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Fourth floor · Full beds · Shared bath

Garret East & Garret West

The top of the house, under the slope of the roof, where servants and boarders slept for 150 years. Two small rooms, two full beds, one excellent bathroom between them, and the lowest rates we offer.

Book now About the stairs

A garret room under a sharply slanted ceiling, a full bed tucked beneath a dormer window, exposed rafters painted white

Up under the roof

Every big Salem house had a garret, and nobody important slept in it. In the Cranes' time the space under the roof held a hired girl, a cook, and in good years a cabin boy or two waiting for a berth; the rest was storage, sails and sea chests and barrels. In the boarding-house years Mrs. Keane partitioned it into four tiny rooms and let them to single men at a dollar a week. The funeral parlor used it for storage again (we won't speculate about what), and by the 1980s it was a single, freezing, leaking attic that nearly took the house down with it.

The Fairweathers rebuilt the roof in 1992, used the garret as a storeroom for another decade, and in 2003 made two guest rooms out of Mrs. Keane's four. In 2021 the Alcotts redid both rooms, insulated everything that could be insulated, put in air conditioning that actually reaches the fourth floor, and turned the old box room between them into a proper bathroom. The rafters are the originals, hand-hewn oak with the adze marks still on them, painted white so you can see them.

Garret East: the lantern window

Garret East has the small square window in the gable at the front of the house, the top window of the 1748 house. This is the window where, the story goes, Abigail Crane set her lantern every evening for eleven years after Nathaniel was lost, high enough to be seen from the harbor. You can still see it from the waterfront if you know where to look, because we keep a lantern lit there every night. It is electric, on a timer from dusk to dawn, and it has a little shade on the room side, so you can sleep. The family name and the lantern are where the house gets its name.

The room has a full bed set under the slope of the ceiling, with a carved pine headboard and a blue-and-white quilt, a small chest of drawers, a wall of pegs for clothes, a slipper chair and a reading lamp clipped to a rafter. A second window, a dormer on the east slope, lets in the morning sun. Garret East is the brighter of the two rooms at breakfast time.

The lantern in the top window, seen from Mercy Lane.

Garret West: the window seat

Garret West is the mirror image across the little hall, a foot or so longer and with a dormer facing west over the garden and the carriage house roof toward the sunset. Built into the dormer is a window seat with a cushion and a stack of pillows, and it is our favorite place in the house to sit with a book at the end of a summer day. The full bed has an iron frame and a red-and-cream quilt; there's a small writing table, a chest of drawers and the same pegs and reading lamp as next door. Garret West is the quieter room, since it faces the back of the property.

The shared bath

The two garrets share a bathroom across the hall, used only by these two rooms. It was rebuilt from top to bottom in 2021: a big tiled shower with a bench, a heated floor, a long vanity with two sinks, plenty of hooks, and a door that locks. Robes and slippers are in each room. In practice, the two rooms are often booked by friends or family traveling together, and then the whole fourth floor is yours.

Room facts

Floor
Fourth floor (the garret), front of the 1748 house
Bed
Full (54 inches), one in each room
Sleeps
2 adults per room
Bath
Shared hall bath for the two garrets only (renovated 2021): walk-in shower, two sinks
Ceilings
Slanted; full standing height down the center of each room only
Stairs
Three flights, the last one steep and narrow
Views
East: the lantern window and morning sun. West: garden and sunset.
Also
Wi-Fi, air conditioning, robes and slippers, tea tray with kettle

Rates

Each garret is priced the same. Book both together for a family or group of friends.

SeasonDatesFrom, per room per night
WinterJanuary – March$179
SpringApril – May$199
Summer & early fallJune – September$219
OctoberAll month$249
Late fall & holidaysNovember – December$209

Rates vary by season and day of the week; taxes not included. Breakfast included. Weekend and October minimums apply.

Good to know

  • The stairs. The garrets are three flights up and there is no elevator. The first two flights are the main stair; the last is the original garret stair, sixteen steep, narrow steps with a turn at the top and a handrail on one side. We'll carry your bags up (and down) at any reasonable hour; just ask. If you're not comfortable on steep stairs, please choose another room.
  • Mind your head. The ceilings slope down to about four feet at the edges. Guests over six feet will find the beds tucked into the eaves a little snug, and we've padded the one low collar beam by the door. It has a small sign. People still find it.
  • Heat rises. Even with the 2021 air conditioning, the garrets run warmer than the rest of the house on hot afternoons. There's a fan in each room.
  • The lantern. The light in the Garret East gable window stays on all night, shaded on the inside. If even a shaded light bothers you, book Garret West.
  • Rain. You will hear it on the roof, beautifully.
  • Guests have occasionally reported the sound of footsteps in the hall between the rooms late at night, and a man's voice humming. We usually assume it is the other garret. It usually is.

Three of us college friends took both garrets for the long weekend and had the whole top of the house to ourselves. Steep stairs, best shower I've had in a B&B, and every night the little lantern in the window. We walked down to the harbor to look back at it.

— A guest, Garret East & West, June 2024