A beach house built in the 1980s shouldn't have this much of a story. And yet the Inn at Rodanthe - originally named Serendipity - has been battered by Atlantic storms, declared a public nuisance, physically picked up and moved down the road, and resurrected by a pair of self-described "extreme fans" of a movie that critics largely panned. Blue shutters and all, it's still standing.
Location
Rodanthe sits at the northern tip of the inhabited stretch of Hatteras Island, part of North Carolina's Outer Banks - that long, thin ribbon of barrier islands curling out into the Atlantic like a protective arm around the state's coastline. It is genuinely remote. The nearest city of any size is a long drive north across the Wright Memorial Bridge, and the island is connected to the mainland primarily by a single highway running its length.
The town of Rodanthe is small and unhurried, the kind of place where the main attractions are the ocean itself, the wild horses that occasionally wander the shoreline, and the Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge just to the north. The Inn sits directly on the beach, with the Atlantic immediately in front of it.
A practical note worth flagging: the driveway can be partially swallowed by shifting sand, and a 4x4 vehicle is recommended. This is Hatteras Island's way of reminding you that you are a guest of the geography, not the other way around.
A House With a Lot of History
Photo by Joyce Longobardi
The inn was built in the 1980s under the name Serendipity, at a time when it had around 122 meters (400 feet) of beachfront buffer between its foundations and the surf. Decades of rising water and coastal erosion steadily ate into that distance until the house was effectively teetering at the ocean's edge - partially in the surf at high tide, as the film's own description puts it.
Warner Bros. chose it precisely for that drama when filming Nights in Rodanthe in 2008, dressing it with the now-iconic blue shutters and wraparound decks. After the crew packed up and left, the shutters came down, the decks were removed, and the house - stripped of its cinematic glamour - was condemned and declared a public nuisance. Vandals moved in. Storms kept coming. A particularly bad one in 2009 buckled the road alongside it.
The original owners, who had everything tied up in the property, tried to sell for years and found no takers. Then Ben and Debra Huss came along. Devoted fans of the film, they purchased the house with a specific vision: move it to safety and restore it to look as it did on screen. In 2011, the house was physically transported on the back of a truck to its current location further inland - still oceanfront, still commanding, but no longer one bad storm away from becoming a footnote.
The Husses then set about the painstaking work of replication. They tracked down the same wallpaper used in the film's kitchen. They reinstalled the swinging kitchen doors that fans of the movie will immediately recognize. They sourced an antique bed matching the one in the blue bedroom where Richard Gere's character slept. Some original props from the production are scattered throughout.
The Accommodation
The house rises across four levels, with decks at multiple points and ocean views from nearly every angle. Six bedrooms sleep up to 12 people across a range of configurations: three kings, one queen, one double, and a twin room with two beds. There are four full bathrooms and one half bathroom.
The first level holds the main living area, kitchen, dining room, and a full bathroom. The kitchen is well-equipped for a group - full appliances, dishwasher, a Keurig for those who need something hot before they're willing to interact with other humans. The dining table seats eight. There's also a smaller table for two by the window, which feels very on-brand for this particular house.
The second level has four bedrooms, including the king master suite with deck access and ocean views, the queen room, the twin room, and the double bedroom. The third level holds another king bedroom alongside a rec area with a kitchenette, a large TV, and a foosball table - making it a decent self-contained retreat for whoever draws that particular room. The fourth level is a single king bedroom in what is essentially a tower, with ocean views that the listing describes, without much exaggeration, as going on forever.
Outside, there's a hot tub on the lower deck, a screened porch, a charcoal grill, a porch swing, and Adirondack chairs positioned for watching the water. The beach directly in front of the house is private. If you're lucky, and patient, you might spot dolphins from the upper deck.
Nights in Rodanthe (2008)
Nights in Rodanthe (2008) is based on Nicholas Sparks' 2002 novel of the same name and stars Diane Lane and Richard Gere - their third film together after The Cotton Club (1984) and Unfaithful (2002). The plot centers on Adrienne Willis (Lane), who arrives at Rodanthe to look after a friend's bed-and-breakfast while working through the wreckage of her marriage. The inn's only guest that weekend is Dr. Paul Flanner (Gere), a surgeon haunted by a patient's death on his operating table. A storm rolls in. Romance, inevitably, follows.
The film made $84.4 million worldwide against what was, by studio standards, a modest production. Critics were considerably less enthusiastic: it sits at 30% on Rotten Tomatoes and landed on several "worst of 2008" lists, including one from The Times. Time magazine later named it one of the ten worst romantic dramas ever made. None of this, it should be said, appears to have dampened enthusiasm for staying in the house where it was shot.
It's worth noting that the interior scenes were filmed on a separate soundstage - what you're experiencing at the inn is a loving reconstruction of that fictional interior, not the original set. The exterior, the decks, the ocean, the blue shutters - those are real. The rest is a very committed act of devotion by two people who loved a movie that most critics didn't, and decided to do something about it.
James Franco, Scott Glenn, Christopher Meloni, Viola Davis, and Mae Whitman also appear in the film, in case that tips the balance for anyone still on the fence about watching it beforehand. A box of tissues is, by general consensus, advisable.
Rodanthe, North Carolina, USA
