A Haven in Hyannis: The Home and Collection of Dealers Alan Granby & Janice Hyland
Maritime antiques are hot, and that suits Alan Granby and Janice Hyland just fine. Dealers in nautical materials for nearly thirty years, Alan and Janice, of Hyland Granby Antiques, Hyannisport, Massachusetts, surround themselves in their home on Cape Cod with reminders of their profession, which also happens to be their hobby. Ship models, figureheads, scrimshaw, sailors’ whimsies, ship paintings, whaling scenes, navigational instruments, celestial globes—both for personal enjoyment and for sale—fill their seaside residence.
Janice and Alan originally embarked on a career path quite different from their current business. In the early 1970s they started out as elementary school teachers in Newton, Massachusetts. Both have doctorate degrees—Janice in library science and communication, Alan in media technology. When the couple met as teachers, Janice introduced her husband-to-be to the ocean, and this connection spurred his interest in nautical items. Soon the couple was buying maritime antiques as a hobby, and in the late 1970s, opened a weekend shop on the Cape in Dennis.
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Alan was no stranger to antiques. His interest started at age six, when he attended auctions at Parke Bernet with his mother. By age ten he was trading stamps, bicycles, and baseball cards with friends. In college, he started buying antiques, dealing primarily in nineteenth-century photographs, expanding into twentieth-century images by the time he was twenty-one; he became so knowledgeable on the subject that he taught a course on the history of photography at Boston University.
By 1983, the couple had decided to become full-time antiques dealers. They left Newton and moved to the Cape as residents of Dennis, purchasing the 1820 Federal-era house of sea captain Uriah Howe. Specializing in maritime antiques, they focused their attention on sophisticated items. As Alan says, “We chase masterpieces.” They have developed their clientele to such an extent that they now sell exclusively through private sales and at major antiques shows across the Northeast.
Their studious natures come into play when they acquire an object. Janice does the cataloguing and record keeping, and Alan thoroughly researches each piece, only offering it for sale after he has found out all he can about it. Standing in his tremendous library filled with historic and contemporary volumes on maritime subjects, he notes, “The nerve center for any antiques dealer is the library.” He’ll soon put his library to further use while writing a book on an important private collection of nautical antiques.
Alan and Janice make a point of buying the best of a form, and only what they would want to own themselves. “We buy for historical and aesthetic reasons, not for inventory,” says Janice. “We have to love everything we purchase, because if we own something longer than a year, it automatically becomes part of our permanent collection. Even though we do our best to keep our personal and business collections separate, Alan loves the objects so much, he keeps dragging them into our house.” “That is the fun of being a dealer,” quips Alan. “I get to handle a lot of terrific material, and if I can live with it for a while, I will!”
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Though nautical objects are the main component of their home, the interior is decorated with a comfortable combination of modern furnishings and antiques, some put to use in creative ways, such as the nineteenth-century ship’s wheel that serves as a glass-covered dining table. Their marble kitchen counter, an 1880 oyster bar, was used by Janice’s family in their Taunton, Massachusetts, fish market business.
This combination of old and new fits well in their home, a converted lighthouse and keeper’s residence they have renovated three times since purchasing it in 1985. The South Hyannis Light, as it was once known, was built in 1849. One of eighteen lighthouses erected along the Cape over a hundred-year period beginning in 1797, it operated until 1929, warning ships of the dangerous shoals.
Now whitewashed and pristine, when Alan and Janice purchased the lighthouse and adjoining property, the place was “beyond belief,” Janice says. “I fell through the floors of the residence on two occasions, it was so badly rotted. The property took two solid years to renovate. We saved as much as we could, even reglazing the period windowpanes.” The couple now enjoys stunning views of Nantucket Sound from atop the refurbished lighthouse and from the floor-to-ceiling windows of their south-facing living room and bedroom. “This is the perfect place for entertaining—day or night,” says Janice.
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Janice oversaw each phase of renovation. “After the initial project, we made three additions to the house,” she notes. “First we added the library and living room, then the den, and in the last eight years, we added our barn, which is climate-controlled and outfitted with 10-foot-high ceilings—it is where we keep our inventory and set up for shows. When we bought the house, we never anticipated doing all that we did.”
During the renovation, they reused some of the original windows and doors in the construction of a guest house, and integrated into the walls of their den the cherrywood-paneling from an 1847 apothecary shop once located on Beacon Street in Boston. “I wanted one room that was the same period as the house,” says Janice. Alan adds, “We took the counter and turned it into the mantelpiece, and copied the pattern in the carving on to the glass doors that open up to the bar area.”
Asked about current pursuits, Alan says that he is collecting maritime photographs once again. “You can still acquire major photographers and images starting at $500, though I have seen some sell for $10,000—the interest in collecting photography is steadily growing.” The couple is also in the process of arranging their photograph collection for display in their Manhattan apartment, a view of which will have to wait for a future article.