Groton Inn Burned in Fire

The Groton Inn has long been one of the signature buildings on the lovely main street through Groton Massachusetts. Sadly, the Groton Inn burned in a large fire on August 2, 2011.

Groton is lined with gorgeous Colonials and parts of the Groton Inn dated to the 1670s.  The inn was on the National Register of Historic Places.  At least one mural in the inn was thought to be painted by Rufus Porter.

I wrote up an offer on a house for sale in Groton over breakfast at the Groton Inn earlier this year.  It’s hard to believe it’s gone.

It’s actually not gone yet.  I was surprised several weeks ago to see it still standing, albeit terribly damaged.  Turns out that there are many pushing for parts of it to be salvaged.  The Historic District Commission and an architectural preservationist from the National Park Service have toured the badly damaged inn and identified a portion that might be salvaged.  The town has since  issued a demolition order and it seems that the current owner is intent on demolishing the inn in total.  A petitition has been started urging that whatever can be saved be preserved.

It’s difficult to think of Groton Center without this beautiful old building.   Here are a few photos we took of the Groton Inn several weeks after the fire.

Categories: Everything Else

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 20th, 2011 at 11:47 pm and is filed under Everything Else. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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