From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
LB2007.1.111383
This view of the town's only major hotel is taken from Main Street, showing the establishment's large connected barn behind it. According to the booklet "150th Anniversary Searsport, Maine 1845-1995" the hotel's history began "...as a dwelling built in 1931...sold in a few years to John Beals who opened it as an inn called Beals' Tavern. Successive owners altered and enlarged the structure" (eventually into a four story clapboard building with a Mansard roof.) "...In 1873 the proprietor, W.H. Matthews, was able to declare proudly on his advertising card that Searsport is the place for 'persons desiring a few days or weeks quiet by the seashore, surrounded by the most magnificent scenery in the World, together with shady and level drives, [and] fine chances for sailing and fishing.' ...The Searsport House burned to the ground on October 21, 1892, destroying the home of Dr. Simonton next door and damaging nearby buildings. Rebuilt by 1895, the old hotel survived until 1943 when it was torn down." The image shows the hotel in its post-1892 fire Queen Anne Victorian phase. The photograph shows its still newly built, eye-catching porches and corner tower, decorated with turned balusters and variegated shingles. The roof is painted with a contrasting white stripe, which would have made the hotel noticeable from the Steamship Landing a few blocks away. A toddler is visible in a window on the second story in the corner tower. A windmill is affixed to the roof of a gabled dormer on the east side. A man in a carriage talks with another man on Water Street. Such an establishment would have appealed to tourists arriving in the area by steamship or rail, but with the advent of the automobile in the early 20th century, driving tourists and families had the means and flexibililty to travel farther afield and stay in local tourist homes and eventually tourist cabins which sprang up aplenty along Route 1 in the 1920s and 30s. The Depression and WWII surely brought a final decline in business to the hotel. [included in the exhibit "Waldo County Through Eastern's Eye"]
