Everyone knows Cape Arundel Inn. Maybe you even remember it as Seacrest. But did you know it was originally built as a summer cottage for the nephew of our 19th U.S. President, Rutherford B. Hayes, after whom Rutherford Hayes Platt was named?

Rutherford’s father-in-law, Captain Robert Swanton Smith, who had served in the regular US Calvary during the Civil War and was later counsel and secretary for the Columbus & Xenia Railroad, purchased two Cape Arundel lots from the Kennebunkport Seashore Company in 1890. He had John Calvin Stevens design him a beautiful cottage that he called Kenridge. Captain Smith’s daughter, Maryette Andrews Smith Platt and her husband Rutherford shared expenses for Kenridge for a few years before their own cottage next door was built in 1896.

Rutherford Hayes Platt attended Phillips Andover and graduated from Yale in 1874. After traveling abroad for a couple of years, he returned to the United States to enter New York’s Columbia Law School. Platt practiced law in Columbus, OH from 1879 until his retirement in 1913. He held many directorships and from 1914 until his death in 1928 he was President of the Columbus & Xenia Railroad. He also served as President of the Arundel Golf Club and the Kennebunk River Club.

Sugar dealer, John Craig Havenmeyer, and then Daniel Woodhull, president of American Bank Note, later purchased the Platt cottage. In the 1950s it was converted to the Seacrest Inn by John Somers. He added a six-room motel to the property in the 1960s. In 1981, it was renamed the Cape Arundel Inn by Ann R. Fales, the new owner.

Two years ago, Rutherford Platt’s descendant, David Platt donated a collection of photographs of the family and both cottages when they were new. I have shared some today. We hope that someday David will present the deeper history of the family in Kennebunkport at the Historical Society but I thought that in the meantime I would include some of his material in my History of Cape Arundel slideshow at the Townhouse School this evening at 7pm. I hope to see you there!