I had to pause when I first saw the notice for a fundraiser this Saturday at the Captain Elihu Spicer Mansion in Mystic.

The cause is an excellent one, the financial aid programs at the Mystic branch of the Ocean Community YMCA. But where, I wondered, is the Elihu Spicer Mansion?

It turns out the mansion is probably familiar to most people with even a passing acquaintance with Mystic. It's the magnificent and imposing 1853 building at 15 Elm St., directly across from the Mystic & Noank library.

That location is not a coincidence. Spicer, a 19th-century shipping tycoon whom The Day called in an 1893 obituary "the most prominent man in Mystic," donated the land for the library and put up the money to build it.

The library was still under construction when Spicer died from complications from a carriage accident. His estate provided the money to finish it, though.

Many people have probably known Spicer's mansion through recent years, not formally named, mostly as a collection of apartments, a massive building behind a hulking 19th-century façade hidden in part behind decades of overgrown bushes.

It is certainly one of the grandest buildings in Mystic, on one of the largest lots in the tight little village, more than an acre and a half in all.

Many, like me, might have assumed that the work going on at the mansion over the last year has been a renovation of the apartments.

But actually the building, under new owners and with a new name in honor of its original creator, is in the midst of a transformation into a boutique bed and breakfast, an estimated $2 million project that the owners say will create a new level of luxury accommodation in Mystic.

A website under construction for the mansion shows high season prices of up to $795 a night for a 1,400-square foot suite with rich carved mahogany doors, floor-to-ceiling windows and a marble bathroom with heated floors.

Eric Gates of Stonington and his wife, Katharine, obligingly gave a tour of the mansion this week to me and a photographer.

Gates' family, which operates car dealerships in northeastern Connecticut, is creating the new bed and breakfast as a family project, with each family member contributing in some way to the process.

Gates agreed the scope of the project was a bit daunting for all from the outset.

And they have tried to tread carefully to preserve and restore as well as possible, a goal that was made easier, in part, because no major renovation was ever undertaken that undermined the original beauty and detail of the building. Remarkable historic detail has been preserved.

The incredible central staircase, which winds up through the middle of the 10,000-square-foot house - past a tiled fireplace flanked by old gaslight fixtures - with a carved hardwood banister the whole way up, three flights, leads to a paneled observation room at the very top, with windows that fully reveal the mansion's spectacular hilltop setting.

You can see all across the rooftops of the village of Mystic, out over the Mystic River, to ships passing distantly on Block Island Sound.

For Saturday's party, an assortment of some of Mystic's best restaurants will set up shop, each in one of the elaborate guest rooms, serving samplings from their menus.

Proceeds from the event will go to a fine cause, providing scholarships for Y programs to young people in a community Capt. Spicer cared so much for.

Spicer was by many accounts a larger-than-life figure, going to sea as a cabin boy at the age of nine from his native village of Noank. After a long career on ships traveling the world, he eventually went into business with Charles H. Mallory of Mystic, and they ran a very successful shipping line between New York and Galveston, Texas.

Spicer, who eventually divided his time between a home in Brooklyn and the mansion on Elm Street, was known at one time as a major benefactor in Mystic.

I am sure he would like to know that a fresh start for the building he cared so much about, one that seems like a great ship sailing above Mystic, will begin as a community fundraiser.

This is the opinion of David Collins

d.collins@theday.com

Twitter: @DavidCollinsCt