Meet OneSixtyFive
I have spent lots of time over the last 12 years rocking in a chair on the porch of The Brunswick Inn. In 2009, the year I bought the Inn, I would sit at the end of a long work day, exhausted and terrified about what I had undertaken. Back in those days, I often had my children, Helen and Charlie, on my lap.
They are now 16 and 18. Helen is off at college, and Charlie is off in my old 2008 Volvo, the one that used to have BWK INN on the license plate. I am no longer terrified. I have had a great run of it here at 165 Park Row: lovely guests and dedicated, loyal employees that are like a family to me; beaming brides, baby showers, retirement parties and birthday dinners; Downton Abbey banquets, a James Bond party, New Years galas, and bed races; guest chefs, cooking classes, spa weekends; a Pulitzer prize winner who rented a room to write during the day; a quarantining senator, stranded college students, movie stars, and a former Secretary of State; quiet nights by the fire and then, come spring, warm evenings on the porch in the white LL Bean rockers.
Those are some of the ups. There have also been some downs. As you read this, The Brunswick Inn has been closed in some way, shape, or form for almost two years. When Covid first struck, I sometimes sat on the porch, so excited to see someone walk by--a sign of life in the otherwise deserted street. I left yeast and flour on the porch when the supply chain broke down and the sourdough mania began. We took in 17 Bowdoin students that September, and they sat on the porch through that fall and even into the winter, talking and laughing in the late summer sun and then later in parkas and blankets. So many Brunswickians tell me that those young people were like a beacon of hope--a youthful energy and optimism when all around us the world was shutting down.
When we were ready to reopen to the public this past March, a fire in the Main Inn left the building standing but also a charred mess that took 10 weeks to clean up. The renovations are still going upstairs as I write this.
The fire also left a blank canvas for the hotel of my dreams.
I have been a hotel and restaurant junkie for my entire life. When I was a little girl, I used to ride my bicycle to The Silvermine Tavern, an inn and restaurant just a few miles from where I grew up. I loved the way the white lights twinkled in the trees above the deck that reached out over the Silvermine River. I loved the candles in the windows and the smell of their famous cinnamon buns. I’ve been hooked on hotels and restaurants ever since.
Now when I sit on the porch, I plot and plan for what comes next at 165 Park Row. The world feels a little more normal now: there are cars and there is foot traffic. Kids run around on the mall across the street. The farmers market comes and goes, and the taco truck line is reliably, ridiculously long. People walk by, say hello, and tell me that they are happy to hear that I am not selling. They ask about the progress inside. I tell them, “It’s coming.”
And it IS coming.