A major renovation and expansion is proposed for a more-than-century-old Black-owned hotel in the historically Black vacation community of Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

The Martha’s Vineyard Commission is reviewing plans to renovate and expand the six-efficiency Shearer Cottage to 15 guest rooms, the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette is reporting. 

Charles and Henrietta Shearer opened the inn in 1912 at a time when Black vacationers were unwelcome elsewhere. The inn is part of a permanent exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and is a stop on the African American Trail of Martha’s Vineyard.

Shearer Cottage is in a section of Oak Bluffs where people like late author Dorothy West and late U.S. Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, a Democrat from New York, owned property. Back in the day, the Commodores used to rehearse on the porch while locals and vacationers came around to listen.