Rockingham Hotel


The Rockingham Hotel is a historic former hotel and contemporary condominium at 401 State Street in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, United States. Built in 1885, it is a prominent early example of Colonial Revival architecture, built in part in homage to Woodbury Langdon, whose 1785 home occupied the site. Langdon's home and the hotel both played host to leading figures of their day, and the hotel was one of the finest in northern New England. The hotel, now converted to condominiums, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Description and history

The former Rockingham Hotel stands in downtown Portsmouth, on the north side of State Street between Middle and Fleet Streets. It is a five-story brick building, built in a conscious imitation of the 1785 home of Woodbury Langdon, a prominent merchant and politician which previously occupied the site. Its facade presents as two five-bay structures set side-by-side, each with a central entrance sheltered by a projecting rectangular portico. Two-story oriel window bays project above the entrances on the third and fourth floors. Stringcourses of brownstone trim separate the first and second floors, and the fourth and fifth floors. The building facade incorporates lions, terra cotta sculptures of the Four Seasons of Man, and busts of Langdon and Frank Jones, who built the hotel in 1885.
Thomas Coburn converted the Langdon house into a hotel which opened November 1, 1833. Frank Jones, a Portsmouth mayor, congressman, and prominent local brewer bought it in 1870, tore it down, and built a Second Empire hotel building on the site. After a fire in 1884, Jones built the present structure. Through these constructions, the dining room of Woodbury Langdon, a high-quality rendition of domestic Georgian design, was retained. It now houses a restaurant.
A hotel until 1973, the premises, either as the home of Langdon or one of the two hotel structures, hosted presidents George Washington, Franklin Pierce, James K. Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Chester A. Arthur, William H. Taft and John F. Kennedy.

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