The Ritter House is an historic house on Beach Street in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, USA, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The house is one of the few remaining Federal period buildings in Vineyard Haven. It has had a succession of occupants and uses, and as of 2007 served as a retail establishment.HistoryThe house was built in 1796 on what was then known as “Quality Street“, next to the Mansion House hotel in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, the main port of the island of Martha's Vineyard. Originally built by Jirah Luce, it was occupied early by the highly respected Connecticut physician Dr. Rufus Spaulding (1760–1830) until about 1812, when he returned to his home state. Dr. Spaulding ran the house as an inn, and Spaulding himself was described by historian Charles Banks as "doctor, postmaster, justice, village librarian, inn-keeper, and Master of the lodge of Masons." Other sources note that this house was at one time a tavern, and later became the first post office and library in the town of Tisbury. The house was inherited by Dr. Spaulding’s daughter Sophronia and her husband, Thomas West.Another early resident was Stephen deNeuville (1778–1816), aka "Stephen New", a young French sea-captain. The house was inherited by his daughter Hannah Chase DeNeuville and her husband Orrick Peck Branscomb (1809–1859), a shoemaker and general store owner who moved to the island from Maine in the early 1830s. This house is often referred to as the “Branscomb House” in many older references. The house barely survived a major fire in 1883, which destroyed the entire downtown portion of Vineyard Haven right to the edge of this property.
