The Avon Hotel

Editor note: As the Spy was preparing for our interview with the Tidewater Inn’s Lauren Catterton and Don Reedy about the famous hotel’s 75th Anniversary, we came across the Tidewater’s application to be registered on the National Register of Historic Places. We were so surprised by this comprehensive and well-written history that we thought our readers would enjoy reading it in its entirety. With special thanks to the Talbot Historical Society for their help with images. 

The Tidewater Inn was built to replace the Hotel Avon, a four-story frame hotel occupying the same footprint and orientation to the northeast corner of Dover and Harrison Streets in the heart of what is now the Easton Historic District. The 1891 Hotel Avon was the largest hotel in the county; on January 10th, 1944, it suffered its second major fire, leaving an inoperable hotel and an urgent need for meeting space and accommodations. Shortages of building materials due to the war precluded any activity beyond site clearing for the next three years. The State Roads Commission, also affected by the war and several years of post-war labor and materials shortages, put all area projects other than ferry repair at Claiborne on hold. Even with priority approval, the Fire Department had to wait a year after the fire for a ladder truck. The vacant lot at one of the town’s most important downtown intersections stimulated an abiding community interest in planning and development.

A. Johnson Grymes, Jr.,

Shortly after the fire, attendees at a Rotary luncheon were warned that without a major hotel, mid-shore business and tourism opportunities would be lost to Wilmington, Delaware. At the same time, alternate uses proposed for the valuable corner lot prompted community leaders to plan actively for a new state-of-the-art hotel, one that would maintain the integrity of the site as a premier lodging facility. The Maryland Credit Finance Corporation, headed by Easton business leader Barclay H. Trippe, purchased the site to secure it until a suitable developer capable of building a fireproof hotel with a minimum of 50 rooms could be contracted to purchase the property. The terms of sale included a two-year period for project completion in consideration of war-related materials shortages. As of June 1946, no qualified developer had emerged.

A. Johnson Grymes, Jr., a prominent local civic leader with shipbuilding interests in New York, agreed to develop the site and operate the hotel, provided that liquor ordinances and local blue laws prohibiting sales of mixed drinks be amended to exclude sizable hotels.

1947 was a pivotal year in county history. Television arrived along with demand for Sunday movies. Daylight savings was adopted in Easton but rejected in the rural county, highlighting a growing urban influence on the town. Tomato canneries gave way to corn; nylon stockings replaced silk, and consequently, Easton lost a mill. Planning started for an architecturally controversial addition to the Talbot County courthouse. The Federal era courthouse was one of the inspirations for the inn’s design. Residential construction boomed and the local economy attracted the attention of the New York Times. Means and routes of transportation were changing forever.

Tidewater Pool

Work began on the Easton Bypass (completed in 1948; now US Route 50), and on sections of the highway connecting Easton to Wye Mills and Cambridge. The road work was to create “a north-south express highway equal to any built in Maryland since the war.” Planning for new routes into downtown began that resulted in Dover Street becoming one of the major connectors to Route 50. State planning began for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, which opened a floodgate of newcomers and beach travelers when completed in 1952. Airport service between Easton, Washington DC, and Baltimore entered its second year under the post-war management of Cities Service Corporation.

Despite such regional progress, circumstances unique to the time and place affected hotel construction. In late 1946, there were several rounds of materials-related rejections (primarily involving restrictions on copper) from the federal Civilian Production Agency.

In its first editorial of 1947, the Star-Democrat called for the CPA to “heed citizen pleas” to recognize the urgency of building the hotel. The Easton Business Men’s Association and other key civic leaders lobbied Senator Millard E. Tydings to advocate the required construction approval with the CPA. Tydings intervened in early January 1947 and succeeded in elevating the project from “borderline” to “priority.”

Easton’s town-owned utility drilled two wells to supply the hotel with the 250-gallon-per-minute demand needed for central air conditioning. Easton Utilities—which produces its own power and gas—installed a customized underground electrical delivery system. Ground was broken for “Hotel Talbot” on January 27, 1947. No other Maryland town was in a position to build a hotel of equal magnitude in 1947; the motivated business community and the town-owned utility were both essential to the project.

Anticipating the need to control accelerated growth, Easton enacted a Subdivision Regulation and Planning and Zoning ordinance—the first Eastern Shore community to take such action and the first in Maryland to impose extraterritorial zoning control within a mile of its perimeter. This ordinance called for a master plan to control suburban development. Town Engineer Bill Corchran described it as “the wall of quality.” Talbot County did not adopt zoning regulations until May 1953.

