Meet our Long Island B&B innkeeper and learn the history of the inn.
Innkeeper Marilyn Marks grew up and was educated in England, graduating from a London college with a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design and Illustration and a minor in Textile Design. After a few years working as a designer for the BBC her entrepreneurial spirit took hold and she opened a textile design studio creating original textile art for the fashion industry. Taking charge of sales led her to travel to all the major fashion capitals of the world, eventually leading her to settle in New York City. There she embarked on a career that spanned all the creative and design aspects of the apparel and home fashion fields, including creating her own line of women’s clothing sold in such stores as Saks 5th Avenue and specialty boutiques throughout the USA, and later in her career, directing a textile design studio and sales agency representing artists from around the globe.
Growing up in England, the love of gardening and the countryside was in her blood, so in her spare time and for fun she indulged this passion by studying horticulture and landscape design at the New York botanical gardens in the Bronx and creating complex landscapes and gardens in each of the houses she owned over the years.
When a complete change of pace seemed in order, Marilyn made a list of all the things she loved to do as well as those she didn’t and came up with the idea of opening a Long Island B&B. She was blessed to find Shorecrest Bed and Breakfast on the North Fork of Long Island, remarkably situated in the midst of wine and farm country and with its own private beaches on both the Shelter Bay inlet and Long Island sound, with expansive views of the water on all sides.
History of our Long Island B&B
The Shorecrest Bed and Breakfast has been operating as an Long Island B&B for over 25 years, and could not have been a more perfect find; a beautiful and unique house in an ideal spot on a parcel of land ideal for creating a garden. Her life time collections of art, textiles, and antique furniture fitted perfectly into this 1897 ‘four square’ historic home, which she now runs along with a thriving vacation rental business, holiday homes she cares for as meticulously as she does her Inn. The landscape she has created literally turns the heads of drivers passing by on route 48.
