Robert J. Carroll, a prominent Edgartown businessman, has sold all of his interest in the Kelley House and the Harbor View Hotel to Robert Welch and Stephen C.
Earnest G. Friez Jr., manager, said that he thought that the Harbor View Hotel had weathered the Tuesday weather in comparatively good shape. “We were very fortunate,” he said, “compared to the trouble some were in.” One chimney fell on the ell of the main hotel, over employees’ quarters, and smashed through the roof into a room on the third floor. Other than that the damage was confined to a few chairs, windows and shutters and shingles.
Only the quick action of Capt. Samuel B. Norton, the skill and equipment of the Edgartown Fire Department, the aid of the sprinkler system just installed and not ready to function automatically, and one or two elements of chance such as a lack of wind and the time at which smoke and flames appeared over and through the building, prevented the destruction of the Harbor View Hotel in what was so nearly a disastrous conflagration late Wednesday afternoon.
A formal agreement for the purchase of the Harbor View hotel at Edgartown has been signed, and the purchasing group for which Alfred Hall has been acting since the first agreement was executed a few weeks ago, will take title to the property in December. But work toward the renovation and rehabilitation of the hotel will begin at any time, Mr. Hall told the Gazette this week, with an expenditure of at least $50,000.
