Cedar Key ยท Historic downtown Second Street
Island Hotel
A tabby-walled general store from about 1861 that survived the Civil War, a hotel since 1914 on Cedar Key's Second Street. Ten rooms.
- Built
- c. 1861built c. 1861 as Parsons and Hale's General Store (tabby walls); a hotel since 1914 (Bay Hotel), renamed Island Hotel in 1946
- Style
- Masonry (tabby) Vernacular
- Type
- Inn
- Rooms
- 10
- Area
- Historic downtown Second Street
- Credentials
- Listed on the National Register of Historic Places
The story
The building was completed about 1861 for Major John Parsons and Francis E. Hale as a general store, with tabby (oyster shell, lime and sand) walls; it survived the Civil War when Union troops burned most of Cedar Key. It later housed the customs house and post office, and in 1914 Simon Feinberg turned it into the Bay Hotel. Bessie and Loyal ‘Gibby’ Gibbs bought it in 1946, renamed it the Island Hotel and made its dining room and King Neptune Lounge famous. Hurricane Easy blew the roof off in 1950; in Hurricane Helene (2024) the current owner reported that no water entered the building, which sits about two feet above much of Second Street.
The ghost story
Hotel staff and local patrons say the hotel is haunted; the inn's own ghost-story page tells of a Confederate soldier seen standing guard by the second-floor balcony doors at sunrise, a boy said to have drowned in the basement cistern, and the 'wandering ghost' of 1914 owner Simon Feinberg.
Source: www.islandhotel-cedarkey.com
Good to know
- Parking: street
- Address: 373 2nd Street, Cedar Key, FL 32625
Sources (5)
- https://npgallery.nps.gov/GetAsset/bcf13a3b-e492-41bc-b99d-3898224d136d
- https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/NRIS/84000252
- https://www.islandhotel-cedarkey.com/history.html
- https://www.islandhotel-cedarkey.com/ghost.html
- https://www.wuft.org/weather/2026-05-18/cedar-key-makes-progress-in-recovery-nearly-two-years-after-hurricane-helene
Last verified October 2026. Details change; confirm with the inn before you book.