Greek Revival

Phillips School, Boston

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The Phillips School at the corner of Pinckney and Anderson Streets in Boston, in 1860. Photo taken by Josiah Johnson Hawes. Courtesy of the Boston Public Library.

The building in 2021:

A high school education is a near-ubiquitous experience for modern Americans, but this was not always the case. In the early years of the country’s history, secondary education was generally only available to white boys whose families had the inclination and financial ability to send them to a limited number of private academies. However, this concept began to change in the first half of the 19th century, when social reform helped lead to an increased access to education.

One of the first public high schools in the United States was the English High School in Boston, which opened in 1821. Unlike most of the earlier schools, which focused on preparing students for college, this school was intended more for middle class students, particularly those who were looking to become merchants and mechanics. The 1871 book Semi-Centennial History of The English High School provides an overview of the course of study at the school during its early years. In their first year, pupils studied:

Composition; Reading from the most approved authors; Exercises in criticism, comprising critical analyses of the language, grammar, and style of the best English authors, their errors and beauties; Declamation; Geography; Arithmetic continued; Algebra.

In their second year, they studied:

Composition; Reading; Exercises in criticism; Declamation; Algebra; Ancient and modern history and chronology; Logic; geometry; Plane Trigonometry, and its application to mensuration of heights and distances; Navigation; Surveying; Mensuration of superficies and solids; Forensic discussions.

And, in their third year, they studied:

Composition; Exercises in criticism; Declamation; Mathematics; Logic; History, particularly that of the United States; Natural Philosophy including Astronomy; Moral and Political Philosophy.

The school was housed at a temporary location for several years, but in 1824 it moved into this newly-constructed building at the corner of Pinckney and Anderson Streets on Beacon Hill. Although this neighborhood is predominantly residential, the school fit in well with its surroundings. Like the nearby rowhouses on Beacon Hill, the school was built of brick, and its design incorporated a blend of older Federal-style architecture with newer Greek Revival-style elements. It was formally dedicated at a ceremony on November 2, 1824, which was attended by a number of city dignitaries, including Mayor Josiah Quincy III and the Reverend John Pierpont, future maternal grandfather of financier J.P. Morgan. An article published in the November 13, 1824 issue of the Boston Recorder describes the event:

This new school house surpasses any other in the city for beauty and accommodations. Besides ample rooms below for ward meetings and other public purposes, the two higher stories contain accommodations for six hundred scholars, and the whole is warmed and ventilated by two furnaces. Its situation, on the most elevated spot in the city, commands a view of the heavens, which most admirably adapts it for astronomical pursuits, which constitute one of the important branches of instruction—and this alone would render it the most eligible location for the seminary. The handsome cupola on the summit is calculated to afford increased facilities for the same pursuit, and together with the commodious apartments below, furnishes, for the first time, sufficient space and accommodations for the preservation & employment of its fine collection of philosophical instruments.

The ceremony of the introduction of the Preceptor and pupils, by the Mayor and Aldermen and School Committee, attended by such parents and other citizens as chose to attend, was a most interesting scene. The Rev. Mr. Pierpont, of the School Committee, commenced by an appropriate and affecting prayer. The address by the Mayor to the pupils, a hundred and forty promising youths, fully explained to them the high privileges and most important advantages they enjoyed for education, the judicious and expensive patronage extended to the Seminary by the public—that in fact nothing was left undone to afford them every facility for their moral and intellectual improvement—and that if these superior advantages were not duly appreciated and improved by them, the fault must be acknowledged entirely their own. He explained to them the obvious and immediate advantages of their several studies for the advancement of their own personal pursuits, and for their improvement and elevation in their political relations as citizens.

The English High School remained at this location for the next 20 years. Enrollment fluctuated during this time, but was generally between 110 and 140 students in any given year. It dropped as low as 104 students in 1839, but by 1843 enrollment had risen to 170, the highest number while the English High School was in this building. However, graduation rates were low throughout this time. Of the 73 students who enrolled here in 1824, for example, only 13 subsequently graduated. Most years saw similar attrition rates, and the largest graduating class during this period was 24, out of 61 students who had entered in 1839.

The English High School relocated to a new building on Bedford Street in 1844, and the old building here on Beacon Hill became a grammar school. It was named the Phillips School, in honor of Boston’s first mayor, John Phillips, and it opened in the fall of 1844. However, just a few months later, on February 1, 1845, it was heavily damaged by a fire that started in a furnace flue in the basement. It was subsequently repaired, and by 1847 the school enrolled 369 boys.

