Royal Welcome

Maine’s grand hotels help us celebrate the joy of waiting.

Monhegan Towel Warmer...

www.islandinnmonhegan.com - 207.596.0371

The Trailing Yew

MONHEGAN ISLAND, MAINE WWW.TRAILINGYEW.COM (207)-596-0440

A A QUINTESSENTIAL NEW ENGLAND ROOM & BOARD STYLE INN CATERING TO ARTISTS & TRAVELERS FOR 90 YEARS

JOIN US … FOR A MEAL, A NIGHT, A CHANGE OF PACE Morley Safer used to paint the hotel rooms he stayed in while he traveled on assignment for 60 Minutes. His canvases were essays on loneliness.

Lobbies are far more fun places to touch down.

I also collect antechambers, lounges, grand tiers, private nooks, vestibules, sun parlors, colonnades, everything from peristyles to parterres. They’re intimate and wary, impressive and cozy—great places to haunt.

Perched on a pink coral wall, I loved listening to the music of the waterfall in the Hamilton Princess Hotel in Bermuda. After martinis, I crossed the Waldorf Astoria’s mezzanine to Cole Porter’s piano to see if I could strike the right note.

The Hotel Forum’s sweeping rooftop views of the lights of Rome at night have more than once beckoned me to stop and do absolutely nothing. I’ve never been a smoker, but I was tempted to join Mount Vesuvius for a few puffs on the terrace of Hotel Excelsior in Naples.

At the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, I sat in a club chair looking at the water for an entire afternoon, expecting Frank Sinatra to stroll by. I’ve stopped and devoured cream pie and coffee by the side entrance of the Omni Parker House in Boston before I’ve even registered.

Any way you look at them, public sanctuaries in hotels are designed to take you from here to here in style.

And Maine’s gracious resorts are at the top of the heap.

SIGNATURE TOUCH

There’s a call for you from the lobby of the Samoset Resort in Rockport, where guests experience penetrating beauty with a towering Portland connection.

“It’s a welcome-back first impression for our guests,” says general manager Cornelius “Connie” Russell.

When Grand Trunk Grain Elevator No. 2 was torn down from the Portland waterfront in 1973, it was the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. The giant timbers were taken by rail to Rockland and

sawn into the 18-inch-square, 2.5-inchthick tiles that delight guests today as the Samoset lobby floor. says. “I’m usually directed to visitors with questions about the tiles by the front desk.”

Has Russell actually overheard guests telling others about the backstory of the lobby tree rings, because they feel a stake in the hotel’s legacy?

“Yes. A lot of them leave with dreams of having cross-cut tiles like that in their homes.”

Surely they don’t return to the Samoset each year just because of the tiles?

“It’s one of many reasons. There are 5,000 tiles in all,” deep red, gorgeous pitch pine almost gem-like with clear varnish. It’s

Walking into the Bayview Hotel in Bar Harbor is like stepping inside a Neil Welliver painting.

Sorry, please tell my room I’m not ready for it!

Bar Stars

Symphony in knotty pine: The Colony Hotel, Kennebunkport.

The White Barn Inn

Aviator Charles Lindbergh dedicated the newly built Eastland Hotel in 1927, after his solo flight from New York to Paris. Since then, the hotel’s swank aerial lobby, the Top of the East, has soared to new heights. According to sales director Kaitlyn Wentworth, the lounge is temporarily closed while the Westin Portland Harborview undertakes a “complete remodel” of the interior. Stay tuned…

Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs were all my teachers, each one passing through the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel, my new university.

—Patti Smith

Time Travel

The Chebeague Island Inn has dazzled visitors since the 1880s with its lobby’s bewitching beadboard woodwork.

impossible not to marvel at their secret history. “We leave one of the tiles intentionally loose” so the curious can pick it up, turn it over, count the rings.

Which one is kept loose? Is it like The Da Vinci Code?

“It’s located in our lighthouse room right off the lobby near the fireplace.” n

Legend The Reborn

COLONY HOTEL; C.A. SMITH PHOTO The Colony unveils a dazzling array of upcoming guest perks.

As you drive along Ocean Avenue in Kennebunkport toward the Colony Hotel, turn left to see the future.

BY COLIN W. SARGENT

says Managing Partner John Martin. “The Ocean Bluff Hotel burned down on this site in 1898. When the Breakwater Court was built to replace it in 1914, the designer was John Calvin Stevens.”

