Original Romar House celebrates 100th anniversary with Aug. 15 community open house

Original Romar House celebrates 100th anniversary with Aug. 15 community open house
The historic Original Romar House Bed & Breakfast Inn, the first house built in Orange Beach and Alabama’s first seaside B & B, will celebrate its 100th anniversary with a community open house on Aug. 15 from 9 a.m. ‘til 5 p.m., and a private reception to follow on Aug. 17 at 6:30 p.m.
Mobile businessmen Spurgeon Roche and Carl Martin built the house in 1924 and used a combination of the first letters of their last names for its name.
Orange Beach’s official historian, Margaret Childress-Long, wrote the copy for a two sided marker in front of the property that was commissioned in 2017 by the City of Orange Beach to honor the home (and as a prelude to Alabama’s Bicentennial celebration two years later).
“The 1924 Spurgeon Roche House has survived many storms. It was originally built on pilings, a second story was added later, and it has been strengthened through many renovations over the years,’’ Childress-Long wrote.
“Jerry Gilbreath purchased the house around 1980, and in 1991, he turned it into the Original Romar House Bed & Breakfast Inn. It is still operating as Alabama’s first Gulfside B&B.
“The original Carl Martin house stood until 1979 when Hurricane Frederic destroyed it,’’ Childress-Long added. “Mack Shelby was the caretaker of the Romar homestead, which was adjacent to Gulf State Park. Lake Shelby is named for the Shelby family.
“Romar Beach began as a large homestead property with three miles of beachfront spanning from Gulf State Park to Hwy. 161 in Orange Beach. The original property now covers 480 feet. It was a true homestead and the owners were required to till the soil. Of all attempts over the years, only the oleander trees survived.
“Their two houses, built around 1924, were the first houses built on the beach. It was difficult to access their property, so the two men built their own road south from Canal Road straight to the beach,’’ Childress-Long wrote.
“This included a wooden bridge built over the freshwater lakes. For stability, the roadway was corduroyed with logs and lumber across the swamp and sandy land. That road is now Powerline Rd.”
Gilbreath decided to turn the house into a bed-and-breakfast after staying in a similarly grand old house in Key West and falling in love with the idea.
An Ole Miss grad and retired lawyer, Gilbreath took a job as the prosecutor in his hometown of Laurel soon after leaving Oxford with his law degree. He earned a seat in the Mississippi House of Representatives by the time he was 24 and held that seat from 1975-83.
He eventually ventured into real estate and developed the Purple Parrot Island Resort on Perdido Key, a resort he modeled after a similar development, the Purple Parrot Bistro, he developed in Belize in the 1980’s.
An entrepreneur from an early age, Gilbreath was a classmate and friend of Archie Manning at Ole Miss and cashed in on Manning’s popularity while still a student there.
He paid $92 to make 1,000 red buttons with “Archie” in big blue block letters. He bought a $5 ad in The Daily Mississippian and put them for sale at $1 each in four Oxford drug stores and Neilson’s department store. For each button sold, the stores would get 25 cents while Gilbreath netted 75 cents.
“They sold all 1,000 in one day,” Gilbreath said. “Everybody on campus wanted an Archie button. I realized I was on to something.”
He later cashed in with “Archie’s Army,” “Go To Hell LSU” and “Kiss Me I’m a Rebel” buttons.
“I’ve had a lot of roles – attorney, businessman, politician – but entrepreneur is the one I liked best of all,” he said.
He still travels between homes in Perdido Key, New Orleans and Laurel, but none of those habitats touch him like the Original Romar House.
“This is the last old house on the beach that has not been bulldozed down for a condo. It’s become part of me – like my baby. It’s the only seaside bed and breakfast in Alabama. There is nothing like it between New Orleans and Panama City,’’ Gilbreath said.
The entire pool and four feet of the first floor were filled with sand after Pleasure Island and Perdido Key took a direct hit from Hurricane Ivan in September of 2004, but the Romar House structure remained intact.
“Remember, this place was built in 1924. So, it’s seen its share of storms,’’ Gilbreath said when his B&B re-opened in 2008, almost four years after taking that punch in the chops from Ivan. “That just goes to show you how strong the pilings they built in 1924 were.’’
Many antiques and heirlooms were lost, and it took almost all of his cash reserves to get his B&B back open at a time when the price for beachfront land was doubling yearly. But Gilbreath held on, saying he had grown too fond of the house to let it go. Unlike the developers who swooned over him, Gilbreath valued the home’s history more than the value of the land the house occupied.
The Inn has modern amenities such as a pool, a hot tub and a lighted boardwalk to the beach. But it is its many antiques, the original hardwood floors and the stained glass windows that give the place its romantic appeal.
The front doors are from Australia and there is Chicago brick throughout. All the doors on the rooms are re-purposed from homes in New Orleans and are at least 100 years old.
The dining room breakfast table is at the same location it was back in 1924. In fact, when Gilbreath bought the home from Lucille and Judge Joe Hocklander of Mobile, they insisted he keep the old wood kitchen table in the same location. According to the story Gilbreath was told, the table was built by an Italian carpenter in one night with help from the owner. “In the morning, there were three empty wine bottles sitting on this beautiful table and two sleeping men next to it,’’ Gilbreath said.
Gilbreath happened upon the stained glass front door window when he saw it on a 1800’s era house that was being demolished in New Orleans. Each stained glass window tells a unique story. The brass fixtures and most of the furniture was carefully chosen from the period of when the house was built.
“I have a lot of stuff I’ve collected over the years here,’’ he said. “This is my house. It’s not just an investment.’’
With that, Gilbreath and Innkeeper Lilia Bard, is inviting the community to stop by and visit on Aug. 15th.