Pilgrims at the Rockingham
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HISTORIC PORTSMOUTH

Dinner at the Rockingham Hotel in the 1940s/ Strawbery Banke Archive Strawbery Banke Presents
HISTORIC PORTSMOUTH #72

Hotel owners Jim and Margaret Smith, like Frank Jones before them, owned both Wentworth-by-the-Sea in New Castle and The Rockingham in Portsmouth. Here in the late 1940s a hostess in Pilgrim garb serves punch at the Rockingham. Behind her is Jones’ horseshoe-shaped fireplace. Fond of costume parties, the Smiths reportedly kept 400 outfits on hand for frequent. Masquerades. (Continued below)

 

HISTORIC PHOTOS of the Greater Portsmouth Area appear here weekly

Pilgrim hostess in front of horseshoe-fireplace at Rockingham Hotel in Portsmouth, NH / Strawbery Banke Archive

READ: Look Who Came to Dinner, 1964
READ: Much about the Smiths and the Wentworth Hotel

BONUS PHOTOS

Rockingham Hotel in the Victorian era/ SeacoastNH.com

Rockingham_Jones_Room

Rockingham_Hotel in the 1990s

THis picture (c) Portsmouth Athenaeum
from the Smith Collection/ It appears in
Wentworth by the Sea: Life and Times of a Grand Hotel
by J. Dennis Robinson