Your Hosts
The McLaughlin Family

“The Blair Hill Inn, an oasis of elegance amid the north wood’s wilderness is housed in a vaguely Queen Anne Victorian mansion. The inn is imposing but not intimidating, luxurious without being fussy, grandly historic but not grandmotherly. It’s a hugely improbable sight, rising up from the hillside just north of Greenville.”
-Wayne Curtis,
Down East Magazine, 2003

And, the inn seems even more improbable the more you learn about it. Because if you know anything about innkeeping, you know that the road followed by young, starry-eyed couples, who trade in corporate lifestyles to buy creaking, oversized mansions with an idea of crafting a luxury inn, is littered with the smoking wrecks of spectacular failures. When it comes to innkeeping, ignorance rarely leads to bliss. Yet, this is the road Ruth and Dan McLaughlin followed when they chucked it all and decided to take up innkeeping, now 8 years ago. And, against considerable odds, they ended up with astonishing results.

Ruth and Dan considered themselves innkeepers-in-waiting for much of their adult life. They both worked for years at the financial software company where they met – and lived in Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago. They loved fixing up their 1929 suburban home and they snapped up good deals on antique furniture, which they stored in their home and various garages with the idea of someday furnishing an inn. They went from daydreamers to serious shoppers after their children were born (Jack in 1991 and Lily in 1992). “We weren’t passionate about our careers,” says Ruth. And tiptoeing in after a late business trip and peering at the kids when they were asleep in their cribs didn’t seem like much of a life.

“We realized we had to do it, and not just dream,” Dan explains. “We didn’t want to look back at our life and think why didn’t we give that a shot?” So they launched a nationwide search for the right property – a place where they could craft an image from scratch rather than merely acquire an existing one.

Then one spring day they spotted an ad for the Lyman Blair house in Preservation magazine, published by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Dan flew out in May 1997 to look at this and several other New England properties. Soon after he drove up the long driveway he knew he could stop looking. “This was it,” he declares. “There was nothing comparable.” He cancelled his appointments for the rest of his trip, videotaped the place to show Ruth, and flew home. Within a month they had signed a contract to buy it.

Our Family

After resigning from their corporate careers, they loaded up the moving trucks, and on November 15, 1997 along with their two young children headed across Canada and into Greenville, Maine. Undaunted by the massive restoration project before them, Dan broke out his tools and took it one room at a time, one wall at a time, one porch at a time, aided by intrepid local carpenter, Larry Lewis. With this space as a raw canvas coupled with the incredible ‘bones’ of the mansion, they carved out eight luxurious guest rooms. Using the antique furniture they had gathered over the years and adding luxe touches they were certain travelers would love, the bright, spacious and tasteful inn was crafted with love and passion.

Seemingly, unaffected by fears normally associated with trying things never ventured before, the couple went on to open a high-end restaurant in an area where the market for such fair might be thin. Their previous experience with restaurants? “Well, I ate in a lot of them,” says Dan.

The result here is as pleasantly surprising as the inn itself. In addition to having the finest accommodations in the North Woods, the Blair Hill Inn has earned a reputation for its dining room. It offers the same dramatic views that distinguish each of the guest rooms and serves up fare that has garnered its designation as a “TOP TEN” restaurant of Maine.

“If we’ve learned anything,” says Ruth “we’ve learned that staying true to yourself in everything you do makes the difference more than anything else.” She goes on to say, “People underestimate the impact of the innkeepers on their stay. Guests can be more concerned with a feature than the underlying experience of the property and will end up ultimately disappointed and not understand why. We love what we do and we believe it shows in everything that we do. I think our peace and joy is contagious.”

And of course, there’s the remarkable view, which continues to amaze both Ruth and Dan as well as guests. Working on scaffolding up off the third floor replacing clapboards, Dan admits that he still gets caught off-guard by simply turning around, only to find Moosehead Lake laid wide at his feet. “We both still feel like we’re getting away with something, by having the chance to do this.”