A schoolhouse revival Blackboards are up, and the lesson is on comfort

LEE -- Take a 19th-century parochial school, add European elegance and American comfort, and you have the distinctive Chambry Inn. Built in 1885 as the Berkshires' first parochial school, the old St. Mary's School faced the wrecking ball a century later.

In 1988, thirty-one years after the parish had built a new school, Joseph M. Toole, a Lee businessman and lifelong resident, bought the old one. In May 1989, the historic building was moved one block to its present location at the corner of Main and Elm streets. After months of pondering the best use for the imposing structure, Toole settled on a European-style country inn. He named it Chambry for the native French city of the teaching order Sisters of Saint Joseph. Five nuns had come to Lee in 1885 to teach six grades of American children. Only two of the women could speak English.

With its gray clapboards, vertical design, and tall windows, the inn still looks like a schoolhouse, and Toole has retained many of its distinctive details. In the foyer are two staircases, one marked ''girls" and the other ''boys." On the second-floor landing, a water fountain is tucked into the wall and an old-fashioned desk displays an original registry of students from the early 1930s.

Rooms are large (up to 500 square feet) and bright, with 13-foot ceilings. In most rooms, one wall is given over to the blackboard that was a staple of each classroom, complete with chalk and a felt eraser. Many include fireplaces and whirlpool tubs. A French theme is evident in room names (La Normandie, Petit Palais) and decor, with lace curtains, Impressionist-style paintings, and French country furniture.

A delightful breakfast basket delivered to your room each morning includes a pot of coffee, fruit juice, cereal or yogurt with fruit, and choice of muffin, scone, or bagel with French preserves.

We made reservations at the last minute and stayed in the handicapped-accessible unit on the lower level, L'Atelier, one of the few rooms without the signature blackboard. Despite its being one of the inn's economy rooms, we found it spacious and attractive, with soft yellow walls, dusty rose trim, and framed oil paintings of sunflowers and peasant women haying. Three deep windows let in lots of light, and room-darkening shades shut out the morning sun. We enjoyed our breakfast basket in two ladder-back chairs at a drop-leaf table.

The large bathroom offered plenty of storage, a hair dryer, toiletries from Garden Botanika, and the best-stocked mini-sewing kit we've ever seen.

Each room includes a tray with a pitcher and drinking glasses, and guests have access to a kitchen area with an ice machine, ice buckets, stemware, and corkscrews. Hot and cold beverages can be requested until 8:30 p.m.; hot and iced coffee and tea are free, and there is a small charge for soda and mineral water.

An extraordinary amount of information is in the guest directory about things to do in the area in each season, with attractions categorized according to their distance from the inn. Restaurant menus are in the lobby, and guests can help themselves to brochures on area attractions.

The only thing we missed was a common room for meeting other guests. For travelers seeking the charm of a B&B with the privacy of a hotel, however, the inn is an ideal middle ground.

Staying with the French theme, we had dinner at From Ketchup to Caviar, a block away. This Zagat-rated restaurant serves French-American cuisine in two small dining rooms and, weather permitting, outdoors on a large front porch. From the spring menu, we shared an appetizer of Duxbury mussels with chorizo, white wine, garlic, shallots, and fresh herbs, followed by seared Maine salmon over asparagus and onion bread pudding and fricassee of organic chicken braised with white wine, artichokes, and grain mustard served over cannelloni beans.

Lee is a perfect base from which to explore the Berkshires, with Routes 7 and 20 running through town. It has the kind of old New England town center where businesses are barely distinguishable from homes, the firehouse resembles a church, and barbershops still display striped poles out front. The Greylock Federal Credit Union on Main Street, with its wood doors, leaded glass windows, and tellers peering through metal bars, looks like a bank Bonnie and Clyde might have robbed.

Ellen Albanese can be reached at ealbanese@globe.com.