As work continues on the new Delamar boutique hotel — a replacement for the Westport Inn, which began as the New Englander Motor Hotel — it’s a good time to remember another spot for weary travelers.
The Hawthorne Inn was located on the southeast corner of the Post Road and Compo Road South — the current site of the oddly punctuated and capitalized [solidcore].
(Photo courtesy of Paul Ehrismann)
It looks like a very interesting place. But I can find nothing about it — beyond its existence, on what became in the late 1950s Compo Acres Shopping Center.
If you know anything about the Hawthorne Inn, click “Comments” below.
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“LOST WESTPORT.” Gorgeous house! If only moved somewhere, it’d still be in business with corporations buying “time/share” rooms with other corporations as happened in Concord, Mass. Boutique BnBs. Coincidentally, there was a Hawthorne Inn across the street from the actual Hawthorne home (now museum), The Wayside, there. Couldn’t get financing to buy it 2 decades ago. Has gone back to a single family home looking out onto protected wet-land in the center of town. Google The Wayside street view and turn the view around.
So the Hawthorne Inn once stood where the Franklin Simon store was built? There were three supermarkets within spitting distance of each other: Finast, Food Fair (across the street) and A&P (top of the hill going east towards Fairfield). That would probably never happen today. Other stores we used to frequent in the area included, Silvers’ Jewelers, Golds Delicatessen, Brooks Hirsch, McLellan’s, etc. I’m showing my age!
1917 Westport Directory lists Hawthorne Inn (John W Fike, mgr) at “State Street nr Compo Rd W”
Best item is the Sanborn Fire Map from 1948 – shows the Hawthorne Inn sitting kitty corner from Winslow Park on the corner of Compo Road South and E. State Street.
p 16 of 22: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3784wm.g3784wm_g011951948/?st=gallery
Looking art the Sanborn maps from 1948, it is amazing how many cul de sacs and such didn’t,t yet exist. We moved to High Point Rd. in a newly built house in 1955, and pretty much every house there was built at the same time (many since replaced by McMansions); I guess the road itself was freshly built. Burr Farms Rd., Elmwood Lane and Sturgis Common were also not on the map.
I have no clue about the home but I do have a question for you. Please email me to discuss! Love your info every day!
During Prohibition it was a notorious speakeasy.
At first I didn’t think there was ever a house this big at this location. But then I recalled some time in my teens when the Welles Brothers had a photography studio in a building at the corner of Compo and the Post Road and they made some early prints for me. So that was the house. Didn’t know it was this big.
wells building, unless it’s a later rendition, still exists right after the shopping center on the east side of Compo Road South. To my knowledge a Mrs. Wells still lives in Westport and owns it.
House of ill repute, it is not from experience that i know this to be true
Reminds me of another reputed at corner Greens farms and Hillspoint rd 🤔
If all these rumors were true (NOT)Westport was a pretty racy place. Having lived in an apartment at the Penguin at one time I can attest there was a speak easy/coffee house in the basement of the Penguin building advertised as a “Country Resort” complete with golf course and miniature golf
across the street.
As Dan Woog previously reported, Pearl Bailey had a song “I Caught Her in the Kitchen Playing Westport.”