The Arts And nature inspire the hotel's design. comfort and convenience complete the experience.
About
Hotel Thaxter is a full service upscale hotel & restaurant (Nichinan), located in the heart of Downtown Portsmouth. The main edifice, built in 1860, was originally home to The First Congregational Church of Portsmouth before becoming The Salvation Army. The handsome brick and wood building has stature and boasts amazing floor to ceiling windows on its elevated ground floor, a large footprint for spacious, comfortable guest rooms and a second to none downtown location. The recent restoration converted this historic building into 15 guest rooms featuring luxurious accommodations, wet bars and local art. Locally inspired, Hotel Thaxter gets its name from Portsmouth native Celia Thaxter, whose father opened the Appledore House in 1848 on the Isles of Shoals, one of the first resort hotels on the New England coast. Celia cultivated a unique multidisciplinary artist colony at the shoals by befriending and inviting several highly regarded musicians, artists and writers to enjoy and be inspired by the remote islands.
Behind the Inspiration: Celia Thaxter
In the mid 1800’s, a young girl named Celia Laighton Thaxter was raised in isolation in a lighthouse station with only her family on the lonely, windswept Isles of Shoals six miles off the Maine/New Hampshire coast. She would grow to become the reason hundreds of guests flocked there to experience a resort whose opening marked the dawn of the Grand Hotel Era in New England.
As a young mother, Celia was a writer, painter and hostess at Appledore House, a seasonal seaside hotel her family opened in 1848 on Appledore Island, the largest of the nine Isles. She wrote poems and stories about island life that captivated readers across the country. In her youth, Celia cultivated a love of flora and fauna that flourished throughout her life. She planted a seaside garden on Appledore that grew into her personal refuge. Treasured by the hotel’s guests and an inspiration to the nationally renowned artists who visited the island, Celia’s garden would become the subject of one of the many books she penned.
Well over a century later, a young hospitality entrepreneur named Amanda McSharry, also a mother and lover of all things botanical, immersed herself in the details of Celia’s life and found a kindred spirit. The result is Hotel Thaxter, a 15-room, state-of-the art boutique hotel in downtown Portsmouth that, through its décor and aesthetic, tells the story of a remarkable woman who became known as the country’s Island Poet and a pioneering nature writer.