Already a best-selling author, newlywed Newton Booth Tarkington first visited Kennebunkport in 1903. His arrival at The Old Fort Inn was proudly announced in Kennebunkport’s summer newspaper. He spent that whole season here recovering from a serious case of Typhoid Fever and falling in love with the town in which he would summer for the rest of his life.

Booth’s second marriage in 1912 was to Susannah Robinson. The Tarkingtons stayed at The Old Fort Inn or in rented cottages until proceeds from the wildly successful Penrod book series enabled them to build a beautiful 16-room summer house on South Main Street in 1917. The new cottage called “Seawood” was mentioned by the Editor of Kennebunkport’s newspaper. “To the summer visitor the house has seemingly reared itself over night like Aladdin’s palace.” Booth’s purchase of the lot was announced in the Kennebunk Enterprise in November of 1916. The house wasn’t ready for occupancy until late summer, 1917.

After his failed eyesight was miraculously restored through surgery, the author wanted to fill his world with beautiful things to look at. He had the front entrance porch at Seawood remodeled in 1933 by supporting its roof with the four two-story columns we see today. A 48 x 22-foot Jacobean Room was added to the back of the house to exactly fit a heavily carved fireplace surround and wall paneling that had originally been installed in Wanstead Hall, a 1608 manor house in Wanstead, England. Many of Booth Tarkington’s later novels and plays were written between those ancient walls.

News of Booth Tarkington’s death in 1946 fell like a blanket of grief over residents of the town of Kennebunkport, who had loved him back. For more than forty years the author had whole-heartedly embedded himself in his beloved summer community in a way that changed the town and the man forever.

Seawood was offered for sale for $50,000 and sold to Oscar Cox in 1952. Cox heirs sold it to a condo developer in 1987. Without changing the exterior too much, the developer renovated the grand neoclassical summer home into four luxury condos.