LODGING: FARE-MINDED INNKEEPERS

It’s a Thursday night at the old Morgan House Inn and Restaurant, and the tavern is abuzz with activity. People are gathered around the wraparound bar, their hands encircling tall tumblers of beer or the delicate stems of wine glasses. Several couples and a party of four sit at scattered, floral-cloth-covered tables, the low and steady conversational tones occasionally punctuated by a burst of laughter as diners take their last bites of pot roast or baked ham or seafood pasta before the evening’s main event begins.

 

Pamela Loring glides gracefully into the room, clad in a stylish black-and-white ensemble, a silver bracelet glinting from her wrist. She smiles warmly at the patrons, addressing them by name as she passes a sheet of white paper to each table and to a few guests at the bar. “Everybody ready?” she asks.

 

Since Loring and her husband, Jim, purchased the historic Morgan House Inn in Lee, Massachusetts, this past year, the weekly Thursday Night Trivia has drawn as many as thirty people, all of whom compete good-naturedly for a twenty-dollar restaurant gift certificate to the Morgan House awarded at the end of each evening.

 

Judy and Bob Bergner, Berkshire second-home owners for twenty-five years, have driven from Ryebrook, New York, as they do every Thursday. But only since the introduction of Trivia Night at the Morgan House have they made it a point to arrive in Lee before seven o’clock on these evenings. “We love the game, and we love the camaraderie here,” says Judy, who’s finishing up a roast turkey-with-cranberry-and-whipped-potatoes dinner. “You feel as if you’re with family and good friends. I love the food. And Pam is charming.”

 

At a table nearby, Marguerite and Ed Bride are gearing up for their fifth Trivia Night. They’ve been coming about twice a month now. “We didn’t start coming for the trivia,” Ed confesses. “We came for the food.”

 

But now, says Marguerite, they’re “addicted” to the Thursday night ritual. “This is a fabulous tavern,” she adds. “Can’t you just feel it?”

 

The first known occupant of the Morgan House was William Porter, a district attorney once described in a local newspaper as “the leading man of the town in his day, the most hospitable and influential.” Whether he built the house or bought it is anyone’s guess; by 1904, the records had disappeared. Along with his wife and four children, Porter presumably lived in the house from 1817 until his death in 1852.

 

Shortly after Porter died, a stonecutter named Edward Morgan moved into the dwelling. (Morgan, incidentally, had come to Lee that same year in search of marble for the west-wing addition to the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. He was impressed with what he found—the Lee marble was considered by many to be the hardest and finest in the world—and, ultimately, he persuaded the builders to use it for the project.) When he wasn’t cutting stone, Morgan ran a boarding house. He expanded the building and converted it into a full-blown hotel, attracting visitors to the quarry as well as stagecoach travelers. In August 1880, Morgan sold the business, but the deal was short-lived; Morgan bought it back in November, and kept it until he died in 1885.

 

In 1902, Patrick H. Bossidy—a longtime Morgan House employee—bought the property. He installed a veranda, bathrooms, electric lighting, and steam heating, and stepped up the inn’s culinary offerings. “Today its bill of fare is abreast with public houses far more pretentious in size and location,” proclaims a newspaper article from 1904. Over the next hundred-plus years, the Morgan House claimed a succession of owners, including the Shields family, from 1913 to 1970, and Maria Cole, the widow of Nat King Cole. Its all-time guest list reportedly includes George Bernard Shaw and presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Grover Cleveland.

 

Mike Hayes, who has lived in Lee for all of his eighty years, remembers when the Morgan House was the go-to place on a weekend night back in the 1940s. “There was dancing music—waltzes, polkas, three-step, whatever,” he says. These days, he and his wife, Sandy, head to the Morgan House at least once a week for dinner. “Sometimes twice,” he admits. “It all depends on how my wife feels about cooking.”

