Concord, Massachusetts, USA

Old Middlesex Hotel

The Middlesex Hotel—once located at the corner of Main Street and Monument Square, opposite the Wright Tavern—thrived as a center of county and town life for decades during the nineteenth century. It provided food, drink, and lodging for lawyers, litigants, and witnesses on court days while Concord was still a shire town, and served up meals to the prisoners in the county jail behind what was then the County House and is now the Catholic rectory. Out-of-town attendants of the Middlesex Agricultural Society’s annual fall Cattle Show lodged and dined there. Workers in the shops on Concord’s Mill Dam stopped in for a quick drink during their day. The hotel accommodated large dinners and dances, including the lavish military balls of the Concord Artillery, and a local dancing school held sessions there summer and winter. The place offered rest and refreshment to teamsters hauling loads over long distances, and food and drink (paid for by the Town of Concord) to selectmen and other local officials who met in the Middlesex to transact municipal business. It was also a stop for passenger and mail stages before the coming of the railroad in 1844 led to the decline of the stagecoach as a form of transportation... concordlibrary.org