This Was Then: The Naumkeag

Rest, relaxation, safe-cracking, and baseball.

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Hotel Naumkeag in Cottage City, opened about 1886 but got off to a rough start. - Courtesy of Chris Baer

With a capacity of 200 guests, the Hotel Naumkeag was among the largest in Cottage City, and at $3 a night, it was among the priciest as well. It stood for more than half a century on the corner of Narragansett and Naumkeag avenues, about two blocks from Ocean Park, where today lies a close-knit residential neighborhood in the heart of Oak Bluffs. Opened about 1886 by Fred Lane, the Naumkeag advertised “electric bells and gas in all the rooms” as well as a “delicate and varied cuisine.” The large dining room was regularly cleared and decorated with wildflower wreaths and Chinese lanterns, and dance “hops” were held for hotel guests and their invited friends.

The Naumkeag overcame a bad start: One predawn morning in August 1887 a professional safecracker came calling and stole $500 in cash and an $800 diamond pin, the property of guests, as well as cleaning out $86 from the hotel’s cash drawer.

But it was an incident at the Naumkeag a few years later, in August 1894, which drew the attention of the Boston press. About midnight, guests were awakened by shouting and cries for help on the third floor. The night watchman rushed frantically through the building to locate the source of the trouble. “The guests by this time had found their way to the corridors in terror, thinking the house must be on fire or some murder foul being committed,” reported the Boston Globe. (The hotel had only that season complied with a police inspector’s order to install rope fire-escapes, but evidently they were not employed that night.)
The Globe reporter continued, “Finally the room from which the terrible cries proceeded was found, and the watchman pounded on the door of No. 21, shouting to the disturber of the peace to ‘wake up.’ It was learned that Mr. Bissell of Chicago, who is a baseball ‘fiend,’ dreamed he was playing ball, and the cheers were for the Cottage City nine, in which he is deeply interested. The groans and death-like yells were occasioned, he dreamed, by the umpire hitting him on the head with a bat, which caused him to cry for help.”

“Then another cry was heard proceeding from No. 23. A lady, anxious to know all that was going on, put her head out through the transom. The window fell on her neck and held her head fast. The watchman released the young woman, and peace was again restored.”

The Naumkeag remained a popular summer hotel through the 1930s.

Chris Baer teaches photography and graphic design at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. He’s been collecting vintage photographs for many years.