 

Like Hayes, fellow Lee resident Marilyn Kelly was delighted to learn that Pam and Jim Loring had decided to buy the Morgan House. As a close friend of Pam’s and the owner of the nearby Sullivan Station Restaurant, Kelly had lobbied long and hard to convince Pam that it was a good idea. “I felt that it was a special establishment, and it needed a local person to own and operate it,” Kelly explains. “I couldn’t think of any couple that could take on the job better than Jim and Pam Loring. I was so happy when she, with her husband’s blessing, got the OK.”

 

Loring faced the idea of buying the Morgan House with some trepidation, however. For twelve years, she’d owned a gift shop in downtown Lee—Pamela Loring Gifts and Interiors—and for six of those years, she and Jim (who was working full time as a police officer) also owned and managed another demanding Lee-based business: the elegant, historic Devonfield Inn. The Lorings had no intention of selling Devonfield, but after a couple from Miami made an offer on the property in 2004, they decided, after much deliberation, to accept it. The deal was done by late 2005, and six months later Pam sold the gift shop to her sister-in-law.

 

For two years, Pam Loring was retired. She and Jim spent time in their vacation homes in Bonita Springs, Florida, and Prince Edward Island, Canada, and traveled to London. “I used to have a really good life,” she laments with humor. “Now, here I am!”

 

The Morgan House went on the market at the end of 2006, its New-York-based owners ready to give it up after three years of what many residents viewed as a half-hearted effort to maintain the food and lodging business.

 

As a fifth-generation Lee resident, Pam had many fond memories of the Morgan House. It was where her family celebrated Easter and Mother’s Day, she recalls. It was the place where she held her own bridesmaids’ luncheon in 1982 and a childhood birthday party for their now-grown daughter, Alison. When Marilyn Kelly and another friend, Mary McGinnis, tried to convince the Lorings to buy the Morgan House, however, Pam was resistant. “I looked at it and said, ‘Oh, my gosh, so much work. Absolutely not!’” she remembers. Jim was poised to retire from the police force in the summer of 2008, and the couple didn’t want to be tied down to a new business.

 

A few months later, though, the idea began to take hold. “I started thinking about it again,” says Pam. “I was really restless. I love start-ups, and thinking about businesses, and what I would do if it was mine.” But her husband remained reluctant. “He kept coming up with all of the reasons we shouldn’t do it,” she recalls. In the end, they decided to make a lowball offer—“a lot less” than what the owners wanted, Pam admits—and were surprised when, in January 2008, it was accepted.

 

The Lorings got more than they bargained for, at least in terms of immediate workload. “It was in such disrepair,” Pam says with a sigh. “There were so many surprises. Things weren’t maintained.” The kitchen equipment broke down and much of the downstairs ceiling had to be replaced. Jim, a skilled carpenter, handled all of the restoration and fixes, while Pam—when she wasn’t redecorating the guest rooms or cleaning out long-neglected closets—focused on the countless details in getting yet another Loring-owned venture up and running. They commissioned artist Susan Leal to paint a mural of the local landscape on the walls of the formal dining room. They enlisted the help of their son, Drew, who, on the brink of graduating from Westfield State College, agreed to work—and live—at the Morgan House for a year.

 

The Morgan House’s new owners opened the doors in May 2008, focusing primarily on operating the restaurant and tavern. Pam says they consider the eleven guest-ready inn rooms upstairs a “bonus,” and have been delighted over the past year by the support and patronage of local residents as well as out-of-town visitors. Their innovative programming—weekly events like Trivia Night, weekend afternoon teas, and frequent two-for-$30 dinner specials—have proven successful in attracting a steady customer base.     

Fellow restaurateur Kelly says the community reaction has been "ecstatic." ”Pam is doing it absolutely perfectly,” she adds. “I think the operation is going to be a home run.” From the beginning, Pam was determined to foster a warm, hospitable environment in which everyone felt welcome. "The Morgan House has always been a vibrant part of downtown Lee . . . with locals coming and going," Pam explains. "That's what we try to re-create that sense of comfort and belonging. [October, 2009].

 

 

THE GOODS

33 Main St.

Lee, Mass.

413.243.3661