(Author Collection)
Although converted to condominiums long ago, we still associate the Rockingham Hotel on State Street with ale tycoon Frank Jones. His face, after all, is chiseled onto the front of the building next to his predecessor, Woodbury Langdon, who built a house on this site in 1785. But Jones, a former Congressman from New Hampshire and Portsmouth mayor, was dead by 1902. He did not live to see the Portsmouth Peace Treaty of 1905 that put his other luxury hotel, Wentworth by the Sea, on the international map.
The trustees of Jones’ estate owned the two hotels until 1907. The two hotels were operated separately by a confusing array of owners until James and Margaret Smith bought them both in 1946. This 42-page promotion, published by Hotel Booklet Company in 1912 and reprinted, it appears, around 1920, fills in a piece of that missing history between owners Jones and Smith.
It’s an impressive brochure for the era, linking historic Portsmouth (population 20,000) with hotels in other “Class A’ destinations including New York City (“the hub city of the world”), Boston, Worcester, Portland and Ogunquit. Eight pages are dedicated to Portsmouth. A six-panel centerfold includes a coast-to-coast map depicting the Rockingham among two dozen hotels from here to San Francisco, all apparently were clients of Hotel Booklet (HB) marketing company.
A capsule description of the city highlights Portsmouth Harbor as “a safe haven for vessels of the largest size” with “25 miles of possible dockage space” downriver.
“Portsmouth has excellent streets,” the brochure explains, “and construction work is progressing to considerably extend its main thoroughfares in all directions. It has an excellent fire department and a very efficient police force.”
Portsmouth’s closeness to Boston was stressed then, as it is now. But promoters can no longer boast – as the Rockingham Hotel could in 1912 -“The city is on the mainline of the Boston & Maine Railroad, and it is a junction for lines running to Portland, Maine and the provinces, and also those extending up to the White Mountains and the North. Branch lines also run from Portsmouth to Concord, Manchester and Dover, New Hampshire.”
It was the dawn of motor tourism, and this slick brochure includes familiar sites like the John Warner, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, John Langdon, and John Paul Jones houses (established as a museum in 1917). But many “must-see” sites are altered or no longer with us. They include the Assembly House and Meserve House on Vaughan Street, the old high schools on Islington and City Hall on Daniel Street.
The key companies in Portsmouth at the time were the Morley Button Manufacturing Company (“largest of its kind in the world”), Gale Shoe Manufacturing, and Atlantic Shipping Corp. (that soon went out of business). All four of the banks pictured in the brochure are no longer in operation. A full page ad for the Rockingham Hotel offers “rates reasonable considering quality of high grade service.”
Copyright J. Dennis Robinson
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