Coffin School History

Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin’s Lancasterian School was founded in 1827, at the height of Nantucket’s whaling era, by an English baronet and descendant of Tristram Coffin, one of the island’s original settlers. First situated on Fair Street, a new school was built in the Greek Revival style at its present location at 4 Winter Street, completed in 1854 after the Great Fire of 1846.

In addition to “giving a good English education to youth who are descendant of the late Tristram Coffin” (which included almost every child on Nantucket), the school emphasized nautical skills. For that purpose, the admiral purchased the first training ship in America – the Clio, an 87-foot brig that took Nantucket boys as far as the coast of Brazil.

Around the end of the nineteenth century, the school became a center of manual training and home economics for the Nantucket public schools. In recent decades, the school has housed various nonprofit organizations and is now the home of the Egan Maritime Institute.