Manufacturer: Royal Worcester Porcelain Co., England
User: The Templeton Inn
Distributor: Jones, McDuffee & Stratton, Boston
Date of footed bowl: 1899
Notes: The original Templeton Hotel, located on the common of Templeton, Mass. was destroyed by fire in 1888. A grand inn of 40-rooms was then designed by Templeton-native Ernest Maynard, who also designed the Tremont, Keith and Castle Square theaters in Boston, Mass.
Moses W. Richardson built the new Templeton Inn at a cost of $150,000 on the former hotel site in 1900 and furnished it luxuriously as hotels in the largest cities. The huge staircase in the lobby, across from the entrance, was finished in quartered oak. Throughout the building were were paintings by Ketler, the artist of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. The octagonal parlor on the front of the building was the gem of the inn with luxurious furnishings, an artistic fireplace and stained glass and plate windows. There was a reading room with paintings and furniture upholstered in leather.
The dining room was finished in Georgia Pine with a paneled ceiling and glass cabinets that held Royal Worcester made for the Inn. The guest rooms were furnished in cherry and birds eye maple and telephones that connected to every part of the building. In the basement was a large billiards room. Water was supplied from several wells and a sprinkler system was installed. Two water towers were constructed to provide pressure to the rooms.
In 1910, an additional 60 rooms were added to bring the room count to 100. The inn also offered garage rentals, having two rows of garage space across the street from the inn. Shuffleboard courts were placed on the common for guests to use; the paved courts still existed in 2008, according to the Templeton Reconnaissance Report, Spring 2008.
The inn was known as the Templeton Inn from its inception until late 1927, when the Templeton Inn property was deeded to the Landlords' Inn. By June 1928, the inn was advertised in newspapers as the Landlords' Inn, an inn "…owned and operated by twenty-five prominent New England Hotel Men."
Four years later, the Landlords' Inn property mortgage foreclosed in November 1931 and went on the auction block in the months that followed.
By October 1935, the property was owned by Waverly Oliver and most of the original inn was torn down thereafter, reducing the structure to that of a residential apartment. The old steel water tower that stood behind the inn was dismantled in the 1940s. In 1961, the town took what was left of the property for taxes and razed it. A fire station occupies the site in 2011.
Hotel Red Book Listings:
Not listed in the 1906 HRB.
Listed in the 1909, 1911, 1913 HRBs, Templeton Inn, Percival Blodgett, Mgr.
Listed 1915, 1918, 1922 HRBs, Templeton Inn, K. J. MacKinnon, Mgr.
Listed 1925 HRB, Templeton Inn, 110 Rooms, W. H. Wilder, Mgr.
Listed 1927 HRB, Templeton Inn, 125-rooms, G. H. Williams, Mgr.
Listed 1928 HRB, Landlords' Inn, 125-rooms, Herbert A. Brooks, Mgr.
Listed 1929 HRB, Landlords' Inn, 125-rooms, Herbert A. Brooks, Mgr. (June 12 – Nov. 1)
Listed 1933 HRB, Landlords' Inn, 100-rooms, H. A. Brooks, Mgr.
Listed 1934 HRB, Landlords' Inn, Grant R. Dennison, Mgr.
Not listed in 1935 or later HRBs.
Sources:
Harry Aldrich, Narragansett Historical Society, Templeton, Mass.
Images of America, Templeton, by Harry Aldrich and Brian P. Tanguay, Arcadia Publishing, 2004
Landlords' Inn advertisement, Fitchburg Sentinel, June 28, 1928
Landlords' Inn advertisement, North Adams Evening Transcript, June 29, 1928
"Legal Notices: Foreclosure Sale of Real Estate," Fitchburg Sentinel, November 23, 1931
"Legal Notices: Foreclosure Sale of Real Estate," Fitchburg Sentinel, December 7, 1931
"Landlords' Inn on Sale," The New York Times, November 14, 1934
"Noted Landlords' Inn to be Torn Down," Fitchburg Sentinel, October 17, 1935
"Westminster Briefs," Fitchburg (Mass.) Sentinel, March 23, 1961
Chap. 0148 An Act dissolving certain corporations, The State Library of Massachusetts, April 1933
Massachusetts: A Guide to Its Places and People, Federal Writers' Project, US History Publishers, 1937, p. 451
Templeton Reconnaissance Report, Spring 2008
Larry Paul's 20th Century Hotel Research Database
Hotel Red Books
White body, 6.25" footed bowl with two bands of laurel leaves between, swags of leaves and bows with flowers between. In the well of the bowl is a logo of two concentric circles with The Templeton Inn between, the initials MWR inside (Moses W. Richardson), and more leaves outside, all in a blue-green color.
For related info:
Landlords' Inn by Scammell China
Landlords' Inn 2 by Scammell China
ID and photos contributed by dbstoneware