With feminism in its walls, Glen Arbor Bed & Breakfast building nears age 150
From staff reports
That quaint bed & breakfast in the heart of Glen Arbor, across M-22 from bustling Anderson’s Market, is approaching a major milestone next year—the building’s 150th birthday. The evidence lies in a newspaper clipping from the July 5, 1873, edition of Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, which inn owners Patricia and Larry Widmayer found beneath five layers of wallpaper when they renovated the interior.
Woodhull & Claflin’s Weekly, published between 1870 and 1876 by Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, was among the first periodicals in the United States to be published by women. The Weekly published articles on topics such as women’s suffrage, spiritualism, vegetarianism, free love, and socialism. At its height, the publication had a national circulation of 20,000.
The building originally served as a boarding house for loggers who came to northern Michigan to cut timber to rebuild Chicago after the city’s Great Fire of 1871—the one allegedly caused when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern. The heyday of logging in this part of the state ran from 1873 until 1905.
The hotel was later owned by Martha Andresen and was known for many years as the Andresen property. John and Linda Peppler’s mother, Helen Rader Peppler, was born there in 1920. She and William Peppler held their wedding reception at the hotel in December 1941. The space was used for many purposes. Mrs. Andresen turned the living room into a dining room, and she served chicken dinners there on Sundays, which attracted visitors from all over the region. After the Second World War, it became a lunchroom for students enrolled at the Glen Arbor School.
Mike Sutherland bought it from the Andresens in 1991, built the front porch and renamed it the Glen Arbor Bed & Breakfast. The Widmayers acquired it in 2001.
“We think of ourselves as the stewards of this building,” said Patricia. “There was so much here before us.”
On a recent mid-June day, the bed & breakfasts’ six rooms were occupied by members of the Sierra Bicycling Club visiting from Colorado and peddling miles on Leelanau County’s scenic, hilly highways. Once a boarding house for hard-working loggers, the building has come full circle.
The Glen Arbor Bed & Breakfast is open seven months a year, from April until October, or until the wine tourism season draws to a close. Patricia’s family gathers here each Thanksgiving for a feast at the dining room table before they shut down the space for the winter.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story misspelled Helen Rader Peppler’s middle name. We regret the error.
