The Chestnut Suite: The Parlor & the Four-Poster

A closer look at the two rooms of the inn's second suite. Historical record; nothing here can be reserved.

The Four-Poster

The bedroom was organized around its queen four-poster — posts turned rather than carved, in the restrained late-Victorian taste that let the wood's figure do the ornament's work. A four-poster reads as romantic to modern eyes, but it began as practical furniture: posts carried curtains, and curtains held heat through high-ceilinged winters. By the inn's era the curtains were long gone and the romance remained, supplemented by a floral quilt, good pillows, and the small anachronisms (bedside lamp, discreet television) that the inn allowed itself.

The Parlor Room

The adjacent parlor was the suite's quiet luxury. It held a queen sleeper — making the Chestnut the inn's family accommodation, with the third floor's Gables reserved for adults — along with reading chairs and a writing surface that remote workers of the inn's final years annexed without apology. The parlor's real function was older than any of that: it gave guests a room to be awake in while someone else slept, which is the difference between lodging and living somewhere.

The Detached Bath

The suite's bath was private but detached — reached by a step across the hall, behind its own locked door. The arrangement is original to how the house worked: bathrooms in 1907 were rooms, not fixtures of every chamber, and the inn preserved the geography rather than carving plumbing through historic walls. Guests met the custom with the spirit of the house, donning the provided robes; a century-old floor plan asks small courtesies in exchange for its character, a bargain the inn's policies made explicit and its guests, by every account, accepted happily.

Return to the Chestnut Suite overview or all five rooms.