The Omni Parker House, founded in 1855 by Harvey Parker, is a staple in the vast history of Boston. The hotel has been home to quirky stories and information that have made the Parker House captivating for over a hundred years.

One of the most prominent historical aspects of the Parker House is its food. The hotel is well-known for some of the states crowning culinary inventions.

By the 1870s, the hotel invented Parker House rolls and, over time, became internationally known. The recipe for the famous rolls was kept secret up until the 1930s when former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt requested the recipe.

The Parker House also perfected the Boston cream pie during the 1870s, later named the Massachusetts state dessert in 1996.

“I like to say that it was not invented by the Parker House, but that it was perfected,” said Susan Wilson, the Parker House’s official historian. As desserts similar to the Boston cream pie were around Boston and the country well before the Parker House put their spin on it.

“One of the things I loved about the Parker House was they basically served the first fresh seafood in a real restaurant setting,” said Anthony Sammarco, a local historian. Historians credit the hotel with coining the term scrod, meaning any white fish served baked or fried.

The Parker House also employed some of the most unusual names throughout history. Ho Chi Minh worked in the kitchen while he was studying baking. To this day, there is a cracked marble table at the Parker House that Minh worked on.

“I like to say Ho Chi Minh had three great loves: liberating South East Asia from foreign control, spreading world communism, and three was baking,” said Wilson. Malcolm X also found his way to the Parker House and worked as a bus boy.

Significant guests at the Parker house include John Wilkes Booth. According to Sammarco, Booth stayed at the hotel just weeks before assassinating Abraham Lincoln.

“It was said that when Booth was here and stayed at the Parker House, he actually went to a firing range in Boston to practice gun shooting,” said Sammarco.

There was also a solid literary connection to the Parker House that drew guests to the hotel. Names such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

These men and others, later coined the Saturday Club, met at the Parker House every last Saturday of the month. The literary connection and the hotel’s hospitality drew Charles Dickens to the Parker House. He made the hotel his “home base” on various speaking tours. Dickens’ visit lends itself to supernatural stories, such as an unmanned elevator rising to the third floor where he stayed. Both Wilson and Sammarco say they have not been victims of ghostly encounters.