The Thayer Hotel history

In the early 1840’s Henry L. Thayer was a successful Littleton, New Hampshire merchant with a dream to build a hotel more modern in equipment and character that others of its kind.

Despite warnings of failure, the dream started taking shape in 1843 when he purchased the lot just east of his store.

When was opening day for Thayer’s– back then known as Thayer’s White Mountain Hotel? Opening day for Thayer’s was January 14, 1850.

What sealed the success of Thayers Inn? Success was established due in part to the coming of the railroads to Littleton in 1852.

However, with the arrival of the railroad to the town in the 1880’s, Annandale quickly passed them by as the railroad provided the main methods of transportation for both personal and business travel.

The history of the Thayer begins with a fire in 1894 which burned down the Thayer’s predecessor, the Charles Hotel, aka, the Annandale House.

One year after the Annandale fire, in 1895 the Hotel was rebuilt, through funding from both the Soo Railroad Company as well as Albert Augustus “Gus” Thayer.

The stew was shipped daily over the railroad from the East, considered very expensive & somewhat a luxury at an equivalent of about $65 today. It was the first building to have gas lights and then electricity which came in 1905.

Originally named “THAYER’S WHITE MOUNTAIN HOTEL,” regular guests called it simply “THAYERS.” Through the years the hotel retained that label, dropping the apostrophe and the “WHITE MOUNTAIN” and finally in 1984 changing “Hotel” to “Inn.”