The 1851 book Sketches of Boston, Past and Present includes a description of the school and its students:

The location of the district from which the school is gathered, is one of the most favorable in the city, as its pupils generally come from the first class families. While this fact is beneficial in many respects, it almost necessarily keeps the school “young,” as its pupils are early transferred to higher schools.

What this book’s description of the school did not include was the fact that it was exclusively for white students. At the time, Boston’s public schools were segregated, and black children who lived in the vicinity of Beacon Hill attended the Abiel Smith School, which still stands a few block away on Joy Street. However, change was already underway, beginning in 1848 when a black Boston resident, Benjamin Roberts, sued the city to allow his daughter to attend one of the white schools closer to their house, rather than the Smith School. He lost his lawsuit, and also lost the appeal, when the state’s Supreme Judicial Court upheld Boston’s segregated school system. Undeterred, Roberts then enlisted the help of the abolitionist community, both black and white, and successfully petitioned the state legislature to outlaw school segregation in Massachusetts. This law went into effect in 1855, and Massachusetts became the only state to ban school segregation in the 1800s, nearly a century before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education did the same at the national level.

Here on Beacon Hill, the Phillips School was among the first of Boston’s schools to be integrated, with 15 black students enrolling here for the first day of classes in the fall of 1855. This desegregation in Boston was celebrated by the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, which declared on September 7, 1855 that:

On Monday last, Boston ceased to be, for the first time in her history, contumaciously unjust and basely proscriptive in regard to equal school rights among her children, irrespective of complexions distinctions.

The newspaper then went on to provide an excerpt from the Evening Telegraph, which described the first day of integration:

The introduction of the colored youth into the schools, we are happy to say, was accomplished with general good feeling on the part of both teachers and white children. At the Phillips School, at the West End, one or two of the white boys were making a little merry sport at the colored pupils as they came up, but the principal, Mr. Hovey, stayed it at once by the quiet remark, ‘Is that your politeness to strangers?’ One enthusiastic white boy ran through Myrtle street, swinging his satchel, and crying out—’Hurrah! we are to have the darkies to-day, and I’m going to have one right side of me!’ . . . The appearance of the colored children in the heretofore by them unfrequented streets leading to the school houses created a ‘sensation’ among the neighbors, who filled the windows, probably in anticipation of trouble. So far as we can hear, there was none, however, in any part of the city.

The first photo was taken only a few years after integration, by prominent photographer Josiah Johnson Hawes. At this point it was still the Phillips School, but within a few years the school would relocate to a new building and would become the Wendell Phillips School, named in honor of the prominent abolitionist and son of the original namesake.

In the meantime, by the late 19th century the old building here in this scene had become a primary school, named the Sharp School. Among the teachers here at the Sharp School was Elizabeth N. Smith, who had been the first black teacher at an integrated school in Boston when she started her career at a different school in 1869. She eventually ended up teaching here at the Sharp School from 1894 until shortly before her death in 1899.

The Sharp School remained here until it closed in 1946, and the building was subsequently sold to the Boston School of Pharmacy. Then, in 1955 the building became the home of the Carnegie Institute, which focused on training medical professionals such as X-ray technicians, lab technicians, medical assistants, and medical secretaries. This school was still around as late as 1980, and was named the Carnegie Division of the Bay State Junior College. However, it appears to have closed soon after, because in 1983 this building was converted into condominiums, after more than 150 years of housing a wide variety of schools.

Today, over 160 years after Josiah Johnson Hawes took the first photo, the exterior of the building has remained well-preserved, despite many changes in use over the years. Its surroundings are also largely unchanged, with most of the early 19th century rowhouses still standing on the narrow streets of Beacon Hill. The old school building is significant not only for its role in the early history of public high school education in America, but also for its pioneering role in school desegregation. It is an important part of the Beacon Hill Historic District, and it is also a stop on the Black Heritage Trail, which highlights the history and landmarks of the free black community that prospered on Beacon Hill during the 19th century.

Ocean Bank, Stonington, Connecticut

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The First National Bank building, formerly the Ocean Bank, on the north side of Cannon Square in Stonington, in November 1940. Photo by Jack Delano, courtesy of the Library of Congress, FSA/OWI Collection.

The scene in 2021:

The first photo was taken in November 1940 by Jack Delano, a noted photographer who was employed by the Farm Security Administration in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In this capacity, he was part of a team of photographers who traveled around the country, documenting life in America during the Great Depression. He was in Connecticut during the fall of 1940, where he visited a number of cities and towns, including here in Stonington. His caption for this photo is simply, “A bank for sale in Stonington, Connecticut,” and he perhaps chose this subject as a way of representing the effects of the Depression on the once-prosperous whaling and fishing port.

