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 one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in New England, built in 1843 by Methodist whaling captains when the town's whaling money was at its peak.
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The Old Whaling Church, a great Greek Revival landmark built with whaling money in the 1840s, still anchors Main Street.
The church was built in 1843 when the original congregation of whaling captains and their families outgrew their earlier church (now Edgartown Town Hall). The architect was Frederick Baylies Jr., born in Edgartown in 1795 and Harvard-educated, who also designed multiple Edgartown public buildings. Construction was supervised by Ellis Lewis using local carpenters and shipwrights, craftsmen equally skilled in building churches and ships. The wood was brought from Maine on the vessel Rhine, captained by John O. Morse.
The façade features six massive tapered Doric columns supporting a cantilevered entablature with triangular pediment. The 92-foot clock tower is crowned with Gothic Revival elements including crenellations, rounded arches, and four spires capped with gilded acanthus leaf finials. The interior features an elegantly curved ceiling supported by massive trusses fashioned from ship-building timbers. Original whale oil lamps remain in the main hall. Seating capacity is approximately 470–500 in the sanctuary.
The Old Whaling Church on Main Street in Edgartown: the columns and the tower.
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The murals were originally painted by Carl Wendte, a Swiss-born artist who worked closely with Baylies and died at age 28. Margot Datz restored and recreated these murals between January 2013 and December 2022, nearly a decade of work. She worked from a single grainy photograph from c.1865, using approximately 24 shades of gray for the full-scale trompe l'oeil arch that transforms a flat rear wall into what appears to be a light-filled antechamber.
The Methodist congregation transferred ownership to the Vineyard Preservation Trust in 1980. The church now serves as a performing arts center and community event venue hosting concerts, weddings, lectures, and town meetings. The Edgartown United Methodist Church still holds Sunday morning services during summer. Ticketed events vary in price. The Vineyard Trust also offers 75-minute guided Historic Walking Tours through their Carnegie Heritage Center.
Located immediately adjacent at 99 Main Street, this Federal-style house was built c.1840 by Dr. Daniel Fisher, a wealthy whale oil industrialist who operated one of the largest whale oil processing factories in the country. The house is now used for events and is the site of the famous July 4th BBQ; see our 4th of July Edgartown Guide.
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).
Island tip of the dayInsiderNo. 84 of 86New tip at midnight, island time
A 502-foot breach opened at Norton Point on January 1, 2026, cutting the sand link between Katama and Chappaquiddick: the Chappy Ferry is once again the only way across, likely for years. OSV drivers should check current beach access with the town of Edgartown.
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.
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