Anita Howe as a girl in Chicago, early 1930s

Anita’s Inn · Boothbay Harbor, Maine

A gardener’s house, with the harbor at the end of the lawn.

Anita Howe · Born 1927, Chicago, Illinois

The inn is named for Anita. This is the house, the name and the family behind it. The rooms book as Admiral’s Quarters, two doors from the water.

Check availability →The story

The name on the sign

Anita Howe

Anita Howe was born in 1927 and grew up in Chicago. She loved having people in the house: family, friends, whoever came up the walk. Her garden was always tended and her home was a lively retreat, the kind of place people arrived at early and left late.

The Howe house on the Boothbay water was hers as much as Guy’s, for sixty-five years. The lawn ran down to the rocks, the chairs were already out, and there was always a room made up for one more.

Anita’s Inn is the name the family gave the white clapboard house at the water’s edge, the inn Boothbay knows as Admiral’s Quarters: a glass solarium, a fire pit on the lawn, rooms that face the harbor, and a garden kept the way she kept hers.

The concept

How the house is being brought back

Porch and deck: shingle, brass lanterns, planters and outdoor dining

The living room: a fireplace, a bar cart, a patterned rug and reading chairs

The kitchen: black stone, white cabinets, brass

The dining room: floral wallpaper, painted paneling, a long table

The parlour: a gallery wall, deep colours, a piano

Bedrooms: floral papers, painted beds, brass reading lights

Baths: patterned tile, marble, unlacquered brass

Materials: herringbone oak, deep green, terracotta, checkerboard

Concept boards with House of Form, 2023. Design studies; the finished rooms will differ.

On the record

THE ANITA

The State of Maine licensed the house under that name in 2018, before the renovation and before the deck. The family had already decided who the inn was for.

Today