Nearly a century before its demise in the Great Depression, the First National Bank of Stonington had its origins in 1851, with the incorporation of the Ocean Bank. This small Greek Revival bank building was constructed around this time, and the bank’s first president was Charles P. Williams, a former whaling ship captain. Williams had gained considerable wealth in the whaling industry, and he went on to further expand his fortune through real estate speculation. By the time he died in 1879, he was said to have been the wealthiest man in eastern Connecticut, with an estate valued at around $3 million.

In the meantime, the Ocean Bank became the First National Bank of Stonington in 1865, and it would remain in business here in this building for the next 75 years. However, the bank ultimately closed in February 1940, leaving the town of Stonington without any financial institutions. The bank’s president at the time, Judge J. Rodney Smith, explained in newspaper accounts that, although the bank itself was financially sound, the business conditions in town made the bank unprofitable for investors. He apparently did not cite specific reasons for this, but a likely cause was the ongoing Great Depression, along with the recent hurricane in September 1938, which battered coastal Connecticut.

As the sign in the first photo shows, the bank building was still for sale when Jack Delano took the photo some nine months after the bank closed. The building would ultimately be acquired by the Stonington Historical Society in 1942. The organization originally intended to turn the building into a museum and headquarters, but over the years it has instead been used as a rental property. Today, the historical society still owns the building, which has remained well-preserved in its 19th century appearance. It has also retained its original use as a bank, and it is currently a branch of Dime Bank, as shown on the sign on the left side in the 2021 photo.

Catskill Mountain House, Catskill, New York (2)

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The Catskill Mountain House, around the 1860s. Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.

The hotel around 1902. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2021:

As explained in more detail in the previous post, the Catskill Mountain House was the first major mountaintop hotel in the United States, along with being arguably the country’s first summer resort hotel. It was perched atop a scenic overlook along the Catskill Escarpment, where visitors could enjoy expansive views of the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding landscape. The hotel benefited from its proximity to New York City and other cities in the northeast, and throughout the 19th century it was a popular destination for the upper classes in American society.

The original section of the building, located behind the columns on the left side of the piazza, opened in 1824. However, the hotel was steadily expanded over the years until, by the 1860s, it had several large wings on the north side and a smaller wing on the south side. The first photo was taken sometime around the 1860s, showing this southern wing in the foreground. By the 1870s, though, this wing was significantly expanded to the rear of the building, as shown in the 1902 photo.

The Mountain House was still prosperous when this second photo was taken, but this would soon begin to change. In part, this was because of changing ways in which Americans traveled. The Catskills had benefitted from being located adjacent to a major transportation corridor, but the introduction of the automobile greatly expanded the places that Americans could visit on vacation. Aging hotels like the Mountain House had difficulty competing in this new environment, and the 1920s and 1930s were a period of steady decline. It eventually closed its doors for the last time after the 1942 season, and it stood here vacant and deteriorating for the next two decades.

The iconic piazza here on the east side of the hotel was badly damaged by a hurricane in 1950, and several years later most of the wings were dismantled for architectural salvage, in the hopes of using that income to restore the original portion of the building. However, these rehabilitation plans never materialized, and the property was eventually acquired by the state in 1962. With no interest in restoring the building, and recognizing the danger that the ruins posed to trespassers, the state deliberately burned it on January 25, 1963. Today, the site of the hotel is an open field, but visitors here can still enjoy the same expansive views that drew thousands of visitors up here to the Mountain House throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Catskill Mountain House, Catskill, New York

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The view of the Catskill Mountain House, around 1900-1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2021:

The first photo shows the Catskill Mountain House, which was one of the most famous hotels in America during the 19th century. It opened in 1824 on a rocky ledge atop the Catskill Escarpment, and it was arguably the nation’s first resort hotel. The building steadily expanded over the years, in the process becoming a must-see attraction for any tour of the United States. Its luxurious accommodations, combined with the cool mountain air and expansive views, made it a popular summer destination. Many distinguished guests stayed here throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and the hotel also played a crucial role in the first truly American artistic movement, which came to be known as the Hudson River School.

Prior to the early 19th century, Americans did not place a high value on the mountains of the northeast. At best, mountain ranges such as the Catskills were seen as obstacles to transportation with little agricultural value; at worst, they were seen a dangerous, hostile wilderness. However, these ideas started to shift with the rise of the Romantic movement, and popular early 19th century writers such as Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper began to extoll the virtues of the American wilderness. Around the same time, artists such as Thomas Cole drew inspiration from the mountains and painted dramatic landscapes of the scenery. Drawn by these descriptions and paintings, the middle and upper classes of the northeast soon began to venture into the wilderness, particularly here in the Catskills.

