Buildings

Slater Mill, Pawtucket, Rhode Island

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A view of Slater Mill on the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, around 1897. Image from An Illustrated History of Pawtucket, Central Falls, and Vicinity (1897).

The scene in 2021:

This mill, located on the west side of the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, is an important landmark in the early history of the Industrial Revolution in America. The building has undergone many changes and expansions over the years, but the oldest portion—located in the central part of the building—was completed in 1793 by Samuel Slater, a British emigrant who is credited with bringing the Industrial Revolution to the United States.

The Industrial Revolution had started during the second half of the 18th century in Britain, where a series of inventors had developed ways of harnessing water power to spin thread and weave textiles. However, Britain closely guarded the details of these processes, in order to prevent foreign competition. This was also the case for the American colonies, where Britain discouraged manufacturing in order ensure that colonists purchased manufactured goods from the home country.

After gaining independence, the United States still found itself largely dependent upon British manufacturers, but many American entrepreneurs were interested in bringing these industrial innovations across the Atlantic. This was particularly true here in New England, where the region’s many fast-flowing rivers made it an ideal place for water-powered industry.

Among these early industrialists was Moses Brown, a member of a prominent family in Providence. His family had become wealthy during the colonial era as merchants and slave traders. In particular, his brother John was a notorious slave trader who continued the practice even after the federal government prohibited American ships from being used in the international slave trade. By contrast, Moses became a staunch abolitionist. He freed his own slaves, converted to Quakerism, and spoke out against both slavery and the slave trade. And, while his brother was still bringing enslaved people to America, Moses was looking to apply the new British textile manufacturing processes here in Rhode Island.

To accomplish this, in 1789 Moses established the firm of Almy & Brown, which was comprised of William Almy and Brown’s cousin, Smith Brown. Their goal was to make yarn, but they had poor-quality machinery and only limited knowledge about the manufacturing process, so it became clear that they needed someone who was familiar with the British system.

As it turned out, that person was 21-year-old Samuel Slater, who arrived in New York from England on November 18, 1789. He had been an apprentice at a textile mill in England, where he became familiar with the machinery that had been developed by inventor Richard Arkwright. In addition, he learned about the management side of the textile industry. So, by the time his apprenticeship term had ended, he not only knew how to build and maintain the machinery itself, but also how to operate a profitable factory.

However, by this point Richard Arkwright’s patents had expired, and Slater apparently believed that Britain would become too oversaturated with textile businesses. America, on the other hand, seemed to offer more potential for an aspiring young industrialist, and he knew that there were plenty of American entrepreneurs who were looking for someone with his knowledge and experience. With this in mind, he left England in September 1789, just two months after the end of his apprenticeship. Because of strict British laws against exporting machinery plans or drawings, Slater did not carry any with him, and he is said to have disguised himself as a farm laborer.

Upon arriving in New York, he soon heard of Moses Brown’s efforts to produce yarn, so he wrote to him on December 2, offering his services. Brown responded eight days later, and in his letter he explained the problem that his company faced:

We are destitute of a person acquainted with water-frame spinning; . . . As the frame we have is the first attempt of the kind that has been made in America, it is too imperfect to afford much encouragement;

He then went on to make his offer to Slater:

[W]e hardly know what to say to thee, but if thou thought thou couldst perfect and conduct them to profit, if thou wilt come and do it, thou shalt have all the profits made of them over and above the interest of the money they cost, and the wear and tear of them. We will find stock and be repaid in yarn, as we may agree, for six months. And this we do for the information thou can give, if fully acquainted with the business. After this, if we find the business profitable, we can enlarge it, or before, if sufficient proof of it be had on trial, and can make any further agreement that may appear best or agreeable on all sides.

These terms were acceptable to Slater, who traveled to Pawtucket in January 1790. However, once he arrived, he saw for himself the poor quality of the machinery, which was evidently worse than he had anticipated. Moses Brown would later tell Slater’s biographer, George S. White, that,

When Samuel saw the old machines, he felt down-hearted, with disappointment—and shook his head, and said ‘these will not do; they are good for nothing in their present condition, nor can they be made to answer.’

Slater then spent the next few months working on the machinery, with assistance from local craftsmen such as Sylvanus Brown and Slater’s future father-in-law, Oziel Wilkinson. They succeeded in constructing a water-powered spinning machine, and in April, Slater became a partner in the newly-established firm of Almy, Brown & Slater. A year later, Slater married Oziel Wilkinson’s daughter Hannah. She would go on to become an inventor in her own right, and in 1793 she became the first American woman to receive a patent when she developed a new way of making cotton sewing thread.