The 95-room Tidewater Inn opened on September 9, 1949, preceded by an open house with over 4,000 attendees. Each room featured modern amenities: television, piped-in radio, central air conditioning, and private baths. A subscription dinner on September 30 listed prominent leaders, including W. Alton Jones of Cities Service Corporation, whose foundation would later finance major projects in Easton, such as the YMCA and St. Mark’s Village.

In 1963, local editor Harrington eulogized Grymes for his “immeasurable” contribution to the community, echoing a 1949 editorial that praised the Tidewater Inn for invigorating the town’s prosperity.

The Delaware Memorial Bridge, completed on August 16, 1951, opened access to Philadelphia, while the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, opened in 1952, brought even more visitors. By May 1953, the Tidewater had served over 100,000 overnight guests. An expansion in 1953 added 28 rooms and conference space. By 1955, The New York Times recommended Easton as an ideal stay for a two- or three-day visit. The inn’s success was celebrated by the dedication of a 1955 bronze compass, a tribute to the Rotarians.

The building’s Federal Revival design was meticulously planned. Architect Clarence B. Litchfield and site architect Frank W. Bower, Jr. instructed Grymes and local Garden Club members on preserving Easton’s historic Federal-style architecture.

Crystal Room

Possessed expertise for designing in the Federal Revival style, notably including Bowditch Hall and 20 additional buildings of the New London Connecticut Naval Undersea Warfare Center. The local community was captivated by the ongoing restoration of Old Wye Church and was heavily influenced by Williamsburg and the College of William and Mary. Early examples of the Colonial Revival influence in Easton are the reconfiguration of the late 19th-century Music Hall to a column-fronted library and a similar reconfiguration of the courthouse entrance in the early 20th century. The Dover Street Post Office, completed in 1936, which faces the Tidewater Inn from the south side of the street, is built in the Colonial Revival style.

St. Mark’s Church, the Elks Club, The C&P Telephone building, the Health Department, and William Hill Manor are public facilities demonstrating the architectural influence of the Tidewater Inn on the town of Easton. Between 1949 and 1964, 57 commercial structures and 499 residential structures swelled Easton’s built environment by 29 percent, mostly in the Colonial Revival Style. The Tidewater Inn’s local builder, Howard Eley, went on to build many of these structures.

By the time of the 1954 addition, the Tidewater was billing itself as “the pride of the Eastern Shore” in the heart of “the colonial capital of the Eastern Shore.” Architectural historian Henry Chandlee Foreman published his widely-reproduced sketch of Easton’s courthouse square as it might have appeared in 1800. Prominent business leaders, under the direction of chairman John W. Noble, formed “A Citizen’s Committee for the Colonial Restoration of Easton” in October 1954. Easton National Bank offered preferred interest rates to businesses willing to incorporate “colonialism” in their storefronts in keeping with Dr. Foreman’s rendering. The town engineer ensured that colonial projects received fast approval and that modern projects returned to the drawing board for revisions.

Business and government leaders convening at the inn also established strong associations to the Tidewater as a modern facility with a relaxing plantation feel and old-fashioned southern hospitality. As post-war bridge and highway development opened the isolated Delmarva Peninsula, the Tidewater Inn became a primary destination for urban travelers and conventioneers. It was the largest bayside hotel on the Eastern Shore and featured a world-class restaurant specializing in local game and seafood, attracting visitors from Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and beyond.

For example, the National Academy of Sciences held an international conference there in 1958, attended by 80 scientists from nine countries, including some from the Soviet Union. Then U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy campaigned from the Gold Room on May 14, 1960, and opted to make an unplanned overnight stay at the Tidewater Inn. Because of a Maryland Truckers Convention and tourists visiting the county’s colonial garden spots, the inn was full. The Republican hotel executive extended Kennedy the use of his personal quarters; five days later, Kennedy claimed 72% of Talbot’s Democratic primary vote.

The Tidewater Inn’s design was inspired by the Williamsburg Inn, blending a high-style plantation aesthetic with the relaxed rural hospitality of local estates such as Wye House. This hospitality extended to the Maryland House and Garden Pilgrimage in 1949 and beyond, where guests could board hunting dogs in hotel kennels. The hotel reflects the tension between modern and traditional aesthetics, rural and urban space, and the southern and northern views of a border state.

