown landmark built in 1843. Visitor information, events, and its cultural significance.
The Old Whaling Church at 89 Main Street in Edgartown is a Greek Revival church built in 1843 by Methodist whaling captains, when the town's whaling money was at its peak.
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Inside the Old Whaling Church: the hall doubles as one of the island’s main performance venues.
The church went up in 1843, when the congregation of whaling captains and their families outgrew their earlier church (now Edgartown Town Hall). The architect was Frederick Baylies Jr., a member of the congregation, who also designed other Edgartown churches and buildings. Ellis Lewis supervised the construction with local carpenters and shipwrights, men who built churches and ships alike. The wood came from Maine on the vessel Rhine, captained by John O. Morse.
The six Doric columns of the portico from the steps, looking up at the entablature and the pediment.
Six big tapered Doric columns hold up a cantilevered entablature and a triangular pediment on the front. The 92-foot clock tower has Gothic Revival touches at the top: crenellations, rounded arches and four spires with gilded acanthus-leaf finials. Inside, a curved ceiling rests on heavy trusses cut from shipbuilding timbers, and the original whale oil lamps are still in the main hall. The sanctuary seats about 470.
The Old Whaling Church on Main Street in Edgartown: the columns and the tower.
The clock tower up close: two black faces with gold Roman numerals above the white cornice.
The building belongs to the Vineyard Preservation Trust, but the clock and the clock tower belong to the Town of Edgartown. The Trust's director at the time told the MV Times in 2015 that a philanthropist gave the town a chiming clock in the 1980s, and the Methodist congregation let it go into the tower as long as the town looked after it.
The tower is the highest point in town and takes the weather head on. In the fall of 2015 the Trust rebuilt it with help from Edgartown's Community Preservation Act money (town meeting voted $100,000 that April). Rotting marine plywood from the 1980s repairs came out and mahogany went in. Two of the four clock faces were replaced outright, and on November 30, 2015 Main Street closed for the morning while a crane lifted the rebuilt spires and crenellations back onto the top.
The church from the Main Street sidewalk with the trees bare, the tower and its four spires against a clear blue sky.
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Carl Wendte, a Swiss-born artist who worked closely with Baylies and died at 28, painted the original murals. Margot Datz restored and recreated them between January 2013 and December 2022, nearly ten years of work. She had one grainy photograph from about 1865 to go on, and used about 24 shades of gray for the full-scale trompe l'oeil arch that makes the flat rear wall look like a bright antechamber.
The Methodist congregation handed the building to the Vineyard Preservation Trust in 1980. Today it is a performing arts and community venue for concerts, weddings, lectures and town meetings. Ticket prices vary by event. The Trust's 75-minute Historic Walking Tour starts at the Carnegie Heritage Center on North Water Street and finishes inside the church under the Datz murals. In summer 2026 it ran Tuesday to Saturday at 10:30 am; the scheduled dates have now ended, and the Trust's tour page lists private tours by appointment at $50 a person (two-person minimum). Regular tickets were $30 for adults and $15 for ages 6 to 17, with kids 5 and under free.
The church from across Main Street in summer, the tower above the trees and the brick walk in front.
Most of the year the church opens for whoever has booked it, so the calendar is a mix of town business, benefits and big-name music. The Trust rents the sanctuary for up to 470 people and the ground-floor Baylies Room for up to 100 seated, and it singles out the acoustics as the reason musicians ask for the hall.
A sample of what 2026 brought: Edgartown's annual and special town meetings on April 14, when 245 voters sat in the pews from 7 to 10 pm; a sold-out Elvis Costello benefit for WMVY on August 8; the free Black Education Forum on August 14; the Harlem Quartet for the Martha's Vineyard Chamber Music Society on August 16; the Martha's Vineyard Gospel Festival benefit concert on August 17; and John Craigie on August 27, presented by Circuit Arts with MVY Radio. The fall calendar has the Martha's Vineyard Diversity Coalition's Fire and Song fundraiser on October 23.
December belongs to Christmas in Edgartown, which runs December 10 to 13, 2026. In 2025 the Minnesingers sang their holiday concerts at the church; the 2026 program has not been posted yet.
The Trust's venue page says the sanctuary is reached by a ramp and a lift, and the Baylies Room downstairs by a ramp. The restrooms are not wheelchair accessible. Parking near the church is public street parking.
That is the main thing the Trust's capital campaign sets out to fix. Its 2026 flyer describes a $2 million project with three new accessible bathrooms, a new lift serving the entry, the sanctuary and the ground floor, a new HVAC system with cooling, and better lighting and sound. Work is expected to start in the fall of 2027 and finish in 2028, and the flyer says half the money had been raised. If you plan to visit around then, check with the Trust, since events may move while the work is on.
The church on a summer day, with the white railed ramp running along the side of the building beside the portico.
Right next door at 99 Main Street, this Federal-style house was built around 1840 by Dr. Daniel Fisher, a wealthy whale oil industrialist whose processing factory was one of the largest in the country. It is used for events now, including the July 4th barbecue; see our 4th of July Edgartown Guide.
The Trust bought the Fisher House in 1975, and it is where the Trust keeps its main offices. Around 1900 the house belonged to Senator William Morgan Butler of New Bedford, who added the semicircular porch on the east side and the porte cochere facing the West Garden. In that garden is a small onion-domed summer house with a gilded pineapple on top, designed by Francis Peabody for the Peabody estate, Glen Magna Farm, in Danvers, the same year the Fisher House was built, and given to the Trust by the Thoron family in 2008.
