[4] John Bride was proprietor by 1832 and it was an attractive hotel that could handle the relay of horses and the needs of the many passengers who passed through each day.
[6] Around two o'clock in the morning on October 30, 1832, a fire broke out in the stable and quickly traveled to the hotel, leveling both in 90 minutes.
[8] The veteran was buried at the local cemetery, and it took several days to cart all of the dead horses down to the marshes where their carcasses could be sunk into the mud.
"[9] The Norfolk Advertiser called it "a splendid new house, not surpassed in size, fixtures, or elegance of finish, by any in all the villages of Massachusetts.
[1] A third fire broke out on January 7, 1850, killing eight horses, two cows, and several pigs, in addition to carriages, harnesses, and other equipment.
[11] John Wade, a resident at the competing Norfolk House, got drunk one evening and mentioned that he knew something about the fire.
[11][5] A number of prominent residents visited him in jail, including Jeremy Stimson, and he eventually confessed that he had been hired by the owner of the Norfolk House to light the first fire.
[11] The accused owner of the Norfolk House, which was a stop on the competing Tremont Stagecoach Line, committed suicide shortly after Wade named him.
"[5] Wade also knew George Walton, who was in prison for robbing Deacon Jabez Boyden of the Second Parish and who was later identified as the culprit in the second fire.
[1] On May 13, 1858, members of the various town ball teams in the Boston area met at the Phoenix House to form the Massachusetts Association of Baseball Players.
[1] One visitor described it as ...the old fashioned country hotel, not only for the summer, but for all-year-round; harboring the most extraordinary collection of oldish women and a few men whom the great whirlpool of the cites had left on this shore--gently bred, most of them, but with no particular object for existence.
[1] Its last owner, Henry White, had owned it for only a year when it finally burned to the ground on the morning of December 25, 1880.