Tag Archives: Historic Hotels

Connecticut Calm (Waters)

I’m generally anxious around this time of year, approaching the end of the semester, but this year I am particularly so: I seem to be uneasy in general and in Salem in particular. The nice weather has kicked off the tourist season earlier than ever, or maybe it never ended? This means large tour groups just outside my house as late as 10:00 at night, with guides speaking about the ancient “ankle breaker” stones along the sidewalk that my neighbors and I installed in the last decade or so. Run, run, to the back of the house, I tell myself, so I don’t have to hear any more, but sometimes I just don’t want to get off the couch—and one guy is so loud I can even hear him way out back. A change of scenery (and perspective) was definitely needed, so for the long Patriots Day weekend my husband and I took off for one of the prettiest towns in Connecticut (a state with many pretty towns): Essex, near the mouth of the Connecticut River. We stayed at the old Griswold Inn, in one of its newer suites, and ate and drank and looked at old houses and the river. It was very foggy, but there were daffodils everywhere, and I do feel a bit cheerier now that I’m back home (or in Salem).

Welcome to Essex, Connecticut!

I started decompressing as soon as we got on one of my favorite Connecticut small roads: Route 169. Well, before, really: right over the state line in Thompson, which has a great common surrounded by wonderful houses (including the resurrected Gothic Revival long neglected by the famous interior designer Mario Buatta). Route 169 leads you through Woodstock, and by Roseland Cottage, to Canterbury, where the amazing Prudence Crandall opened her school for African-American girls (what an amazing woman! I need to know much more about her), to Norwich, where we turned south and drove by the decaying buildings of the long-abandoned Norwich State Hospital which are such a sharp contrast to the shiny Mohegan Sun casino across the river.

The road to Essex: Thompson houses, Roseland Cottage (which I visited just last summer), Prudence Crandall’s school in Canterbury, and one of the derelict buildings of the former Norwich State Hospital (with a glimpse of Mohegan Sun across the river).

I think my husband thinks that Essex is a bit “Truman Show-esque” but it was just what I needed:  a lovely town with clean sidewalks that is proud of its history rather than seeking to sell it 24/7. The houses are pretty perfect, but they are not mansions. It’s really all about watercraft in Essex: this was a rather quiet time but its harbor will be full to brimming in a month or so. Essex built a famous warship for the Revolution named the Oliver Cromwell (which was renamed the Restoration when it was captured by the British in 1779!), it endured the burning of 27 of its privateering ships when the British raided the harbor in April of 1814, the storied schooner yacht Dauntless ended her career on the Essex waterfront at the turn of the last century, and famous steamships line the walls of the Griswold Inn. The wonderful Connecticut River Museum, housed in an old steamship warehouse, explores the layers of local maritime history through art, artifacts and narratives in such an engaging way that I really felt the connection of water to land over history and now I’m absolutely inspired to take another New England road trip: a longer one, up the entire length of the River from Saybrook to Canada.

An array of Essex houses (birdhouses are big in this town too); the Onrust, a replica of a Dutch colonial ship, is moored in front of the Connecticut River Museum (my husband John is looking for me, I think); the Turtle, a Revolutionary-era submarine, which was built just up the River. I love the caption of this c. 1860 painting of Captain and Mrs. Samuel L. Spencer: “Captain Spencer of Old Saybrook, shown with the most important females in his life: his wife and his ship. He was captain of Daniel Webster of the London Line of packets for more than twenty years.” The Connecticut River Museum’s exhibition of Watercraft at Work made even BARGES interesting, and among the items I found my very favorite ship name of all time: of the schooner “Tansy Bitters”.


Weekend at the Mt. Washington

My grandmother introduced me to two things of which I can never have enough: a parade of new dresses for back-to-school every fall and grand old hotels. One indulgence started early in life but endured because of my profession; the other started a bit later but is also still ongoing. It was a family tradition to stay at the Equinox in Vermont for long Thanksgiving weekends, and later the White Elephant on Nantucket, and the two of us traveled to a succession of historic hotels on an epic trip down the east coast and back twenty-plus years ago. Nana passed away just about a year ago after her 104th birthday, so I was thinking about her when I planned my last October getaway weekend at the Mt. Washington Hotel. Built in 1902 in a (Spanish) Renaissance Revival style that is meant to dominate, rather than blend into, its setting, the Mt. Washington was one of the last of the great Gilded Era New England resorts to be built before the onset of the automobile, and it remains a conspicuous survivor. I really only wanted to do two things from the moment we arrived on a sunny Friday afternoon: capture the hotel from every angle, and sit on the back veranda (drink in hand) and stare at Mt. Washington and the Presidential Range, like generations of guests before me.

MW 1

MW 2

MW3

MW 4

MW Veranda

The interior of the hotel has a formal-but-not-fussy aesthetic designed to frame the views outside and mix faded grandeur with modern comforts. In the central lobby, a large fieldstone fireplace “crowned” with a Moose bust contrasts with crystal chandeliers from the 1920s, which seems to be the decade that supplied most of the Hotel’s lighting–and glass inserts everywhere. A ballroom, dining room, several bars, and a domed conservatory are also on the first floor, along with the famous “Gold Room” where the International Monetary Fund agreement was reached in the closing year of World War II.

MW Interior2

MWLobby 2

MW Interior

mwi2

mwi

mwi3

Mount Washington collage

We had great weather on Friday and Saturday so I spent as much time as possible out on the 900+ foot veranda, watching the light and cloud patterns change over Mt. Washington every few minutes, especially at twilight, when I got my best picture (s) ever: behold below! No filters necessary: the sunset was gold and purple on Friday night.

MWView 5

MW View 3

MW View 4

MWView2

MWView

My husband was not content to hang out at the hotel all the time so we took a hike—where we happened upon a man playing his flute in the woods–and went to the top of Mt. Washington on the cog railway. When I was quite young, for some reason I read a book about all the people who died on Mt. Washington and these sad stories have always stayed with me so I’ve never been particularly drawn to the mountain, but our traverse did afford me several new vantage points of the Hotel—you can just see it in the valley down below from the summit in the next-to-last picture, a little bit of white encircled by green far far away. As usual, it’s man-made over natural for me!

mwe

mwe2

mw clouds

MW Train


%d bloggers like this: