Nantucket Historic District

The National Park Service called it the finest surviving architectural and environmental example of a late 18th- and early 19th-century New England seaport town — and designated it a National Historic Landmark District in 1966. That designation later expanded to encompass the entire island. What made it survivable was the same thing that hollowed it out: when whaling collapsed and the Great Fire of 1846 burned through the main town, people simply left. Underdevelopment preserved what prosperity might have demolished.