The Colonial Inn at Monument Square in Concord, around 1910-1920. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.
The scene in 2023:
As explained in more detail in an earlier post, the Colonial Inn is a historic hotel that stands at the northern end of Monument Square in the center of Concord. It was built over the span of many years, with the earliest section in the distance on the far right side of the scene. It was built around 1716, and was originally owned by James Minot Jr. , and subsequent owners included Dr. Timothy Minot, Ammi White, and John Thoreau, the grandfather of Transcendentalist author Henry David Thoreau. Henry himself also lived here for a few years as a teenager, from 1835 to 1837.
The central section of the hotel, which has the row of five windows behind the “Colonial Inn” sign in the bottom photo, was built later in the 18th century, but was originally only one story in height. It was used as a store, and it was one of the places in Concord where colonists stored munitions in advance of the Battle of Concord on April 19, 1775. This section of the property was sold to John White in 1789, and second story was added around 1800.
The section of the building on the left side was constructed around 1812-1820 as the home of John White, who later sold the left and central sections to Daniel Shattuck in 1821. Shattuck then purchased the section on the right side from the Thoreau family in 1839, putting all three buildings under the same ownership for the first time. He lived here until his death in 1867, but shortly before he died he gave the entire property to his daughter, Frances Surette. It was apparently in the 1860s, probably during her ownership, that the section on the right was altered with a Mansard roof. Frances’s husband, Louis Surette, was a dry goods merchant, and they also operated a boarding house here, which they named the Thoreau House.
In 1889, the central and right-hand sections were sold to John Maynard Keyes, who opened a hotel here. He later acquired the section on the left in 1897, and named the hotel the Colonial Inn. The top photo was taken soon after, probably sometime in the 1910s, and it shows the building from the southwest, at the corner of Monument Square and Lowell Road.
More than a century later, the building has undergone additional changes. Most significantly, this has included the addition of a large wing on the back of the hotel, which was added in 1960. Otherwise, though, the historic portion of the building remains much the same as it did in the early 20th century, and it remains in use as a hotel while also standing as an important historic landmark in downtown Concord.