Geologically, the Catskills are the northeasternmost portion of the Appalachian Plateau, a large dissected plateau that runs to the west of the main ridge of the Appalachian mountains. The plateau extends from Alabama to New York, before coming to an abrupt end here at the Catskill Escarpment. The escarpment is more than two thousand feet in elevation, but from here the landscape drops sharply to the east, with rocky cliffs and steep slopes that form a dividing line between the mountains and the Hudson River Valley. The river is less than eight miles away from here, so the escarpment had long provided a dramatic backdrop for travelers heading north and south along the river corridor. And, as a few adventurous visitors had begun to discover by the early 19th century, the top of the escarpment offered even more dramatic views of the landscape.

This particular site, which came to be known as Pine Orchard, is located near the northern end of the escarpment, about nine miles to the west of the village of Catskill. Here, the edge of the escarpment dips slightly, forming a low point between the 2,480-foot South Mountain and the 3,180-foot North Mountain. Just to the west of here are two lakes, North Lake and South Lake, which are drained by a stream that drops down Kaaterskill Falls, one of the most dramatic waterfalls in the Catskills. This stream then passes through Kaaterskill Clove, a scenic ravine that separates South Mountain from Kaaterskill High Peak further to the south. So, in short, this area around Pine Orchard formed a sort of microcosm of Catskill scenery; it had mountains, lakes, waterfalls, and ravines, along with rocky cliffs with scenic views of both the narrow, wild Kaaterskill Clove and the broad, cultivated Hudson River Valley.

One of the earliest published descriptions of this area was written by Timothy Dwight IV, the president of Yale College. He visited the Catskills in 1815 and subsequently wrote about the scenery in Travels in New England and New York, which was published posthumously in 1822. In this book, he described the two lakes, along with the “stupendous and awful grandeur” of Kaaterskill Clove, which he believed was second only to Niagara Falls among the many scenic places that he visited. He then described the escarpment itself, and the expansive views of the Hudson River Valley and beyond. Although he did not mention it by name, his vantage point on the escarpment was likely here in the vicinity of Pine Orchard, and he declared that “[a] more distinct and perfect view of a landscape cannot be imagined.”

Just a year after the publication of Travels of New England and New York, made an appearance in James Fenimore Cooper’s 1823 novel The Pioneers. The book is a work of fiction, and like Dwight’s book it does not mention the site by name, but Cooper’s protagonist Natty Bumpo was clearly describing this spot when he spoke of a place in the Catskills,

where one of the ridges juts out a little from the rest, and where the rocks fall, for the best part of a thousand feet, so much up and down, that a man standing on their edges is fool enough to think he can jump from top to bottom.

Further in the narrative, he describes how one can see “all creation” from here, and how,

If being the best part of a mile in the air and having men’s farms and houses your feet, with rivers looking like ribbons, and mountains bigger than the ‘Vision seeming to be hay-stacks of green grass under you, gives any satisfaction to a man, I can recommend the spot.

Natty Bumpo then goes on to describe several other nearby landscape features, including the lakes, the waterfall, and Kaaterskill Clove.

While writers such as Dwight and Cooper were using their literary talents to capture the scenic wilderness here in the Catskills, other more entrepreneurially-minded individuals were working to make this scenery more accessible to the general public. By 1822, the Catskills were described in the New York Spectator as a place that was “becoming an extensive place of fashionable resort.” The article went on to explain how “for the public accommodation a house of entertainment has lately been erected at what is called the Pine Orchard.” This was the site of a grand ball in September 1822, and the following spring a group of investors formed the Catskill Mountain Association in order to build a hotel here at Pine Orchard.

Early records indicate that there were “old buildings” at Pine Orchard prior to the Catskill Mountain Association purchasing this property in 1823, although it seems unclear as to whether this refers to the 1822 “house of entertainment,” or whether there were buildings here even before 1822. Either way, the hotel was operational during the 1823 season, using temporary quarters while construction was underway on a permanent hotel.

The new hotel was opened in the spring of 1824, and it would stand here atop the precipice for nearly 140 years, although it would undergo a number of alterations and expansions along the way. The original 1824 building was 60 feet long, 24 feet wide, and three stories high, and it featured a columned piazza here on the eastern façade. It had just 10 rooms, but a successful 1824 season prompted the owners to embark on a large addition for the next year, which added 50 rooms to the hotel. This project involved building two new wings, with one to the north of the 1824 structure and another in the rear to the west. Like the main section, the north wing had a columned piazza, although this wing was set back a little further from the cliff.

