The site has always provided a good central meeting place for groups in Western Massachusetts.
Source: Union-News (Springfield, MA)
Author: WILLIAM SWEET
GOSHEN, MA – The Whale Inn, which has served up food and Yankee hospitality to residents and travelers in the hilltowns for 74 years, will close Oct. 18, its owner said yesterday.
“We’re going to miss the people, but it’s time,” said owner Linda Walden, who runs the inn with her son Robert. Her husband, Kenneth T. Walden, bought the property in 1960. He died in 1995.
Although Linda Walden said the decision to close the inn was made for personal, not economic reasons, she also said serving travelers passing through town seems to be a business out of step with the times.
“There aren’t places in the hills anymore,” she said. “It’s a passing era. I think it’s had its day.”
“It’s a great blow to Goshen,” said Goshen Fire Chief Francis S. Dresser. The inn has been a long-time host to the fire department’s autumn ball.
The establishment has been used as a meeting place for decades, and has seen wedding receptions, family reunions, and memorial services. It also has rooms for lodgers.
A faithful group of customers comes out for Saturday night dinner dancing. The last Saturday night open to the public will be Oct. 11. The final Saturday, the inn will be closed to host a private party.
Walden notified the inn’s 17 employees last week that the establishment would be closing.
“We’re just devastated,” said Patricia Fortin, lead singer of Bill Fortin’s High Society Band, which has had an eight-year gig at the inn. “We have a tremendous following because of the Whale Inn.”
The band is trying to find another place to play, but Fortin said Goshen has always been ideal because of it central location in the four surrounding counties, she said.
“They are not going to give up their dancing,” Fortin said.
Walden said the establishment is meeting all its scheduled obligations, and has weddings and other parties booked through October.
According to Walden, they will not be selling the property. The building will remain in the family as Linda and Robert pursue other interests.
In 1960, Kenneth T. Walden purchased the inn and restaurant from Smith College, which was willed the property by Mary Lois James, a 1904 Smith graduate who died in 1958.
Smith bought the old farmhouse in 1922, opening it as the Whale Inn the next year.
The original structure was built in 1799. The inn’s name is a reference to the whale-tail-shaped stone on the front lawn.
The story goes that James’ neighbor Arthur Warner suggested the name by quoting Scripture: “The Whale he swam around the ocean, and landed Jonah up in Goshen.”
James was a real individualist, said Dresser. “She was a real old Yankee,” he said.
The inn was cited in Life Magazine in 1942 as one of the finest country inns in the nation. When Walden bought the property, he built an addition, doubling the seating to 200. He also managed to obtain a liquor license in 1960, though not without it becoming what local historian Anne Sabo Warner called a “lively issue in a town that had been legally dry since the old tavern days.”
Some of the more memorable guests at the establishment have included Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and poet Archibald MacLeish, who had a home in Conway.