ORLEANS — A hundred years ago, the landmark fishermen looked for when returning to Rock Harbor was a small colonial revival building on the marsh’s edge. Coffee was served there. Later, the place became a seafood shack run by George “Captain Cass” Morton and his family.

Morton and his wife lived in an apartment above the restaurant, which they took over when its owner retired in 1961. Until Morton’s death in 2012, he served hamburgers and lobster rolls from the front of the building and fishing gear out of the back. The restaurant closed during the pandemic and has remained quiet ever after.

Or at least that was true until this summer. On July 5, Captain Cass opened again under a new owner, Eastham resident Michelle Lamy, who purchased the building from Morton’s daughter Sue in 2022. Lamy took her time with building renovations — she says she hired only “the best of the best” for the work.

The building is dated 1930 by the Mass. Historical Commission, but Lamy suspects it’s older. She says the original doors, which are still present in their frames, date back to the 1920s.

Lamy had most of the interior redone, but an original bathroom door still hangs on an interior wall. Visitors who look closely will see the names of Morton’s children carved into the wood.

What Lamy most wants to preserve is the sense of community she felt at Morton’s restaurant when he was in charge.

Morton was “a heck of a nice guy,” says Al Youngren, the local fisherman who gave “Captain Cass” his now-immortalized nickname back in 1960 during Morton’s first day bullraking for quahogs on Chet Higgins’s dragger. The full appellation, “Cass-a-Boo-Boo,” is a play on Joseph Kasa-Vubu, the first president of what was then called the Republic of Congo, who frequently made the news in the 1960s. “I called him on the radio and it kind of stuck,” Youngren says.

At the time, Morton and his wife had just moved to Orleans from Worcester. “He had an executive job up there, I was told, and he’d had enough of that,” says Charlie Miller, an Orleans fisherman who says he worked at Morton’s restaurant when he was about nine years old. Miller’s job was to refill empty soda bottles; the pay was a cheeseburger and a chocolate frappe every day. The original Coke machine is still on display in Lamy’s version of the restaurant.

Miller also remembers Ella Smith, who owned the coffee shop before it became Captain Cass. “She would give you a cup of coffee with a cigarette in her mouth,” Miller says. “The ashes from the cigarette would fall into your coffee.”

Miller took Morton’s place on the quahog dragger when Morton started running lobster pots out of Nauset Inlet. Most of the lobsters that Morton caught, Miller says, were served at the restaurant. The building became a favorite hangout for fishermen, who recognized “Captain Cass” by his bicycle and his signature buffalo plaid hat.

The restaurant has proved just as popular under Lamy, which has created some challenges for Orleans Harbormaster Nate Sears. Captain Cass Restaurant shares its parking lot with Rock Harbor’s commercial wharf, which is currently in the throes of a significant redevelopment project. That construction closed off the sidewalk connecting the restaurant to the harbor’s recreational parking lot, essentially forcing patrons to use the commercial lot instead.

Sears has ended up allowing some restaurant parking in the commercial lot while reserving some spots for wholesale fish trucks to use while the pier remains under construction. He also established a one-way roundabout to direct traffic around Young’s Fish Market, a seafood shack that stands in the center of the parking lot.

“The goal is just to survive the season,” Sears says of the workarounds. But he says he’s glad to see so many people coming to Rock Harbor now that the restaurant is open again. Drawing people here was the motivation behind the commercial wharf revitalization.

Construction should wrap up sometime this winter. Once it’s done, Sears says, he’ll discuss getting Captain Cass patrons to park in the recreational lot. He says he also hasn’t written off designating some parking spaces for commercial slip holders.

The construction project also brought its share of challenges for Lamy, but it left her with one blessing in the form of several wooden pilings now ringing her restaurant’s outdoor seating area.

Those pilings came from the harbor’s commercial marina. Lamy recalls running out of the building waving and yelling when she saw a crane lifting the posts out of the water. She didn’t want them hauled away. They’re marked with grooves from boats rocking against them over the years.

Captain Cass is the only restaurant at Rock Harbor, but it doesn’t violate the Orleans zoning bylaw. Restaurants are allowed in the marine business district provided they don’t serve alcohol. Where the building doesn’t conform to code is in its side and rear setbacks, which are supposed to be 25 feet from the road, according to Town Planner George Meservey. But that was always the case, and because the use of the building didn’t change and there were no enlargements, nothing about Lamy’s reopening triggered compliance requirements.

There’s been a lot of jockeying for parking this summer, Meservey says, with the town trying to keep everybody happy. But it’s been worth the trouble.

“It’s a really vital shoreside restaurant where you can walk down the harbor and have your fish and chips,” he says.