Former Eben House
Eben House, 90 Bradford Street. [2016, Dunlap]
The Fairbanks Inn in 2014, the last year of its operation. [Dunlap]
Rear building at 90 Bradford Street. [2010, Dunlap]
Text last updated in 2015 | Other inns may come across like museums, but Eben House actually was one. The Federal-style, brick-sided home was built in 1776 by Capt. Eben Snow. It was purchased in 1826 by David Fairbanks, a founder of the Seamen’s Savings Bank, and in 1865 by a tin merchant, Charles Baxter Snow Sr., and his wife, Anna (Lancy) Snow. It passed to their daughter, Gertrude (Snow) DeWager, and her husband, Dr. E. A. DeWager, staying in the family until 1953. Stan Sorrentino, the owner of the Crown & Anchor and a collector of American folk art, opened it in 1975 as the David Fairbanks House, filled with more than 1,000 examples of antique folk art made between 1776 and 1876. From 1985 to 2014, it was the 14-room Fairbanks Inn, run first by Lynette Molnar and Sabrina Riddle, and then by Alicia Mickenberg and Kathleen Fitzgerald. It was transformed in 2015 into a luxury property by Kevin O’Shea and David Bowd of the Salt House Inn, and renamed in its builder’s honor.
Darren Showers wrote on 6 November 2009: I worked here for almost five years, working from 1998 to 2002 for Lynette Molnar and Sabrina Riddle. At one time there was some construction done in one of the rooms and all of us that worked there wrote our names down on a piece of paper with the date and stuck it in the wall before it was sealed up.
¶ Republished on 15 September 2023.
90 Bradford Street on the Town Map, showing property lines.