Ospreys nest atop the telephone poles by this inn on Shelter Island. A yellow-and-white awning shelters the patio, and a beached rowboat sits in a children’s play area on the wide front lawn. The voice of Billie Holiday is often heard in the dining room. The 1929 center-hall Colonial-style building is all weathered shakes, white trim, and green shutters. Guests can walk to a gazebo by the tennis courts, and a grassy path leads down to 800 feet of beachfront on Coecles Harbor. Summer guests are cooled by bay breezes.
Owners James and Linda Ecklund and innkeeper Peter McCracken collaborate in running the place, and each fills in wherever necessary to make sure guests are taken care of. In 1980 the Ecklunds bought the inn in a rather “decayed state,” as they put it, and they have spent the intervening years restoring it.
|
