The Longest Honeymoon in the House: One Hundred Years of Room 2
Photo: Shixart1985, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Every old inn has a room with a reputation, and ours is Room 2 — the corner room on the second floor with the turret window and the view of both the harbor and the garden. It's our oldest guest room, and for roughly a hundred years, it has been the honeymoon room. Not by marketing plan. By accumulation.
We've been digging through the restored ledgers and the guest books that survived fires, hurricanes, and one regrettable decade of paneling, and the story that emerges is bigger than any one couple. Rooms, it turns out, can soak up stories the way the porch soaks up sun.
The Ledger Years (1920s–1940s)
The earliest entries we can confirm date to the 1920s, when the inn was a summer boarding house and the ledgers were kept in a copperplate hand by the original proprietress, a widow named Harriet who reportedly had strong opinions about proper footwear at dinner.
Her notations are half the fun. Next to one couple in June 1927: "Mr. & Mrs. — first trip. She seasick, he delighted. Sent them to the calm side of the point." Next to another, simply: "Honeymoon. Gave them the good towels."
That phrase — the good towels — shows up enough times that we've made it the unofficial motto of the room.
The War Years and After
The 1940s entries thin out, then come back changed. There are couples married quickly, some with only first names in the register. And then the fifties arrive with a flood of newlyweds arriving by car instead of train, the highway having made the coast an easy destination.
One 1954 entry is our favorite: "Returned for our tenth anniversary. Room smells the same. So does he." We choose to read that as affectionate.
The Legends (Handle With Care)
No hundred-year-old room escapes local folklore, and we'll be honest about what's documented and what isn't.
Documented: a famous big-band leader spent his honeymoon in Room 2 in 1938, according to a newspaper clipping a guest's granddaughter mailed us.
Less documented: the story that a couple in the 1960s got engaged in the room, to each other, having arrived engaged to other people. The guest book entry just says "Complicated. Wonderful. Coming back next year." They did, apparently, the following June.
And there's the persistent tale of the "Room 2 curse" — that couples who honeymoon there stay married. We can't verify this. We also can't disprove it, and several couples now in their sixth decade of marriage have asked us to stop looking into it too hard, just in case.
What the Guest Books Say
Read a century of honeymoon entries back to back and patterns emerge. The nervous first-night notes ("Arrived late. She cried at the view. Good crying."). The anniversary returns, ten and twenty-five years later, checking on the room like an old friend. The entries from couples who honeymooned there as newlyweds and came back with grandchildren, asking to just see the room.
One entry from 1987 has been quoted at more inn gatherings than any other: "We didn't pick Room 2. Room 2 picked us. See you in ten."
They came back in '97. And in 2007. And — we're told — a reservation is on the books for this fall.
Why a Room Can Hold a Hundred Years
There's no logical explanation for why one room becomes the room. It's the light in the late afternoon, maybe. The turret window that catches the harbor at sunset. The particular quiet of that corner of the house. Or it's simply that honeymoons happened there, so honeymoons keep happening there, each couple adding a little weight to the room's sense of occasion.
We've updated the mattress. We've updated the plumbing, thank goodness. But the bones, the window, the light — those we've left alone.
Your Chapter Is Waiting
Here's our pitch, and we'll keep it short: the room doesn't care if you're on a honeymoon, an anniversary, or a Tuesday. It has hosted a century of people starting things — marriages, yes, but also retirements, recoveries, second acts, and one memorable couple who wrote their novel there over three successive Octobers.
The good towels are ready. The guest book is open to a fresh page. Come add your line to the story — and if the legend of the Room 2 curse is true, well, you've been warned.