After 1825, the appearance of the building remained largely unchanged until the mid-1840s, when Charles L. Beach purchased the hotel. His father, Erastus Beach, was a livery company owner who operated stagecoaches from the village of Catskill to the Mountain House. As a 15-year-old boy, Charles Beach had worked for his father during the summer of 1823, bringing guests up the mountain to the temporary hotel here at this site. Charles would subsequently go on to have a successful business career, including owning several stagecoach lines of his own, before leasing the Catskill Mountain House in 1839. He then purchased the property in 1845, and soon set about improving both the building and the grounds.

Among the changes that Beach made was a large wing on the north side of the building, along with a smaller addition to the east side of the 1825. The latter made the building’s main facade longer, which enabled Beach to construct a large piazza here, with 13 large Corinthian columns. These columns, which were joined by four matching ones on the west side of the hotel, would become the hotel’s most distinctive architectural feature, and they would remain a part of its design for more than a century. Along with these improvements to the building, Beach also made changes to the surrounding land. The hotel’s holdings eventually grew to about 3,000 acres, with a network of trails that led to scenic overlooks and other points of interest. By the mid-19th century, the hotel also offered recreational opportunities like carriage and horseback rides through the grounds, and boating and fishing on the nearby lakes.

During these early years, guests reached the hotel by way of the Old Mountain Road, which linked the hotel to the steamboat landings on the Hudson River in Catskill. It was on this road that the teenaged Charles Beach had transported guests during the summer of 1823, and it would remain in use throughout most of the 19th century, until the stagecoaches were finally replaced by railroads. During the 1820s and 1830s, fare from Catskill to the Mountain House was a dollar, and there were generally two daily trips up the mountain, with stagecoaches taking about four hours to make the 12-mile trip. The first two-thirds of this journey was over relatively flat ground, but the last portion was a strenuous climb, with the road gaining about 1,500 feet of elevation in four miles. Partway up this section of road was the Rip Van Winkle House, located alongside a stream at a place known as Sleepy Hollow. First constructed around the mid-1820s, and later expanded into a boarding house, this establishment offered rest and refreshment to travelers and horses on their journey up the mountain, while also making the dubious claim of having been the setting for Washington Irving’s short story “Rip Van Winkle.”

Over the years, the Catskill Mountain House was a popular summer resort destination for the upper classes of New York, Philadelphia, and elsewhere in the northeast, along with being a stop on the American equivalent of the Grand Tour. Many distinguished guests came to the hotel during this time, including presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Chester A. Arthur. However, perhaps the single most significant visit to the Mountain House occurred in the fall of 1825, when a young artist named Thomas Cole traveled to the Catskills. He subsequently produced five paintings of the scenery in the vicinity of the Mountain House, and these were put on public display in New York City. Cole had been only a marginally successful artist up to this point, producing a mix of portraits, landscapes, and genre paintings. With his Catskill paintings, though, he soon gained attention as one of the nation’s leading landscape artists, and he helped to popularize the Catskills as a scenic destination.

Cole would make many more visits to the Catskills over the years, eventually moving to the village of Catskill, and the mountains—including the Mountain House itself—became a common subject in his paintings. Many other artists followed his lead in painting the Catskills, along with other scenic landscapes in the northeast. The result was what became known as the Hudson River School, an artistic movement that emphasized dramatic, romanticized landscapes of the American wilderness. This was generally regarded as the first distinctly American art movement, and its name is based on its origins in the vicinity of the Hudson River, particularly here in the Catskills. Aside from Cole, many other prominent landscape artists spent time in the Catskills and featured the mountains in their paintings, including Frederic Edwin Church, Asher Durand, Sanford Robinson Gifford, and John Frederick Kensett.

For the first half century of its existence, the Catskill Mountain House was indisputably the premier resort in the region. The rooms here were priced accordingly, and by the mid-19th century it cost guests $2.50 per night to stay here. This was a considerable amount of money at the time, and part of the reason for the high rates was to cover the hotel’s operating expenses, particularly the cost of transporting food and other supplies up the mountain. However, these rates also helped maintain a level of exclusivity to the hotel, and the Mountain House did not face any serious competition here in the Catskills until late in the 19th century.

This period of hegemony came to an abrupt end in 1881, when two new resort hotels opened in the Catskills. The Mountain House had long been the largest in the region, but it now found itself only the third-largest, with an aging facility that could only be accessed via a bumpy uphill stagecoach ride. One of the two new resorts was the Grand Hotel, located about 25 miles west of here in the village of Highmount. However, a far more serious threat to the Mountain House was the Hotel Kaaterskill, which was practically built in the older hotel’s backyard. As the story goes, Philadelphia patent attorney George Harding was visiting the Mountain House during the summer of 1880, and he requested chicken for his daughter, who had dietary restrictions. However, the kitchen refused to prepare a meal that was not on the menu, and Charles Beach challenged Harding to build his own hotel if he wanted chicken. There are many variations of this story, but regardless of the details, Harding went on to do just that, sparing no expense to construct a massive hotel in time for the 1881 season.