The geographic isolation of the Eastern Shore before World War II, from nearby urban centers of the Mid-Atlantic, preserved old social values. While the area embraced religious diversity during early settlement, the agricultural economy reliant on slavery caused a strong Confederate sentiment that persisted into the civil rights era. Tensions from opening the shore to “outsiders” were acutely felt. The completion of Route 50, fully dualized through Talbot County by 1962 and connected to Cambridge via the Emerson C. Harrington Bridge, put Cambridge within 20 minutes of Easton and two hours from Washington, D.C.

The area’s entrenched reliance on Jim Crow segregation and new accessibility made it ripe for Freedom Riders advocating for equal access. Eastern Shore’s proximity to the nation’s capital was a strategic advantage for activists seeking federal intervention on civil rights issues.

A hate crime in September 1957 involved the headwaiter at the Tidewater Inn, Mr. Sessions Boyd. Boyd and his family narrowly escaped injury when ten sticks of dynamite planted near their home failed to detonate. Investigators reported that the bomb, attributed to the recent integration of his sons into the Hanson Street Primary School, was powerful enough to destroy several neighboring homes.

The targeting of Boyd over other African-American parents was attributed to his prominence at the Tidewater Inn. A week after the thwarted bombing, Mr. Boyd received a scrawled postcard addressed to the hotel threatening more violence. The Rotary Club met at the Tidewater in the Gold Room and raised a cash reward to assist the Easton Police and the FBI in developing leads in the investigation.

The Tidewater Inn’s role in civil rights history was locally significant, although mixed in nature, from the time it was built in 1949 until the adoption of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Nationally, the inn was significant for its response to the public accommodations protests during the Kennedy administration, which helped distinguish Talbot County from Cambridge, then under martial law. Talbot County never experienced the violence that broke out in Cambridge between 1962 and 1964 when the Freedom Riders arrived, in no small part because of the stature and leadership of the Tidewater Inn.

While the Tidewater catered to a cosmopolitan clientele, it also depended on a plantation ethos for its hospitality standard. The Southern colonial era standard of service, inspired by the success of Williamsburg, was part of the product being marketed to northern guests as an early example of the experience-based economy. This led to a planned reliance on African-American staffing for service-level positions. In 1946, when architectural plans were developed for the Tidewater, a “Colored Help Dining Area” was included at the basement level, reflecting a business plan that racially segregated employees along economic lines. There was no need for segregated dining areas because only African-Americans were hired for service-level positions, while European-American employees occupied desk-level and professional jobs, dining in the public restaurant facilities.

In 1956, the Sidney Hollander Foundation awarded the Tidewater Inn “Honorable Mention” for its “demonstration of hospitality extended without discrimination.” Despite these early steps, integrated service for patrons was not the norm until the Maryland Public Accommodations Act of 1963. In a protest covered nationally on January 6, 1962, fifty demonstrators—both black and white—protested racial segregation in Maryland restaurants, including at the Tidewater Inn.

Easton lawyer William H. Adkins II joined the federal bi-racial commission and worked toward voluntary adoption of open public accommodations.

While the Tidewater’s race relations in both employment policy and public accommodations were motivated by public relations, the profit motive attached to its actions facilitated a peaceful transition countywide to the terms of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in stark contrast to Cambridge. Just over the Choptank River, Cambridge endured many incidents of violence and remained under martial law for a full year, involving U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in a 1963 negotiated solution that only held after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Today, the Tidewater Inn still evokes the high style of a plantation-era inn essential to its social and architectural contexts. Its Colonial Revival structure retains the form and orientation to its setting of its period of significance. It continues to anchor the downtown business district, connecting the primary gateways into Easton from U.S. Route 50—Dover Street and Goldsborough Street via Harrison Street. The “reach the beach” traffic on Route 50 has intensified with the construction of a second Chesapeake Bay Bridge span, sustaining a continual stream of visitors to Easton’s landmark hotel and the Avalon Theatre on its opposing intersection.

Both the Tidewater Inn and its historic setting have a high degree of integrity in appearance and feel from the period of significance. The exterior of the hotel has only undergone minor changes since its construction. While the shop interiors facing the street have been altered, some significantly, the main public spaces have only seen decorative updates (paint, wallpaper, and carpet). The downtown has changed little since the hotel was built, and in the adjoining blocks, the Post Office, Bullitt House, and Avalon Theater have seen no major exterior changes since the hotel’s construction.