The Original Old Fort Inn
Long-time Kennebunkport hotelman, Reuel W. Norton had the Old Fort Inn designed by Architects Henry Paston Clark and John Russel in 1901.Builder Alphonse Allen promised it would be finished in time to accept guests for the 1902 season. The Old Fort Inn opened for business in June 1902, as promised.
The hotel was named after the earthen ramparts of the old War of 1812 fort, which was still standing proudly on the lot adjoining St Ann’s-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in 1902. The mounds of earth with apertures left open for canons remained in relatively good condition thanks to the sea grass that had grown up around them. Wealthy Philadelphian Inventor, Atwater Kent owned the house next to St Ann’s by-the-Sea. He purchased the Old Fort lot and had the 1812 earthworks flattened in 1919.
Edwin Nevin, the well-known Attorney of Philadelphia and Joseph E. Duffield of Camden, NJ had become proprietors of the Old Fort Inn in 1913 when Reuel Norton was focused on supervising the construction of his next hotel project with architects H.P. Clark and J.W. Russell, Breakwater Court (now The Colony) on the site of the burned Ocean Bluff House. Nevin & Duffield enjoyed many successful seasons managing the popular Old Fort Inn.
Joseph Duffield eventually owned the hotel by himself until a few years before his death. The bank took it back from the elderly gentleman in 1943 and sold it to Maurice Sherman of NY, who had once been a bellhop at the Old Fort Inn. Sherman lost the respect of his neighbors when he ordered an employee to cut down his neighbor’s trees that were by then blocking his view of the ocean. “Let them sue me,” he reportedly said to the porter, and they did. The judge charged him a punitive fine of $30,000.
Sherman owned The Old Fort Inn until his death in 1962. His descendants tried to continue running the hotel, but it eventually closed and was demolished in November 1967. A rear service wing survived and was converted into a small bed and breakfast of the same name and continues operations.
The mounds of earth with apertures left open for canons to protect the mouth of the Kennebunk River in 1812 remained in relatively good condition thanks to the sea grass that had grown up around them. A shallow cemetery adjacent to the fort was the resting place for the Jeremiah Smith family. Philadelphian Inventor, Atwater Kent owned the house next to St Ann’s in 1919. When he learned that there was a movement afoot by some of his history-loving neighbors to secure the earthen ramparts of the Old Fort of 1812 on the lot adjoining his property and turn it into a public park, Kent quickly purchased the lot to end the conversation. The following notice was subsequently posted in the last issue of the season of Turn ‘o the Tide, “We feel assured that, in his hands, this historical relic will not suffer the fate of the famous block house in the village, which was purchased several years ago and promptly torn down to make room for a stable. In years to come we will have at least one remnant of the War of 1812 that one and all can view with pride.” The writer’s confidence in Atwater Kent was misplaced. Amid considerable controversy in Kennebunkport, Kent leveled the fort and had the Smith family moved to The Landing Cemetery and The Arundel Cemetery to make way for a sweeping lawn to the ocean. His neighbors nicknamed the wealthy cottager “the grave robber”.
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