Walk to the back of the Fisher House property and you reach the Vincent House, built in 1672 and the oldest surviving house on the island. It first stood on 20 acres beside Edgartown Great Pond, and eight generations of the Vincent family lived in it. It is a one-and-a-half-story, three-room Cape built around a central brick chimney, with post-and-beam framing and wattle-and-daub insulation. The Trust's sign out front says it is open to the public with hours that vary by season, and the walking tour stops inside for its Revolutionary War exhibit.
The Vineyard Preservation Trust sign that lists the three landmarks on this block: the Dr. Daniel Fisher House (1840), the Vincent House and Gardens (1672) and the Old Whaling Church (1843).
The Trust's Carnegie Heritage Center, the old Edgartown library at 58 North Water Street, is a few minutes' walk away and is where the walking tour begins. Its exhibit on Margot Datz and the church murals, Margot Datz: Recreator, is becoming part of the Carnegie's permanent collection, with a free celebration there on Thursday, November 5, 2026. Through November 29, 2026 the Dickinson Room also has a free show of carvings by Leo Convery, a lifelong Edgartown resident.
The church is part of the Edgartown Village Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. For a complete guide to Edgartown, see our Edgartown Town Guide (2026).
The porch and garden of the Dr. Daniel Fisher House next door, hydrangeas in bloom and tables set out on the lawn.
Step 1 · WhenMonth PickerTwelve months compared on NOAA numbers, crowds, prices and what is open. 
Step 2 · DaysDay-by-Day Trip PlannerMorning, afternoon and evening sketched for every day, events dropped in, emailed to you. 
Step 3 · CostTrip Cost CalculatorFerry, beds with the rooms tax, meals, getting around and activities in one price range. At 89 Main Street in Edgartown, a short walk from the harbor and the Main Street shops. The free VTA bus reaches downtown Edgartown from either ferry terminal, so you do not need a car. Our Edgartown guide covers the rest of the village.
Yes, when something is on. The Vineyard Preservation Trust runs it as a performing arts and community venue, so concerts, lectures, weddings and town meetings fill the calendar, and ticket prices vary by event. The Trust's Historic Walking Tour ends inside the church; its scheduled 2026 dates are over, and the tour page lists private tours by appointment.
Not in the everyday sense. The Methodist congregation gave the building to the Vineyard Preservation Trust in 1980, and it now works as a venue. The island's United Methodist church now holds its Sunday services at the Trinity Worship Center in Oak Bluffs.
The curved ceiling held up by trusses cut from ship timbers, the original whale oil lamps, and the trompe l'oeil arch on the rear wall, recreated by Margot Datz between 2013 and 2022 from a single photograph from around 1865. The sanctuary seats about 470.
The Dr. Daniel Fisher House at 99 Main Street, a Federal-style home from about 1840 built by a whale oil industrialist. It is used for events today and hosts the July 4th barbecue; see our Edgartown 4th of July guide.
Downtown Edgartown parking is tight in summer. The easiest move is the Edgartown park-and-ride lot and the free Route 11 shuttle into town, which runs every 20 minutes through the middle of the day from late May to early September. Our parking guide has the lots.
Partly. The Trust says the sanctuary is reached by a ramp and a lift and the ground-floor Baylies Room by a ramp, but the restrooms are not wheelchair accessible. A capital project planned for fall 2027 to 2028 would add three accessible bathrooms and a new lift. Our accessibility guide covers the rest of the island.
The Town of Edgartown. The Trust owns the church, but the town owns the clock and the clock tower, according to both island papers when the tower was restored in 2015.
Each event is sold by whoever puts it on, so there is no single box office. The Vineyard Gazette's online calendar has a page for the church that lists upcoming shows, and our 2026 events calendar has the island-wide picture.
Joshua Slocum, first to sail alone around the world, spent his last years farming in West Tisbury and vanished from Vineyard Haven harbor in November 1909. The voyage, the farm called Fag End, the last departure, and what a visitor can actually see: the harbor, a marker stone by a country road, the museum's Slocum papers, and the book itself.
Who summered where on Martha's Vineyard, and what a visitor can actually see: Eisenstaedt's Menemsha, Benton's Chilmark, Cronkite's Edgartown harbor, Styron and Buchwald in Vineyard Haven, McCullough and Katharine Graham in West Tisbury, Belushi's grave at Abel's Hill, and the Onassis farm in Aquinnah that opened to the public in 2025. Public places named, private homes left alone.
The red bus that gets the loudest cheer in the Edgartown Fourth of July parade belongs to Camp Jabberwocky, a tuition-free summer camp for people with disabilities that has run on the Vineyard since 1953. An islander's account of where it came from and what it is. For anything official, the camp's own site is the source.
The Feast of the Holy Ghost in Oak Bluffs, held every third full weekend of July since 1928: the Queen Isabel legend behind the free soup, the Sunday parade from the ferry up Circuit Avenue, the crown blessed at Our Lady Star of the Sea, the sopas at the Portuguese-American Club, the club the rest of the year, and how a visitor should behave at the island's Portuguese feast.
The words you will hear on Martha's Vineyard and what they mean: up-island and down-island, on-island and off, going to America, the boats, wash-ashore versus native, Five Corners, the Triangle, the Blinker, Chappy, OB, the Campground, the Derby, the Fair, island cars and the Vineyard shuffle, with pronunciations.
East Chop Lighthouse in Oak Bluffs: the 1878 cast-iron tower on Telegraph Hill, the Sunday sunset openings run by the Martha's Vineyard Museum, the semaphore and Chocolate Lighthouse history, and the bus stop and parking below the hill.
Island tip of the day Timing No. 61 of 79 New tip at midnight, island time
Visit Edgartown on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Same beautiful town, maybe 30% of the weekend crowds. Most restaurants have availability without reservations.
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