Nantucket Historical Association
Arthur Hayden’s South Water Street waterfront compound in the mid-20th century. The tiny structure at left housed Hayden’s famous popcorn stand and political bulletin board, while the attached Chowder Bowl restaurant became a favorite stop for ferry passengers, servicemen, high school students and locals walking through the harbor district. Hayden, publisher of the Madaket Free Press, used the property as both a business and a public soapbox, posting handwritten editorials attacking island politics, policing and local power structures for anyone passing by to read
How inventor, publisher and waterfront provocateur Arthur Hayden used popcorn, politics and a homemade bulletin board to wage war on island power
Carlos Mendoza • May 19, 2026
Arthur Hayden sold chowder, popcorn and political arguments from a tiny waterfront compound beside the Dreamland Theatre, and for decades much of Nantucket could not decide whether he was a civic watchdog, an eccentric nuisance or both. Either way, people stopped to read the board.
By the 1940s and 1950s, Hayden’s small property at 19 South Water Street had become one of the island’s strangest public spaces: part restaurant, part newspaper office, part political soapbox and part harbor-side theater. There was the Chowder Bowl restaurant itself, a popcorn stand built like a miniature Nantucket house with its own tiny roofwalk, and the famous bulletin board where Hayden posted handwritten editorials attacking local government, utility costs, police enforcement and almost anything else he believed was wrong with Nantucket.
The signs alone captured his personality. One pointed visitors toward the “Boat to America — Second Left,” while another above the bulletin board read: “NANTUCKET JOURNAL — 1816 — GAZETTE” followed by the line “ELEVATOR NOT RUNNING TO WIDOW’S WALK.” The whole setup looked homemade because it was homemade, and that was part of the point.
Hayden was born in Brockton in 1881 but was brought to Nantucket at just two weeks old to be raised by his grandmother, the wife of whaling captain William Cash. He attended the Old South and Coffin schools and later described himself as proud of both his Nantucket and Brockton ancestry. Before returning permanently to the island, Hayden spent decades in business on the mainland as an inventor and entrepreneur. He operated the Hayden Photographic Manufacturing Company, developed camera and film accessories and eventually received around sixty patents, mostly tied to motion-picture cameras and mechanical devices. At one point he even maintained a second office on 42nd Street in New York.
According to family history cited in Historic Nantucket magazine, Hayden was hit hard by the economic collapse following the 1929 stock market crash. By the mid-1930s, he and his wife Bertha were spending more time on Nantucket, and in 1936 they purchased the South Water Street property for $3,000. Around the start of World War II, he built the Chowder Bowl next to the family home, squeezed between the Dreamland Theatre and Vincent’s Restaurant near Oak Street. Summer visitors heading to and from Steamboat Wharf stopped there alongside high school students and servicemen stationed on the island during the war years. Hayden and Bertha operated the place together, and according to their granddaughter Marjorie Colley, many customers simply called them “Ma and Pa.”
Nantucket Historical Association
Arthur and Bertha Hayden, 1930s; Arthur Hayden, 1950s
The popcorn stand became especially famous because the Dreamland did not sell popcorn at the time, so Hayden built his own tiny stand nearby and sold it himself for years. Nantucket Town Clerk Catherine Flanagan Stover later recalled buying popcorn there as a child and remembered Hayden standing behind the counter “in a nice white shirt and a tie.” The notorious bulletin board was attached directly to the popcorn stand, turning the little structure into one of the island’s most unusual public forums.
Hayden’s newspaper, the Madaket Free Press, first appeared in August 1936 and quickly established the tone he would become known for: relentless commentary about Nantucket politics, transportation, utilities, waterfront access and local government. He argued for municipal wharf control, criticized electric rates, pushed for better harbor access and complained about train service replacing direct boat connections from New York. Francis Pease later summarized Hayden perfectly when he said, “He never approached a problem diplomatically. He waded right into it.” Another islander described him differently, saying, “He wasn’t a radical, but he questioned everything everybody did.”
