377 Days - Blog #32, The Hotel Barre

A couple weeks ago I was going through old newspapers to find the one I knew my father kept about Nixon’s resignation.  When he saw it, he pulled out a few of the other yellowed copies of the Globe and Worcester T&G, provoking us both to go down a clouded memory lane.

One of the newspapers he found was about the fire at the Hotel Barre. 

I remember it was the end of my summer vacation before the start of my sophomore year.  I remember seeing the headline the day before saying the hotel was closing, at which I was very sad because I had been there only once.  My parents went frequently.  That was usually an outing that meant we had a babysitter.  In fact, they went before we even moved to this area because it was a favorite place of my grandparents on their night out.

My one visit was for brunch, just before Christmas.  I remember it was all decked out in Victorian splendor.  That Anne of Green Gables fan I mentioned yesterday was in absolute heaven.  I wanted to take home every Christmas tree and swag and ornament and do that in my own space.  I vowed to myself that someday I would live in a house where I could do that.  Funny thing is, I outgrew the clutter of that sort of excessive décor (thanks in part to Henry Davis Sleeper)… but I still think of that hotel as a thing of resplendent beauty.

I also remember the dining room.  A lot of people do.  The walls were painted with a mural of Barre Common, full of greens and blues and images of citizens a century before.  Just sitting there with my parents, I felt grownup… as if I had been admitted to a magical mature universe.  I couldn’t wait for another opportunity to go back.

But it burned down that summer.

That was three years before I became a regular on that stretch of Common Street.  Before I made my summer home in the church/theater that was just a few buildings down the way.  It was before the church was a theater.  And it is something to contemplate how that massive fire was contained.  Although, supposedly, the theater did have some fallout from the fire.  Legend (and by legend, I mean the oft repeated and interpreted story of various theater members) has it that there was a ghost in the hotel by the name of Nellie.  A woman who lived there?  Who died there?  Who had a bird in her room?  Well, some people allege she moved into that church at the end of the street – the church that became Barre Players.

Now, I don’t know if those details are true.  I also maintain a healthy distance from complete belief where ghosts are concerned.  However, I am also willing to think that it is possible.  I have spent many late evenings at that theater when there were sounds and movements that defy logic.  It is an old building, a drafty building, with a pretty ancient heating system… but there have been nights when the heavy door to the outside has just opened and the swinging doors move.  Or the night when we did Our Country’s Good and the light fell.  Or sounds in the chimney.  Or the fact that the air filtration system decided to rattle at certain moments in a conversation two weeks ago when I was deciding how much or how little I want to get involved at the theater.  But that was the bank… but Nellie is mobile… and it could all be coincidence.  Or just a nice bit of mystery to fuel our imaginations as we step out of reality in that theater space.  It definitely fuels the imagination of producing Hamlet in that space someday.

But back to the hotel.  The novel I just finished is set in a made up version of Barre.  I call it Hutchenson.  Bonus points if you understand the reference.  I did something similar with Oakham for my other novel, calling it Coldbrook.  I actually live in a pretty interesting part of the world – in spite of its small population and excess of trees.  

Barre was a summer town back in the day – the day of railroads and the day before AC when people of means would leave the summer for cooler parts.  So, there were ‘cottages’ and a big sprawling hotel.  My book is set in a similar town… with a similar hotel.  I ended up cutting a lot of the hotel scenes because they were superfluous.  But it is mentioned quite a bit, as a place of employment and a place to go for parties (though I don’t know if the Hotel Barre was host to wild parties in WWI and the 20’s).  I even had it burn down.

Now there is a parking lot in that space, for the bank that rebuilt itself with some of the design features of the hotel.  A parking lot where theater patrons go when it is a full house.  It is quiet and peaceful.  And yet, it still has the echoes... ghosts of what was there 25 years ago.