Despite this new competition, the Mountain House still benefitted from its long history and tradition, which the new hotels could not replicate. However, nostalgia could only do so much, and the building’s age also worked against it. The hotel had been constructed piecemeal over the course of many years, and its guest rooms were small and corridors narrow compared to the modern competitors. The new hotels benefitted from direct railroad service, while Mountain House guests still arrived via the same route that Charles Beach and his father had operated some 60 years earlier.

Beach had come a long way since his first trip up the mountain as a teenaged stagecoach driver, but he was still operating the hotel throughout the late 19th century, and still introducing innovations. He had expanded the hotel several more times, including a south wing, which was built in the 1860s and stands on the left side of the first photo. Then, in the 1870s, he added a much larger wing on the southwestern side of the building, creating an enclosed courtyard within the building. At some point after that, a smaller addition on the west side created a second courtyard. The last major additions appear to have been completed by the early 1880s, giving the hotel a capacity of around 400 guests, and by the time the first photo was taken, the building had largely assumed its final appearance.

To address the transportation issue, Beach constructed the Catskill Mountain Railroad, a narrow gauge railroad that connected the village of Catskill to the base of the mountain. He also reached an agreement with George Harding, and built a road connecting the railroad station at the Hotel Kaaterskill with the Mountain House. This arrangement was mutually beneficial, as it made the Mountain House more accessible while also increasing ridership on Harding’s railroad. However, the most ambitious of Beach’s improvements was the Otis Elevating Railway, a 1.3-mile funicular railroad that ascended the steep Catskill Escarpment to the east of the Mountain House, providing direct access from the Catskill Mountain Railroad to the hotel. By making use of this railroad connection, guests could now make the journey from the Hudson River to the Mountain House in 40 to 50 minutes, in contrast to the thee or four hours that it had previously taken by stagecoach.

The first photo was taken sometime during the first decade of the 20th century. The Mountain House was still a prosperous hotel at this point, but it would soon enter a dramatic decline, as would the other grand resorts in the Catskills. There was an element of foreshadowing in the fall of 1902, when longtime rivals George Harding and Charles Beach both died within a month and a half of each other. Beach’s death occurred just shy of 80 years after he had brought his first stagecoach full of passengers to the Mountain House, and nearly 60 years after he had acquired ownership of the hotel.

His death certainly marked the end of an era here in the Catskills, but there were also more subtle changes that would soon affect the hotel, including the increasing trend of automobile ownership. The Catskills had long benefitted from its proximity to New York City and its many railroad and steamboat connections, but automobiles changed the way that Americans vacationed, now that they were no longer restricted to places within easy access of railroads. The Catskills also saw changing demographics here at the old resort hotels. Once the domain of upper-class Protestants, by the early 20th century the region had become popular among immigrants, including Italians, Jews, and other ethnic minorities.

The Beach family continued to own the Catskill Mountain House throughout the 1910s and 1920s, although by this point it would enter a decline that it would never recover from. In the mid-1910s the Otis Elevating Railway closed because of low ridership, and the tracks were removed in 1918 as scrap metal for the war effort. The nearby Hotel Kaaterskill burned in September 1924 and was never rebuilt, but this loss of its greatest rival did little to improve business here at the Mountain House. While the Kaaterskill had been destroyed by a spectacular blaze in a matter of hours, the demise of the Mountain House would prove much more prolonged and anticlimactic.

As bad as the 1920s were here at the Mountain House, the Great Depression of the 1930s proved even more challenging. In 1930, the family of Charles Beach sold more than 2,100 acres of the surrounding land to the state of New York. Soon after, they sold the hotel itself, with its dramatically reduced acreage. It would continue to operate throughout the 1930s, under the ownership of Milo Moseman and Clyde Gardiner. They, in turn, leased it to the Andron family, who renamed it Andron’s Mountain House and catered primarily to Jewish tourists, serving kosher meals in the dining room.

The Mountain House managed to limp through the Depression years, but the start of World War II proved to be the final blow for the old hotel. The Androns chose not to renew their lease for the 1942 season, leaving it to Moseman—by this point the sole owner—to attempt to run the hotel by himself in 1942. As a young man, Moseman had worked as a bellboy here during the hotel’s glory days, and as owner he tried in vain to preserve the building that he had fallen in love with. However, his 1942 season proved to be a failure, and the Mountain House closed its doors for the last time at the end of the season.

