Wentworth Hotel
The Bostonians Take Over
Harvey & Wood Brochure, circa 1902

After millionaire owner Frank Jones died in 1902, Hotel Wentworth was owned by his estate. A series of companies managed the property beginning with the Boston firm Harvey & Wood. The images in this gallery are from their brochure, likely from 1902. At the time the brochure was issued, the owners listed their offices as Hotel Bellevue, on prestigious Beacon Street in Boston, about an hour away by car today and the same at the turn of the 20th century by rail. The American Hotel Company also noted its corporate mailing address as Fifth Avenue in New York City. Other Harvey & Wood holdings included the Passaconnaway Hotel nearby (York, Maine), The Sippewissett (Falmouth, Mass), Hotel Pemberton (Hull, Mass) and the other Jones Estate hotel, the Rockingham in Portsmouth, NH.

There is surprisingly little advertising copy in this 1902 photo brochure and much of that is given over to promoting the hotel's new sanitary sewage system. In the photos, the hotel interior appears much as it does in the detailed brochure by the Henry Beckwith company when it took control in 1923, though less ornate. The earlier photographs here are more evocative, less detailed, many printed in a hazy oval frame. We see the ocean bathing area before the addition of "The Ship". The tennis courts and golf course were popular, but in an era before fast motorized pleasure boats, the emphasis was on quiet New Castle walks, historic rambling and gentle canoe, rowboat or sailing trips. As always, the scenic Isles of Shoals, with its own famous hotel, was not emphasized in the promotional literature. Instead the brochure suggests a hike to the historic Fort Constitution just down the road in New Castle.

It was under Harvey & Wood that the region's most notable event occurred. The hotel agreed to host Russian and Japanese delegates for the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905. The first face-to-face negotiations between these military superpowers and the treaty signing in Portsmouth under President Teddy Roosevelt put Portsmouth, particularly the Wentworth and Rockingham hotels on the world map. They remain, for many Japanese visitors, historic shrines to this day.

After Harvey & Wood, the hotel was managed consecutively by Henry Priest (1906), Frank Hall (1907) and Priest & Shaw (1908). Management changed repeatedly in the next few years, it appears. There was an attempt to sell stock in the hotel but little is known about that era before major owners Henry Beckwith took over in 1923 and the Smiths purchased the Wentworth Hotel in 1946.

Photo of delegates to the Treaty of Portsmouth from "There are No Victors Here" by Peter E Randall.

Wentworth-by-the-Sea
Boston Era Gallery, 1902-5

Click on thumbnails for larger images
All photos courtesy of Friends of the Wentworth
and the Portsmouth Athenaeum collection.

For more EARLY IMAGES click here.
Sample photo galleries include: