Sea Crest Beach Hotel: On the Water in Falmouth
By Max Hartshorne
GoNOMAD Editor
There are plenty of beachfront hotels in places like Mexico and Florida. But you don’t often get that ‘right on the beach’ experience in chillier Massachusetts.
When we visited the Harbor View Hotel on Martha’s Vineyard, we found out about Scout Hotel’s other properties, which include hotels in Nantucket, Cape Cod, Florida, and Belize.
Though we have always driven through Falmouth Mass. on our way to the ferry to the Vineyard, this time we’d be stopping short of the ferry port in Woods Hole and enjoying a weekend in North Falmouth. It was all familiar, but I’d never given this varied and interesting upper Cape town enough of a look.
Falmouth has 68 miles of coastline, average summer water temp of 70 degrees F, and 12 miles of beaches that the public can enjoy. There’s also a dog park and one of the nicest bike paths on the US East Coast!
The town is quite large–there’s a North, West, and an East Falmouth, plus a nice downtown area with bookstores, cafes, great restaurants, and a hand-carved children’s carousel ride. Most travelers scoot right through all of the Falmouth’s heading for Woods Hole, where the Martha’s Vineyard ferry departs, or across the Bourne Bridge to Cape Cod. Falmouth, we discovered, has a wealth of places to enjoy and sparkling beaches too.
Since 1927, a Storied History of the Sea Crest
The Sea Crest has a storied history, for more than 50 years. During the 1920s, a troupe of actors including Henry Fonda, James Stewart, and others created a summer playhouse and tearoom on Old Silver Beach.
During Prohibition, the playhouse was destroyed by fire, and it became a speakeasy. After a disastrous hurricane in 1938, the Old Silver Beach Club was destroyed, to be replaced in 1942 by The Latin Quarter, a dance club. Then in 1963, Boston Celtics coach and president Red Auerbach bought the club with two partners and in 1971, it was turned into a year-round resort.
You can see photographs of old Red with Celtics players in the hotel’s restaurant, Red’s. In 2010, Scout acquired the hotel. In 2023 Sea Crest Beach Hotel was purchased for the second time since 2016 by the hospitality investment groups HHS and Certares.
The 264 guest rooms in eight buildings were recently upgraded during a $15 million investment in 2011, and there are different types of rooms to suit most people’s tastes in the sprawling grounds. What was once a set of indoor tennis courts now provides 30,000 square feet of meeting space, the largest conference facilities on Cape Cod under one roof.
Dozens of weddings take place here, in the Sea Crest Ballroom, the courtyard between the two buildings (with an ocean view), and some right on the beach with sand in everyone’s toes! Sadly, the outdoor tennis courts were taken out of service when too few guests used them.
The hotel’s rooms right above the pool, numbers in the 500, can be a little bit loud. Even though the outdoor bar stops serving at 8 pm, all of those wedding partiers still manage to make a ruckus. And right below these rooms is the popular indoor pool, which wafts a chlorine scent up into the hallways. A tip for those who want things a little quieter is to stay in one of the rooms on either side of the pool.
Seth Thomas, the Sea Crest’s recreation director, told us about how people here focus on the beach–nothing else can distract them. “We used to have four outdoor tennis courts over there,” he said, pointing to the abandoned courts.
“People want to sit on the beach, play with their kids in the pool, but nobody was playing tennis anymore.”
I asked Seth what the hardest part of his job is. “That would be the various weather situations,” he said. “But we set up games for kids, activities for adults, big screen indoor movies, all to make a rainy day a fun one here at the Sea Crest.
At Red’s Restaurant, a wall of fame shows the resort’s famous one-time owner, Celtics Coach, and President Red Auerbach.
We enjoyed some of their top-shelf clam chowder and fresh lobsters at this casual, family-style restaurant.
Big tables encourage mingling and sharing a meal with fellow guests.
Staff from Around the World in Falmouth
The servers, like nearly all of the staff, are from all around the world. Getting enough help who can stay through the September busy season has pushed the trend toward hiring these “J1” students, who can travel, work and get a permit to do so in the US all summer and part of fall. You never know where your waitress or your bellman was born at the Sea Crest!
Shining Sea Bikeway
One great thing about the Sea Crest is its proximity to one of the nicest bike paths on the East Coast. The Shining Sea Bikeway is an 11-mile route that takes bikers, bladers, and walkers past tidal marshes, open ocean, sandy beaches and deep forests. It starts at Rte 151 and ends in Woods Hole.
The path winds its way through the Woods Hole Steamship Authority Parking lot where you can disembark and enjoy lunch in this busy port village. The Fishmonger Cafe is one great choice for seafood.
Shining Sea’s name comes from “America the Beautiful,” the famous poem by Katherine Lee Bates, a Falmouth native. A morning ride on this trail is invigorating, and if you bring your swimming suits you can enjoy a dip right from the path!
Visit the Sea Crest Beach Hotel website
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