In the meantime, Slater’s machinery worked so well that the production of yarn soon outpaced the firm’s ability to sell it through their existing supply chains. However, once Slater and his partners began expanding into new markets, the original mill was unable to keep up with the increased demand. So, in the fall of 1791 the firm purchased this site here on the west side of the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, in order to construct a new mill. The wood-frame dam, shown here in the foreground of these two photos, was constructed in 1792, and the mill itself opened in 1793.

It was the first large-scale cotton mill in the United States, and it marked the beginning of an industry that would dominate the New England economy for more than a century. This building is still standing, in the center of these two photos, although it has been significantly expanded over the years. The original 1793 portion of the building was two stories high, and measured 40 feet long and 26 feet wide. It was built of wood, with a stone foundation, and it stood directly atop the Great Flume, which was built parallel to the river to provide water power for this mill and others further downstream.

Aside from his knowledge of textile machinery, Slater was also familiar with the management and operation of British mills, and he brought many of these innovations to America. Among these was the idea of continuous production, rather than the earlier practice of only making yarn to fill specific orders. Slater also took advantage of economies of scale, with his mill specializing in a relatively small number of products. More troublingly, though, Slater also copied the British practice of employing child laborers, and his workforce typically consisted of children between the ages of 7 and 12. However, unlike the British system, which tended to exploit orphans and other destitute children, Slater sought to develop factory villages that employed entire families. This approach, which came to be known as the Rhode Island System, involved having children produce yarn at the mill, and then have women weave the yarn into cloth at their homes.

By focusing on relatively small-scale industrial production of the yarn, along with having a decentralized weaving process, Slater’s Rhode Island System was in contrast to the subsequent Waltham-Lowell System, which would come to dominate New England textile production during the 19th century. However, despite this comparatively limited scope of manufacturing, Slater’s mill was an important first step in transitioning the new nation into a major industrial center.

Although Slater’s mill here in Pawtucket was a success, he often clashed with the other two partners in the firm, who handled the financial side of the business. After just a few years, he established his own company in partnership with his in-laws. This new mill was constructed in 1799, directly across the Blackstone River from the original mill, near the spot where these two photos were taken. At the time, the river formed the border between Massachusetts and Rhode Island, so the new mill was located in the town of Rehoboth, Massachusetts. Later in the 19th century, though, the state border would shift a few miles to the east, making the east side of the river part of Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

In the meantime, Slater retained his share of the original mill, which underwent several expansions in the early 19th century. The first of these came in 1801, when the building was expanded by 57 feet to the north, more than doubling its length. Then, in the late 1810s it was extended closer to the river, with a 40-foot addition here on the south side, followed by a stair tower and cupola on the west side around 1830.

In addition to this mill, Slater and his family opened a number of other mills in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Here in Pawtucket, he continued his partnership with Almy and Brown until 1829, when an economic downturn forced him to sell his share in the original mill, along with several of his other mills, in order to repay his debts. Despite this setback, he was able to recover financially, and upon his death in 1835 he left an estate valued at over $1 million.

Slater’s former firm here in Pawtucket subsequently became Almy & Jenkins, and the old building was later occupied by several other partnerships during the 19th century. The building itself also changed, with the construction of at least three more additions during this time. The surrounding area likewise continued to be transformed, and the waterfront of the Blackstone River became lined with other mills.

Over time, the mill came to be used by a variety of tenants. By the late 19th century, these included a bicycle shop and a manufacturer of jewelers’ tools. Alongside these uses, the building continued to produce cotton until 1895, just over a century after Samuel Slater and his partners launched the American Industrial Revolution here. The first photo was taken around this time, showing the heavily-altered mill surrounded by an assorted mix of smaller industrial buildings along the river. By this point it had become a much-photographed local landmark, but it was still in active commercial use, and it was starting to show its age.

Many of the surrounding buildings were demolished at the turn of the 20th century, but the mill remained standing. It was ultimately acquired by the Old Slater Mill Association in 1923, with the goal of preserving the building and restoring it to its historic appearance. Over the next few  years, the later additions to the mill were removed, leaving only the original 1793 section and the early 19th century wings. The resulting structure, which still stands here today, thus approximates how the mill would have looked at the time of Samuel Slater’s death in 1835.