The bulletin board became Hayden’s outdoor editorial page. He posted accusations, observations, criticisms and public complaints in full view of everyone walking along South Water Street. Ferry passengers arriving on Nantucket could step off the boat and immediately encounter Arthur Hayden’s latest grievance before they even settled into town.
Some excerpts from both the board and the Free Press:
• Am I a radical because I believe our Selectmen should fight to get us a Municipal Wharf that we can control in the interests of all? I am radical because I believe WPA projects should have been put in by the Selectmen last summer to give work to all the needy during the winter? Am I radical because I believe the harbor should be opened up to bring back our fisheries? ... Yes, I am radical, radical enough to believe the electric light rates on Nantucket are outrageous and we should go to the extreme in proving them so. ... Yes, I am radical, radical enough to go to the extreme — to have a municipal wharf so that I will not be asked many times at America, who is the big boss that keeps these fine islanders in virtual slavery?
• I also heard that a large piece of land was offered the Town for an airport, with no strings attached to it. (Not the one mentioned at Town Meeting.) It was said it was turned down. Why was it not put in writing and published with particulars, if any? After all, isn’t it up to the voters to pass judgement on a gift? Or was it just a gesture in hopes of stopping something?
• Boston 96. Nantucket 76 and lower.We of Nantucket take our baths in the ocean, not in our clothes!
• I can see why the natives don’t organize for their own protection. There seems to be too much petty jealousy and being afraid the other fellow may get a little more than him
• AIR NOTES-The Nobadeer Airport has been busy, with about 19 planes coming in during the week.” (August 12, 1937.)
• We must have a boat service from New York. No matter how nice the conditions are on the train, you do not have the comfort of roaming around. We know of no better way to harm Nantucket, if there is such an intention, than to ride in a stuffy train.​
Nantucket Histórical Association
Arthur Hayden’s South Water Street waterfront operation in the mid-20th century. The hand-painted signs, chowder stand and famous bulletin board became a familiar stop for ferry passengers, waterfront workers and locals moving through Nantucket Harbor. Hayden used the tiny office as both a business and a public soapbox, posting handwritten editorials and political commentary for anyone passing by to read.
Eventually, the board got him into serious trouble. In 1949 and again in 1957, Hayden was prosecuted for criminal libel because of statements posted publicly on the board accusing local officials and police of misconduct and incompetence. One case centered around criticism of District Court Clerk Grace Klingelfuss and courthouse conditions. Another accused police chief Wendell Howes and Sgt. F. Stuart Chadwick of refusing to prosecute traffic violations tied to a local garage owner.
The second trial resulted in a guilty verdict and a suspended eighteen-month sentence. According to the Town Crier, the following day “the bulletin board was erased completely of any writing.” Today, the entire episode feels almost impossible to imagine. A chowder stand owner publicly attacking officials on a handwritten board beside the ferry route while simultaneously publishing his own newspaper sounds less like modern Nantucket and more like a character from another era of island life.
What makes Hayden fascinating now is not simply that he was eccentric. Nantucket has always had eccentrics. It’s that he represented an older version of island life where one intensely opinionated local personality could still create a public voice out of almost nothing: a chowder stand, a popcorn shack, a bulletin board, a mimeographed newspaper and the confidence to argue with anyone who crossed his path. The waterfront around South Water Street has changed enormously since then. Most of the tiny improvised harbor businesses disappeared long ago as property values rose and downtown Nantucket became more polished and expensive. Hayden’s compound survived in pieces into the 1980s before the property was fully redeveloped.
Arthur Hayden died in 1963 at age 81 and was buried in Prospect Hill Cemetery in the Cash family plot beside the grandparents he revered throughout his life. The photographs that survive of the Chowder Bowl and its bulletin board now feel less like images of a business and more like evidence from another Nantucket altogether, one that was smaller, rougher, more argumentative and far more willing to let individual personalities spill directly into public life.