Moses Webster House

The Moses Webster House stands on the east side of Vinalhaven's downtown area, at the northeast corner of Atlantic Avenue and Frog Hollow Road. It is a large 2+1⁄2-story wood-frame structure, with a mansard roof, clapboarded walls, and a granite foundation. Its front facade is six bays wide, with a projecting two-bay section on the left side, capped by a three-story mansarded tower. The leftmost bay has a two-story polygonal window bay with a gabled top and bracketed cornices, while a single-story porch extends across the right four bays and wraps around to the right side. It is supported by chamfered square posts and has a low balustrade. Second-floor windows rise through the lower portion of the mansard roof as wall dormers, and are topped by bracketed and pedimented gables.^[2]

The house was built in 1873 for Moses Webster, who was, along with Joseph R. Bodwell, a leading figure in Vinalhaven's highly successful late 19th-century granite industry. The two men, both New Hampshire natives, came to Vinalhaven in 1851, and began the expansion of its previously small-scale granite quarries, eventually providing stone for major buildings along the Atlantic coast. The Bodwell Granite Company, of which Webster was president and co-owner, dominated the island's economy into the early 20th century.^[2] The house served as a bed and breakfast inn in the early 2010s, and was listed for sale in 2016.

• National Register of Historic Places listings in Knox County, Maine