Think of the historic Colony Ho-

BUILDING 1 FRONT ELEVATION

We’ve consulted with many neighbors, We care about how these improvements take place.

tel with its curving driveway as a demilune table bordered by Colony Road. That semicircle embraces luxuriant lawns and flowerbeds, a shuffleboard court—the details that keep guests coming back year after year.

Which brings us to right now, with the first wave of new construction underway. “We’re really, really excited about this.”

Doubling the demilune on the other side of Colony Road to complete a full circle, the new North Campus deepens the gardens and opens up a symmetrical whirl of amenities. A trio of new guest quarters will give the resort a contemporary edge. “They’ll be interconnected by skywalks and walking paths along the creek and through the gardens.” Imagine dreamy views of Fairfield Creek “never seen before” by most visitors.

On the corner of Ocean Avenue and Colony Road (to the right of Mabel’s Lobster Claw), “we’re building a marketplace where guests will be able to stop in. Think Dean & DeLuca meets Starbucks. You can pick up a bottle of wine, fine cheese, cappuccino, espresso.”

When will it open?

“I’m hoping for July 4.”

What if it’s not ready by then?

“You can get your coffee in the main hotel.”

MARKET TESTING

The design of the marketplace echoes (and updates) the long-gone Ocean Bluff Garage, with its gambrel roof and row of dormers. “Building 4 (as the marketplace is called just now) is ninety percent framed. It has parking for guests, and at the recommendation of a neighboring business, we’re putting green grass between the cars and the curb along Ocean Avenue. We’ve been very transparent with neighbors and asked for opinions.”

Example? “We’ve shown Tom Bradbury [Executive Director of the

Kennebunkport Conservation

Trust], who loves the Kennebunks so much, the plans” and asked for input. “We’ve consulted with many neighbors” in the nearby retail enclave that includes Dannah Gifts. “We care about how these improvements take place. We’ll move the construction fences and have no construction during the summer. We’ll go quiet until Fall 2022.”

All the improvements on the North Campus will be finished “in the next two years,” Martin says, ready for the 2024 season. Power lines will move underground to complete the dream.

“And that’s just the beginning.”

“NO, LET’S KEEP GOING.”

The new buildings superseding the Colony’s parking lot and outbuildings are all the more astonishing to local observers for arising during COVID. What moved the Boughton family of hoteliers (who’ve owned the Colony since 1947) to choose this moment to seize the day?

“Hilary [Roche] and Jestena [Boughton] and I started talking about this five to seven years ago, before COVID existed,” Martin says. As 2020 wore on, he was approached by a few concerned friends. Are you sure you want to launch into all of this despite the pandemic? Don’t you want to wait a while to see what happens?

“No, it’s just the opposite. I want to build it right now!”

Summer and beauty are on his side.

“Sometimes we call the marketplace The Garage, after the building that inspired it. My cardiologist would probably say I should call it ‘My Next Heart Attack.’”

Visit Castle Tucker & Nickels-Sortwell House

Wiscasset, Maine

For information, visit HistoricNewEngland.org or call 207-882-7169

$1 off museum admission with this ad

TOP-DRAWER

Nevertheless,“It’s nice to work with a Maine company,” Wright-Ryan Construction. “We don’t want the new [winterized] guest wings to be a reproduction or a smaller version of the Colony—just to suggest the Colony. We’re going to have the modern amenities in Buildings 1 and 2 in the North Campus” (designed by Market Square Architects of Portsmouth, NH).

Because the original [1914] hotel has so many stardust memories for generations of locals and guests, “We’re not going to modify the main building,” apart from its customary lavish upkeep.

Is it possible to add wow factor to a resort that’s already enchanting? We’re watching it happen. n

KPT Luxury Properties focuses on providing upscale vacation rental experiences to our guests. We offer some of the most luxurious homes and locations in the Kennebunkport area. Whether our guests want oceanfront homes, daily housekeeping, a private chef or a day on a yacht—

we make it happen.

CALL 207-221-3436 OR GO TO KPTLUXURYPROPERTIES.COM FOR RATES VACATION RENTAL MANAGEMENT AND CONCIERGE SERVICES, KENNEBUNK AND KENNEBUNKPORT