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In 1887, Captain Abbott Chandler, who ran a small boat business, renting rowboats and sailboats from his floating pier south of the East Ferry wharf, hired Charles Bevins to build a boardinghouse for seamen on Conanicus, then called Shore, Avenue. Chandler was himself a retired merchant mariner who had made nine voyages around South America to the Pacific Ocean before settling in Jamestown.
In 1921, George Wales turned the boarding house into an inn. The inn’s beautiful, unobstructed view of Narragansett Bay led to a new name, “Harbor View.” The inn sign now hangs in the rear stairwell of Town Hall as part of the Jamestown Resort Era exhibit.
The inn survived the Great Depression of the 1930s, World War II, and the rapid depression of the island that followed the war, but in the fall of 1950, Iona and Walter Dailey opened the renovated building as the Harbor View Nursing Home. Over the next 25 years, 375 sick or elderly Jamestowners lived there. It was a cheerful place for patients and convenient for their families.
The nursing home closed in 1975 because the over 85-year-old building could not meet state and federal requirements. The building was razed in 1984.
