Rock Rest, Historic house in Kittery, United States.
Rock Rest is a 1+1⁄2-story wood frame Cape-style house at 167 Brave Boat Harbor Road, set close to the road, with full shed-roof dormers front and rear forming a substantial second floor. A large glassed-in porch extends to the right and a gabled porch shelters the front entry. North of the house, a guest house/garage reads as a two-bay garage with a half story from the street, extending into a larger rear structure with a common room below and guest rooms above.
Clayton and Hazel Sinclair, both originally from New York City, bought the property in 1938 and began taking in lodgers before the end of World War II. They formally opened Rock Rest as a summer guest house in 1946 and ran it until 1977, closing only because of poor health, four years after Maine's 1971 public accommodations law. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.
Hazel Sinclair's cooking drew guests by word of mouth, and the Sinclairs advertised through postcards mailed to a list they kept themselves, not through The Negro Motorist Green Book. Valerie Cunningham, whose aunt ran Rock Rest, described its offer of fine home-cooked food, a vegetable garden and shade trees in the 2020 PBS documentary Driving While Black.
The house is accessible from public roads in Kittery and can be viewed from outside. Detailed information about ownership and preservation status can be found in National Register of Historic Places records.
Rock Rest never advertised in The Negro Motorist Green Book; the Sinclairs relied on postcards mailed to a list they kept themselves. The National Museum of African American History and Culture holds memorabilia from the site, including a boulder painted in white with the words "Rock Rest".
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