Press Releases

Colonial Homes Magazine - September 1998
"While walking one evening in 1985, Peter Conway let himself in through the unlocked door of a large Marblehead house. Under renovation for conversion to condominiums, the house had a back wall missing; the space was covered only by a cloth tarp. He walked through the rooms by the light of the moon.

'I saw this fine staircase and spacious rooms all feeding off a central hallway,' says Conway. 'I immediately thought it would make a perfect inn.' Already the owner of the 15-room Carlisle House bed-and-breakfast on Nantucket Island, Conway convinced the developers to continue their renovation but to create an inn instead of multiple units, thus keeping the historic structure intact. The result is the Harbor Light Inn, set in the town's historic harbor district.

The earliest portion of the house was built in 1729 by joiner Samuell Goodwin, who helped transform Marblehead from a simple fishing village to an elegant seaport. In 1819, Dr. Calvin Briggs expanded the original two-story, four-room house into the three-story, hipped-roof Federal house it remains today. After several changes in ownership during the second quarter of the 19th century, the house stayed in the same family from the early 1850s through 1985. This continuity has helped to preserve many of the house's architectural details, including carved fireplace mantels, dentiled moldings, and wide-plank floors.

Conway expanded the inn in 1992 when he bought an adjacent circa 1820 home. Also Federal in style, the second house had been refurbished in the 1980s by the same architect who worked on the inn. The joining of the two houses was not a difficult project because they already abutted.

'Here we had two houses that were made for each other-and they even touched,' says Conway. In all, the merger provided an additional nine guest rooms to the original 12.

Today Conway operates the inn with his wife and business partner, Suzanne. Conway says he hopes the inn lives up to its name, which was taken from a friend's poem written as if composed by an 18th century sailor: 'These years I have sailed the world to all manner of place, safe and unsafe. I have endured…I want only the Harbor Light and home.' Fittingly, the ocean and Marblehead's lighthouse can be glimpsed from a private walkway on the third floor. For information write: 58 Washington Street, Marblehead, MA 01945, or call (781) 631-2186."

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