The fate of the historic building remained in limbo for the next two decades. The state was very interested in acquiring the property and incorporating it into the surrounding Catskill Park, but they had no intent to preserve the hotel, so Moseman rebuffed their offers in the hopes of restoring and reopening it himself. These plans were seriously hampered, though, by a hurricane that hit the area in the fall of 1950, destroying many of the iconic columns here on the main façade. Then, a year later, Moseman decided to sell the north and south wings to a demolition company for $70,000. These wings were dismantled in 1952 and 1953, resulting in the loss of about two-thirds of the building. Moseman only retained the central 1820s section of the hotel, including the remaining columns in the portico.

Moseman had hoped to use the income from the sale of the wings to fund the restoration of the remaining section, and he floated a variety of plans for the reuse of the building. However, he died in 1958 at the age of 70, ending the last real hope of saving the hotel. His heirs subsequently sold the property to a real estate company that, in turn, sold it to the state in 1962. By this point, the badly-deteriorated structure had become an attractive nuisance to hikers and other curious visitors who ventured into the ruins, so during the summer of 1962 the state demolished the piazza and its remaining columns. Then, in the early morning hours of January 25, 1963, the state deliberately burned the remaining portion of the nearly 140-year-old building.

Today, more than a century after the first photo was taken and nearly two centuries after the Mountain House was built here, there is little evidence of its existence here. The site of the hotel is now an open field, and perhaps the only real signs of its longtime prosperity are the many names and initials scrawled into the rocks here along the cliff. However, while there are no longer any grand 19th century resort hotels here, this area remains a popular destination for visitors to the Catskills, who continue to visit places like Kaaterskill Falls, the lakes, and the many scenic overlooks along the escarpment. The only overnight accommodations are campsites at the nearby North-South Lake Campground, which is a very different experience from staying at the Mountain House, yet it is perhaps more in keeping with the way that early visitors like Timothy Dwight would have seen this area in the early 19th century.

For further information, I would highly recommend The Catskill Mountain House by Roland Van Zandt, published in 1966. This book is well-researched and well-written, and contains detailed information about the Mountain House, the surrounding landscape, and its role in influencing the artists of the Hudson River School, along with many images of the abandoned hotel taken by the author in the early 1960s. It was a valuable resource for writing this blog post, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the Catskills.

Middle Street, Hadley, Mass

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The view looking north on Middle Street towards Russell Street in Hadley, around 1900. Image from History of Hadley (1905).

The scene in 2021:

Hadley is one of the oldest towns in western Massachusetts, having been first settled by European colonists in 1659 and incorporated as a town two years later. Its terrain is mostly flat, and it is situated on the inside of a broad curve in the Connecticut River, giving it some of the finest farmland in New England. The main settlement developed in this vicinity, with a broad town common on what is now West Street. This common was the town center during the colonial period, and it was the site of three successive meetinghouses beginning in 1670.

The third meetinghouse, which is shown here in these photos, was completed on the town common in 1808. This location was a matter of serious contention, as by the turn of the 19th century much of the town’s development had shifted east toward what is now Middle Street. Tradition ultimately prevailed, and the third meetinghouse was built on the common. However, this proved to be only temporary, because in 1841 it was relocated. The intended location was to be a compromise, located halfway between the common and Middle Street, but the movers ignored this and brought the building all the way to Middle Street, to its current location just south of Route 9.

Architecturally, this meetinghouse reflects some of the changes that were occurring in New England church designs. Prior to the late 18th century, the region’s churches tended to be plain in appearance. Many did not have steeples, and those steeples that did exist tended to rise from the ground level on the side of the building, rather than being fully incorporated into the main section of the church. This began to change with prominent architects like Charles Bulfinch, who drew inspiration from classical architecture when designing churches and other buildings. Bulfinch’s churches tended to feature a triangular pediment above the main entrance, with a steeple that rose from above the pediment, rather than from the ground.

Bulfinch does not appear to have played a hand in designing Hadley’s church, but its builder was clearly influenced by his works. It has a pediment with a steeple above it, and it also has a fanlight above the front door, and a Palladian window on the second floor. Other classically-inspired decorative elements include pilasters flanking the front entrance and dentils around the pediment. As for the steeple itself, it does not bear strong resemblance to the ones that Bulfinch designed, but the builder likely took inspiration from other 18th century New England churches. In particular, it bears a strong resemblance the steeples of churches such as Old North Church in Boston and the First Church of Christ in Wethersfield, Connecticut.

