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A Happy Ending for the Nora Roberts Literary Hotel

Where: 1 N. Main Street [map], Boonsboro, MD, United States

Yay! It looks like it may be a happy ending for author Nora Roberts' hotel (yes, that would be the same Nora Roberts whose books you spent all summer reading on the beach).

Last year, the author had planned to open up an inn out in her hometown Boonsboro, Maryland, converting a 200-year-old building into a cool literary-themed hotel. Sadly, during the renovations — almost a year ago this week, actually — the hotel caught fire, and the blaze spread to the buildings next to it causing an estimated $1.5 million in damages.

We weren't sure whether or not she and her husband were going to move forward with the opening, but it seems she pushed through: the 2.5-story Inn Boonsboro will open up this Tuesday, featuring (according to the Annapolis Capital) "rooms named for literary couples including Eve and Roarke from a series of novels Roberts wrote under the name J.D. Robb." Rates start around $220; reservation info can be found here.

Tags: Hotel Fires / Hotel News / Literary Hotels / Nora Roberts / → All Tags

Nora Roberts Planned Literary Hotel Destroyed By Fire

We might have some weird type of ESP. In our story the other day about Starwood devaluing their points system, we mentioned the Sheraton Four Points in Hagerstown, Maryland which we picked to demonstrate how many SPG points you will need in a random city in a random state like Maryland.

Then a Hotel Maven mentioned Hagerstown was his hometown. Interesting.

And now, Hagerstown is in the news because novelist Nora Roberts (women's fiction best for airplane reading) was planning on turning an old hotel into a literary-themed, except the place caught fire!

[A fire marshal] said the fire started around 7:30 a.m. in the Boone Hotel, owned by Roberts and her husband, Bruce Wilder. It spread to the two other buildings caused an estimated $1.5 million in damage, Zurolo said.

[Roberts and Wilder] were renovating the hotel and planned to open it this summer as an inn with each room reflecting a different romantic literary theme. The 2 1/2-story hotel dates to the late 1700s.

That's an extremely sad ending for such a historic hotel. But we secretly hope Roberts will stil go forth with her romantic literary-themed hotel. We'll even locate Hagerstown on a map and go there.

[Photo: Steve Meyers/Hagerstown Herald Mail]