Edna St. Vincent Millay, one of America's greatest poets, grew up in Camden, Maine.
Her sister Norma worked in the Whitehall Inn dining room.

At the end of every season, the mostly long-term guests invited staff to a party in the employee's honor, a masquerade ball in 1912. Norma brought along Edna, who entertained the guests and staff with her singing and playing the Steinway piano that is still in the inn lobby.

Her friends prompted her to recite a poem for the first time in public, and her reading of the poem "Renascence" enthralled everyone. The poem was written atop Mt. Battie, just above the back side of our inn. One well-heeled guest arranged for Millay to get a scholarship to Vassar College and introduced her to literary people in New York, the launching pad for Millay's meteoric rise as poet and playwright.

After Millay's death in 1950, hundreds of people, including celebrities, crowded into the Whitehall Inn to dedicate a room in the poet's honor. That room in the inn where Millay was discovered (pictured above), including a grand piano on which she also performed, provides a glimpse into the life and writings of the accomplished writer