Aside from moving the church to this site, the other major event of 1841 that solidified Middle Street as the town center was the construction of a town hall here. Prior to this point, town meetings were held in the church, as was the case in most Massachusetts towns in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Massachusetts was slow to create a separation between church and state, and not until 1833 did the state outlaw the practice of taxing residents to support local churches. Here in Hadley, this soon led to a physical separation between the church and the town government, although as shown in this scene the two buildings stood side-by-side on Middle Street.

While the church features Bulfinch-inspired architecture, the design of the town hall reflects the Greek Revival style of the mid-19th century. This style was particularly popular for government and other institutional buildings of the period, as it reflected the democratic ideals of ancient Greece. The town hall is perhaps Hadley’s finest example of this style, with a large portico supported by four Doric columns, along with Doric pilasters in between the window bays on all four sides of the building.

The first photo shows Middle Street around the turn of the 20th century, looking north toward the church, the town hall, and Russell Street further in the distance. The photo also shows a house on the foreground, just to the right of the church. Based on its architecture, this house likely dated back to about the mid-18th century, but it was gone by 1903, when the current house was built on the site. This house was originally the home of Dr. Frank Smith, and it was designed by Springfield architect Guy Kirkham.

Today, the town of Hadley is significantly larger than it was when the first photo was taken more than 120 years ago. Russell Street is now Route 9, a major east-west thoroughfare that has significant commercial development thanks to Hadley’s position at the center of the Five Colleges region. Likewise, Middle Street is far from the dirt road in the first photo, and it is now Route 47. However, much of Hadley has retained its historic appearance, including its extensive farmland and its many historic buildings. Here on Middle Street, both the church and the town hall are still standing. They have seen few major exterior changes during this time, and the church is still an active congregation, while the town hall remains the seat of Hadley’s town government. Both buildings are now part of the Hadley Center Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.

Philadelphia Arcade, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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The Arcade Hotel on the north side of Chestnut Street, between Sixth and Seventh Streets in Philadelphia, in January 1858. Image courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia, Frederick De Bourg Richards Collection.

The scene in 2019:

In 1819, the Burlington Arcade opened in London, becoming one of the earliest precursors to the modern shopping mall. It soon inspired similar buildings here in the United States, including ones in New York, Providence, and here in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Arcade, shown here in the first photo, was designed by John Haviland, an architect who was responsible for many important buildings in early 19th century Philadelphia. Work on the building began in 1826, and it was completed a year later, at a cost of $112,000.

In the architectural sense, an arcade is a series of arches, and this building featured four large arches here on the Chestnut Street façade. The Arcade extended the width of the block to Carpenter Street (modern-day Ranstead Street), and on the interior it featured three floors The first two floors each had two parallel hallways, or “avenues,” that were topped by skylights, and these avenues were lined by shops and offices on either side. On the third floor was the Philadelphia Museum, which had been established by prominent artist Charles Willson Peale. In total, the Arcade could house 80 shops and professional offices, and it also had a restaurant in the basement.

The intent was that this section of Chestnut Street would become the commercial center of the city, with the Arcade as an upscale shopping center that would attract high-end tenants and affluent customers. From the beginning, however, the Arcade struggled to fill vacant spaces in the building, and an 1829 report lists just 33 tenants here. In general, the ground floor primarily housed retail shops, selling goods such as books, boots and shoes, clothing, confectioneries, dry goods, lamps, and tobacco. The second floor also featured several stores, but it was primarily office space, with tenants such as lawyers, editors, employment services, an engraver, and a bookkeeping teacher. Overall, these businesses here in this building offered customers a variety of goods and services, but these were hardly the exclusive boutique shops that the Arcade’s founders had envisioned.

The decline of the Arcade continued over the next few decades, especially after the Philadelphia Museum moved to a new location. The building was eventually purchased by Dr. David Jayne, who converted the upper floors into the Arcade Hotel. It opened in 1853, and it provided accommodations for men only, at a rate of 50 cents per night. Guests could also eat here at the hotel, for 25 cents per meal for breakfast or supper, or 50 cents for dinner. The Arcade Hotel had nearly 200 guest rooms, and it also featured a saloon, a reading room, and a smoking room, in addition to the dining room. The saloon was located here at the front of the building, with a balcony that was likely added during the hotel renovations.

The first photo was taken a few years later, showing the Chestnut Street façade of the building. It was still in use as a hotel at this point, with storefronts on the ground floor, but it would only stand here for a few more years. In 1863, it was demolished and replaced by three new commercial buildings. These buildings, in turn, have long since been demolished, and most of this block is now One Independence Mall, a high-rise office building that has a parking garage here on the lower floors.