Sawyer's Island House, North Boothbay, ca. 1910
Item 105878 info
Penobscot Marine Museum
The Sawyer's Island House was a favorite summer resort in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The resort advertised "pleasant rooms and good board for 15 or 20 ladies and gentlemen...on reasonable terms."
Visitors could enjoy fine sailing, fishing and bathing. The Bath and Boothbay steamers stopped there regularly, good roads with bridges connected to the mainland and other Islands, and mail arrived daily.
Summer people began coming to the island about 1870 when Zina Hodgdon took boarders into the house he had built in 1847. Over the next decade he converted his home into a hotel.
The adjacent building was originally Hodgdon’s shoemaking shop. He expanded it into a general store in 1870 and later made it into guest rooms. In the 1930s a single sink with running water and toilet upstairs and a bathroom near the kitchen on the first floor served guests. They required appointments to use the bathtub.
In the early 1900s Elton H. Lewis operated the resort. Fire destroyed it in 1964.
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