By an agreement reached recently the familiar hotel landmark on Starbuck’s Neck. Edgartown, is being sold by the Harbor View Hotel Corporation to the Harbor View Hotel Co. Inc.
The new corporation has two stockholders, Sen. Allan F. Jones of Hyannis, president, and Robert J. Carroll of Edgartown, vice president and treasurer. The third member of the corporation is James R. Di Giacomo of Cohasset, a Boston attorney, who is serving as clerk.
Mr. Carroll said this week that the hotel will be operated next season with no major changes from the practice of recent years. Gene Porta, who managed the hotel last summer, is planning to return next season in the same capacity, and Willy Weber, who has served as chef for five or six years, will also return.
There will be some refurbishing of the existing facilities, Mr. Carroll said, but it is the intention of the owners to maintain the nostalgic charm characteristic of family hotels of an earlier day.
Senator Jones, who represents the Cape and Plymouth District, of which the Vineyard is a part, in the upper house of the state legislature, is the proprietor of several restaurants on the Cape. He has been a frequent visitor to the Island, often making the trip in his own airplane.
Primarily a Restaurateur
Mr. Carroll has also been primarily a restaurateur up to now. He was the owner of the Edgartown Coffee Shop for a period, but sold it after he established the Seafood Shanty in 1961. He purchased the former Shiretown Dairy Bar last spring. renaming it Sally Carroll’s Dairy Bar.
The transaction was forecast to stockholders in the call for the annual meeting in August sent out by Alfred Hall, president of the corporation. In the letter he said, in part:
“Our corporation was organized fifteen years ago to restore the Harbor View Hotel to its former attractiveness and importance to Edgartown. The time schedule for debt repayment was set at fifteen years, and we issued fifteen-year debentures which matured Jan. 1, 1965....
“It is felt that our goal has been accomplished, and those of us who have been directing the affairs of the company would like to retire. This would seem to be an appropriate time to offer the property for sale. It is with some reluctance that our decision is disclosed....”
Approval of the stockholders for the directors to proceed was voted at the meeting.
The idea of rehabilitating the hotel property was the conception of Mr. Hall, and it was he who formed the group of both year-round and summer residents to purchase the property. The plan was revealed in September of 1949 and the new corporation took title in December of that year. It has been Mr. Hall, too, who has carried the main burden of the hotel during the sixteen year history of the corporation, and Mrs. Hall is given major credit for her assistance in redecorating the property.
The new owners have the right to continue the old familiar name of the property, which includes the hotel and annex, and six cottages, on land of several acres which stretches from Fuller street to the harbor.
The former owners were Raymond Walker and his sister, Mrs. Luther M. Sibley, heirs of their father, Dr. Thomas J. Walker, who preserved and established the Harbor View as a success after it was in difficulties. The hotel, first opened in July, 1891, eventually became an important influence in the resort life of the town and Island.
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