In keeping with early to mid-20th century historic preservation trends, nearly all of the neighboring buildings were subsequently demolished. The intent was to make the mill the centerpiece of a riverfront park, but it also took away the historic character of its surroundings. Not even Samuel Slater’s house was spared in the process, although Oziel Wilkinson’s three-story stone mill was preserved. Built in 1810, it stands just out of view on the left side of the present-day scene. However, this site did have one addition later in the 20th century, when Sylvanus Brown’s house was moved here from its original location about two miles away, to save it from demolition. It was in this house that Samuel Slater spent his first night upon arriving in Pawtucket, and it is visible in the present-day scene, just to the left of the mill.

Overall, despite the many changes here, the mill and dam are still recognizable from the first photo. However, there is nothing else left from the photo; to the left of the mill is the park, and to the right of it is a parking lot. Further in the distance, on the other side of the mill, are still more parking lots, and on the right side of the scene is the tower of Pawtucket City Hall, an Art Deco building that was completed in 1936.

The mill was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1966, and it is now part of the Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park, which focuses on the industrial history of the Blackstone River. Here in Pawtucket, the park includes the two mills and the Sylvanus Brown house, along with the original dam and associated water structures, including the Great Flume. The Slater Mill is open to the public seasonally from Thursdays through Sundays, and park rangers conduct free guided tours of the building.

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.

Hotel Kaaterskill, Hunter, New York (2)

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The western side of the Hotel Kaaterskill, around 1890-1910. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2021:

The first photo shows the side and back portions of the Hotel Kaaterskill, a 1,200-room resort hotel that was constructed here atop South Mountain in 1881. Built as a rival to the nearby Catskill Mountain House, the Kaaterskill was a popular summer destination during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Here, guests could enjoy the cool, clean mountain air, while also taking in the expansive views of the Catskills and the Hudson River Valley. The operating season generally ran from the end of June until the beginning of September, and over the years the hotel hosted a number of prominent guests, including Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Chester A. Arthur.

The first photo was taken facing east. On the right side of the photo is the main portion of the hotel, which featured a large entrance portico and a piazza on the other side, along with towers on either end of the building. The interior of this section had reception rooms, parlors, a smoking room, and a barber shop on the first floor, and guest rooms on the upper floors. On the left side of the photo is a large wing that extended north from the front lobby area. The dining room was located on the first floor of this wing, with more guest rooms above it. There were several other wings on the opposite side of the dining room, which housed more guest rooms along with the kitchen, the boiler, and living quarters for the employees.

The hotel stood here until the evening of September 8, 1924, when it was destroyed in a fire. It started in the kitchen, and the flames soon spread throughout the large wood-frame building before firefighters were able to reach the mountaintop. The building was a total loss, and it was never rebuilt. Instead, the state eventually acquired the property, and it is now part of the Catskill Park. The 2021 photo shows the scene from approximately the same spot as the first photo, but there is little left to indicate that there was once the site of a massive Gilded Age resort. Only a low stone foundation remains of the hotel, along with scattered debris like rusted metal and broken glass and china. Otherwise, the forest is steadily reclaiming the mountaintop, hiding the scenic views that had once drawn thousands of visitors here every year.

Hotel Kaaterskill Front Lawn, Hunter, New York

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The front lawn of the Hotel Kaaterskill, around 1900-1905. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2021:

These two photos show a view similar to the one in an earlier post, looking east along the front façade of the Hotel Kaaterskill. The hotel was built in 1881, and it was designed by Stephen Decatur Button, a prominent Philadelphia architect. His design for the building featured a large portico above the main entrance, supported by four-story-high columns. Flanking the portico was a long piazza that ran along the width of the building, and at each corner was a five-story tower, one of which can be seen in the distant center of the first photo. Further in the distance is the Annex, a separate building that was constructed to provide additional guest rooms, and on the right side of the photo is the main driveway to the hotel.

The Hotel Kaaterskill stood here until September 8, 1924, when it was destroyed in a massive fire that had started in the kitchen and quickly spread to the rest of the wood-frame building. It was never rebuilt, and nearly a century later there is little visual evidence that the hotel was ever here, aside from a low stone foundation and scattered debris. The forest has steadily reclaimed the area here atop South Mountain, and the site is now owned by the state of New York as part of the Catskill Park.