Omni Parker House

19th century The Parker House Hotel was established by Harvey D. Parker and opened on October 8, 1855. Additions and alterations were made to the original building starting only five years after its opening. The hotel was home to the Saturday Club, which met on the fourth Saturday of every month, except during July, August, and September. Among the Saturday Club's nineteenth-century members were poet, essayist, and preeminent transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet and The Atlantic Monthly editor James Russell Lowell, novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, poets John Greenleaf Whittier and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, diplomat Charles Francis Adams, historian Francis Parkman, philosopher, educator and abolitionist Amos Bronson Alcott and sage-about-town Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. The Parker House kept the door to Dickens' guest room when he stayed in 1867 and the mirror used by him for rehearsals, both of which remain on display at the hotel. The hotel introduced to America what became known as the European Plan. Prior to that time, American hotels had included meals in the cost of a room, and offered them only at set times. The Parker House charged only for the room, with meals charged separately and offered whenever the guest chose. The hotel was seized by its creditors during the Great Depression and sold by the bank to Glenwood Sherrard in 1933. James Michael Curley, the charismatic, Irish-American "Mayor of the Poor" who dominated Boston politics for the first half of the twentieth century, was a constant presence at the Parker House, in part because Old City Hall stood directly across from the hotel on School Street. The Omni Parker House bar, The Last Hurrah, was named for Edwin O'Connor's 1956 novel of the same name, a thinly disguised chronicling of Mayor Curley's colorful life. The hotel was bought by Dunfey Hotels in 1968. Inspired by the nineteenth-century Saturday Club, the Dunfeys in 1974 founded the New England Circle, purposeful gatherings of activists from a variety of backgrounds and experiences designed to advance civil and civic dialogue and inspire constructive community change. In 1996, the Omni Hotels chain and its properties, including the Parker House, were sold to TRT Holdings, owned by Texas billionaire Robert Rowling. 21st century The hotel was temporarily closed to guests during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, but continues to be the longest continuously operating hotel in the US, because staff continued to maintain the property and respond to guest inquiries for future reservations during this period. The hotel currently has 551 rooms and suites. In 2009, AAA named the hotel one of the top 10 historic U.S. hotels. The Omni Parker House is a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Historic Hotels of America program. 2024 strike On October 14, 2024, unionized workers at Omni Parker House went on strike as part of a citywide effort to secure a new collective bargaining agreement with all union hotels in Boston. On October 20, 2024, the workers at Omni Parker House unanimously voted to approve a new contract and returned to work the following day. 2025 renovation and rebirth In November 2024, the hotel commenced a major renovation of all guestrooms, function spaces and the main lobby. This $65 million project was completed in August 2025. == Parker's Restaurant ==

Parker's Restaurant predates the historic Parker House Hotel by 22 years. Harvey D. Parker, a coachman for a Watertown woman, frequently dined in a cellar cafe owned by John E. Hunt whenever he visited Boston. In 1832, Parker purchased the cafe from Hunt for $432 and renamed it Parker's Restaurant. The restaurant quickly became famous for its food and excellent service and gained popularity with businessmen, lawyers, and newspapermen. In 1847, Parker took on a business partner, John F. Mills. By 1854, the two purchased a former mansion, built by merchant John Mico, which would be renovated into the luxury hotel. In 1856, Anezin reportedly invented the Boston cream pie, originally called Chocolate Cream Pie or Parker House Chocolate Cream Pie. The original recipe had more distinctly French details, like a rum glaze brushed onto the cake layers and slivered almonds around the sides. In the 1860s a German baker working at the Parker House Restaurant created Parker House rolls, commonly known as Parker rolls. The legend says an angry baker threw a tray of unfinished rolls in the oven after an argument with a hotel guest. When he took the rolls out, they were puffy on the inside and crispy and buttery on the outside with a distinct folded shape. The popularity of the bread generated many copycat recipes, the oldest of which was printed in an April 1874 edition of the New Hampshire Sentinel. ==Famous employees==

Malcolm X, then going by the name Malcolm Little, worked as a busboy at the hotel in the 1940s. ==In literature and music==

For more than 150 years, the Parker House has appeared in prose and poetry set in and around Boston. Although many "haunting" books and "ghost tours" claim that Stephen King's 1999 short story 1408—about a writer who experiences a haunted stay at a New York hotel called the Dolphin—was based on Room 303 of the Parker House and the supernatural events surrounding the room, King's personal assistant says that claim is false. In March 1877, humorist Mark Twain was staying at the Parker House in room 168. and observed to a reporter, "You see for yourself that I'm pretty near heaven—not theologically, of course, but by the hotel standard." Twain's quote inspired the title for the definitive history of the Parker House, Heaven, By Hotel Standards, written by Susan Wilson. The third edition was published in 2024. ==See also==