GOSHEN — Amy Breakell is soft-spoken, short in stature and easygoing. But when she goes after something, she lets nothing get in her way. After years of planning, she has opened The Snuggery Bed & Breakfast in the home she has lived in for 25 years.
Breakell is a licensed masseuse and maintains a successful practice in her North Street home, built more than 180 years ago and a short walk from Goshen’s roundabout that connects Routes 4 and 63. In a town that she said often resists change, she successfully argued for a zoning change that made The Snuggery possible.
“When my kids moved out, I thought long and hard about selling the property, and I looked around, and I found myself not finding anything that I could afford,” Breakell said as she led a tour through the rooms. “I wasn't ready to retire. My massage practice is here and it’s well established, so I started talking about doing this bed-and-breakfast, and the more I talked about it, the more I talked myself into doing it."
The Snuggery is named after a house in Princeton, Mass., that her great-grandparents owned, she said.
She got her permit two years ago and has been accommodating guests during a yearlong “soft opening.” Her guests have come from Massachusetts, North Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and other states. A bed-and-breakfast owner from Georgia stayed there and wrote in a testimony on Breakell’s website, “It truly is wonderful. I am taking notes.”
The home was built in about 1844 as a parsonage for the Rev. Lavalette Perrin (1816-1889), whose first ministry was at Goshen’s Congregational Church beginning in 1843, according to The Snuggery’s website, www.thesnuggery.net. The website describes the home as “a perfect whimsical blending of the classical Greek Revival and the intricate details of the Carpenter Gothic styles.” Some of the features are described as “flushboard siding, pilaster-and-lintel framed doors and windows (very rare in this form), and wave-like bargeboards.”
The guest area includes a parlor on the main floor, and two guest rooms and a bathroom upstairs. Original creations by Goshen artist Lori Barker adorn the walls in the Aspen Room, Winter Room and hallway.
Breakell said local bed-and-breakfast regulations permit continental breakfasts.
“I would have to be an inn to cook for people,” she said.
A fridge in the parlor is stocked with burritos and other ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat meals, juices, yogurts and snacks. There also are easy-to-use coffee- and tea-making appliances, she said.
“I usually bring in some kind of baked goods from Northern Farm and Flowers or Nodine’s (Smokehouse),” Breakell said of two Goshen businesses.
A writing nook in the upstairs hallway includes a travel guide, pamphlets, stationery and a guest book. The Aspen Room features wall sconces and a full-size bed with a maple frame. The Winter Room has a queen-size bed and overhead lighting. Both rooms have throw rugs over hardwood floors and closets that include private safes for valuables.
“The windows, doors and floors are all original, but (the house) went through a lot of major renovations, taking off layers of old lead paint to bring it back to the natural wood,” Breakell said.
She did most of the work herself, she said.
“I did a lot of it on my own — a lot of painting, a lot of floor refinishing, a lot of decorating,” she said. “I do have a handyman that helped me out a lot, but I did a lot of it. A lot of it was with my own sweat, tears and hard work.”
It wasn’t all physical work. She figured out how to convince town officials to change the zoning from residential to commercial.
“It took a lot of guts and I did it myself,” she said. “I went online and I started researching how to get a zone change. And I just took everything that was relevant to my situation and I pulled it out. And then I created my own document, went up to the Planning and Zoning Department, and I stood there (shaking), reading it word for word. And I made an argument they couldn't say no to.”
Breakell noted the part of Goshen she lives in has a history of hospitality.
“A long time ago, the two houses in the center of town were both inns," she said. "And my grandparents’ house down the road was Hillcrest Inn. The house next door to me was a tea house. So, in the day of people coming through town in a stagecoach, it took a long time to get from point A to point B. They needed a place to rest and get something to eat."
She said there are Airbnbs in Goshen, and the Mary Stuart House is a long-established bed-and-breakfast in West Goshen.
Breakell is president and one of the founders of Goshen Business Circle, a network promoting economic growth. The group also seeks to preserve the town's rural landscape, and toward that end, Breakell is involved in Trees for Goshen, a project devoted to planting trees in town.