Mansion House Hotel

A landmark in Carlisle, the “Mansion House Hotel” operated on the south west corner of West High and Pitt streets¹ from the 1830s until the 1920s. Inns on that site had housed travelers since the days of the Revolutionary War.

The first tavern on the site was kept by James Pollock in the eighteenth century. The tavern was a two-story log house 24’ x 26’ with a two-story brick addition 45’ x 20’.² The journals of several travelers in the 1780s³ mention staying at Pollock’s Tavern. Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, visiting Dickinson College in 1784, noted in his diary that he dined at James Pollock’s, “a large and excellent tavern.”⁴

In 1808, James Noble purchased this property, Lot #76, as well as adjoining Lot #68, at a Sheriff  sale.⁵ There were two houses on the two lots at that time, and, according to James Hamilton, Jr., Noble built the stone hotel that “became one of our principal hotels.”⁶ By 1815, when Frederick Fogle leased the property, the name had been changed to the “Carlisle Hotel.”⁷ Fogle was one of several men who leased the hotel, went into debt, and were forced to sell the hotel’s furnishings.⁸

By 1835, when Noble’s property was assessed for taxes, the hotel complex consisted of “two lots with two large buildings of stone and brick plastered (tavern) and large stone stable, carriage house and other buildings. Also on same lot, was one large two-story stone house, back buildings and stone stable all on W. High and Pitt streets.

In the 1830s, the name of the hotel was changed to the Mansion House. It may have coincided with the first trip of the Cumberland Valley Railroad train from Carlisle to the Susquehanna River in August 1837.⁹ The train tracks ran along High Street in front of the hotel, and the first train station was built on the adjoining lot.​

Willis Foulk leased the Mansion House Hotel in 1843 and advertised in the January 25, 1843 edition of the Carlisle Herald and Expositor that he wanted furniture, liquors, etc. for the hotel.  He had to furnish "sixteen bedrooms, two Parlors, one Bar, two sitting and one eating room for sixty, and a Kitchen..."

As well as local residents who lodged at the hotel, the hotel register lists the names of members of various opera and performing companies who stayed there while performing at Rheem’s Hall in the 1860s.¹⁰ In 1879, the newspaper reported:

Gen. Tom Thumb gave two select entertainments in Rheem’s Hall last Thursday…The party, numbering eight persons, arrived on the Mail train at 10:55, and registered at the Mansion House. When Clerk Shreffler showed the General and his wife up to No. 11, Mrs. Thumb, when she saw the room, said “it would answer, it was only for one day.”¹¹

Reminiscing about the Carlisle of her youth, Nettie Jane Blair wrote that the Mansion House “bar was on the left hand corner and the dining room was between the bar and the kitchen and ran along Pitt Street. The bedrooms were large with very high ceilings, well furnished. At that time it was considered the best hotel between Harrisburg and Waynesboro,” she wrote.¹²

From 1924-1938 the hotel was named the Argonne Hotel. In 1938, the owner and manager, Beaufort S. Swartz, changed the name to the James Wilson Hotel to mark the 150^th anniversary of the adoption of the U. S. Constitution, and to honor James Wilson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who once owned the property.¹³ The hotel building, re-named Safe Harbour in 1986, is a not-for-profit organization that provides housing for the homeless of Cumberland County.