The Pacetti Hotel Was Private for a Century. Ponce Inlet Residents Now Walk In Free.

When did anyone in Ponce Inlet last get to walk through the front door of the old hotel beside the lighthouse? For most of the past hundred years, nobody outside the owners' circle could. The building at 4928 S. Peninsula Drive was a hotel until 1920. After that it was a winter home, a family retreat, a private hideaway for a World Series team and finally an empty house.

Today it is the Constance D. Hunter Historic Pacetti Hotel Museum, and the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse & Museum admission page lists Ponce Inlet residents among the few groups who get in free with proof of residency. The building went from closed to the town to free for the town in about five years. The guided tours running every Friday this November are a good way to see it.

A Hotel That Stopped Taking Guests in 1920

The building started small. In the mid-1860s, Bartola Pacetti built a two-room house for his wife, Martha, on what was then called Mosquito Inlet. The painter William Aiken Walker encouraged the family to expand it into a tourist hotel. Martha became known for running the fishing resort and cooking for the guests.

The money for that expansion came from right next door. Bartola and Martha sold ten acres to the U.S. government for the lighthouse site for $400 and used the proceeds to finish and enlarge the hotel. The Lighthouse Preservation Association's own pages give slightly different construction dates. Whichever date is right, the hotel wing went up in the 1880s, around the same time as the tower beside it. By 1900 the Pacetti place was a nationally known fishing resort with guest rooms, a kitchen, a parlor, a dining hall and a porch.

The Association's timeline shows how the building passed from one private owner to the next:

1. 1898 to 1917. Bartola died in 1898. Martha kept the resort running until her own death in 1917.
2. 1920 to 1923. The Pacetti family sold to Fred and Elizabeth Phares. The hotel closed, and by 1923 it was a private winter home for Jean Long and Edmund Widdowson.
3. 1936 to 1938. Olivia Gamble bought the run-down property and made major repairs. The Association credits that work with saving the building.
4. 1961 to about 1970. Olivia left the property to her nephew, Louis Nippert, and gave James Marlay Kugler the right to live there for the rest of his life. Louis and Louise Nippert took full ownership around 1970.
5. 2011 to 2019. The property went to the Greenacres Foundation and sat empty from 2012 until 2019.

From 1920 to 2024, the building was a private home or an empty one. Its best-known guests came during that stretch.

The Big Red Machine's Spot on the Halifax

Louis and Louise Nippert were majority owners of the Cincinnati Reds from 1973 to 1981. During that time they hosted the team at the hotel, and the Reds won the World Series in 1975 and 1976. The roster that came to Ponce Inlet included the core of the Big Red Machine. The Lighthouse's account names captain Pete Rose along with Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, George Foster, Dave Concepcion, Cesar Geronimo and Ken Griffey Sr.

According to that same Lighthouse account, the players came every year to relax and fish. Hotel caretakers Ann Caneer and Billy Joe Potts were known for the parties they threw. The museum describes those afternoons this way:

"Picture this: live music drifting through the salty air, players shucking oysters on the dock, and plates piled high with fresh local seafood."

Those parties were private by design. A Hall of Fame catcher could shuck oysters on a Ponce Inlet dock in the 1970s because the property belonged to the man who signed his paychecks and nobody else could come in. Bench, Perez and Morgan were all later inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

The museum marked that era on November 15, 2025, with an event called "Baseball at the Hotel." It included the unveiling of a temporary exhibit of rare Cincinnati Reds memorabilia. This fall, the museum's Reds program was an outreach talk on November 3 at the Halifax Historical Society Museum in Daytona Beach, presented by Programs Manager Zach Hopple. Because the memorabilia exhibit was billed as temporary, email [email protected] before you visit if the Reds are your main reason for going.

How the Building Came Back to the Town

The Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse Preservation Association bought the hotel from the Greenacres Foundation in October 2019. Its hotel page lists the price as $1.7 million. A multi-year rehabilitation plan began in 2020. Staff and volunteers handled smaller jobs through 2023, and the Association brought in a historic-preservation architect, engineers and contractors for the major work in 2023 and 2024.

The largest single gift came from the Paul B. and Constance D. Hunter Charitable Foundation. Its support added up to as much as $2 million: an initial $1.5 million, up to $250,000 in matching gifts and another $250,000 later in the project. That's why the museum carries Constance D. Hunter's name.

The work included repairing windows and doors, reinforcing floors, adding climate control and fire suppression, and building a dock. The fishing and boat dock was rebuilt in 2023 with a floating platform, and the front of the hotel faces the Halifax River. Hometown News Volusia reported that the museum opened to the public on August 22, after more than four years of work costing "several million dollars." The Association's history page places the opening in the summer of 2024.

Inside the building, which covers more than 5,000 square feet, exhibits fill the rooms and hallways. The furnishings and artifacts include beds, dressers, wash stands, steamer trunks, a piano, sofas, porcelain dishes, glassware and candleholders.

What Living Here Gets You at the Door

Most visitors buy a ticket. Pacetti Hotel admission is $5 for adults 12 and older and $1 for children ages 3 to 11, and a combination ticket that also covers the lighthouse is $11.95 for adults. Ponce Inlet residents, Preservation Association members and Florida Lighthouse Association members get into both museums free with proof of residency or membership. The museum also offers a 20% discount to former and active-duty service members, but it doesn't offer a senior discount. Pass holders for national, state or county parks should know those passes aren't accepted here.

You don't need a reservation, and you can buy tickets at the hotel or in the Lighthouse Gift Shop when you arrive. Under the current hours of operation, which run from September 8, 2026, through May 30, 2027, the Pacetti Hotel Museum is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The last admission is sold at 5 p.m. Both museums close on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day.

Free admission lets you drop in for twenty minutes on a Tuesday afternoon without feeling like you have to make it worth the ticket price. You can come back later for the rooms you skipped.

Dates on the Lighthouse Calendar Through Mid-December

A docent-led tour is the best introduction to the building. Tours are included with regular admission, which for residents means they're free. Here's what the Lighthouse events calendar lists from now through mid-December:

The November 12 talk fits well with a hotel tour. It covers the period when, as the museum puts it, the waters of the Halifax River "became part of the front lines of America's coastal defense," with German U-boats operating just offshore. That's the same stretch of river the Pacetti porch looks out on. Families with younger children can also watch for Rustic Christmas at the Lighthouse, a hands-on holiday workshop for kids. It's listed for November 23 and again on December 15 and 17 in the Education Building.

The December 16 concert stands out on the list. The New Smyrna Beach Dulcimer Society will play traditional holiday favorites and lead a sing-along inside a building that hosted Martha Pacetti's paying guests more than a century ago.

If the Pacetti Hotel is still the building you drive past on S. Peninsula Drive, I'd be glad to tell you what I know about it and the other landmarks at the south end of the peninsula. Whenever a question about life here comes up, Allyson Wise-Bird is happy to help. Contact Allyson.