New Hampshire

North Main Street from Pleasant Street, Concord, New Hampshire

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Looking north on North Main Street from the corner of Pleasant Street in Concord, New Hampshire, around 1874-1885. Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.

The scene in 2022:

As these two photos show, much of downtown Concord has retained its historic architecture, with a number of buildings here that date back to the mid-19th century. Some have been altered over the years, but overall most of the buildings from the first photo are still standing here around 150 years later.

Starting in the foreground on the right side of the street is Moore’s Block at 4-12 North Main Street. This was built sometime around 1860, although over the years it has been altered almost beyond recognition. The main façade has been almost completely rebuilt, and today the only clue to its original appearance in this scene is the central window on the second floor, which is still topped by its granite lintel.

Beyond this building is the three-story Currier Block, which was also probably built in the 1860s, and the four-story Statesman Building, which was built around 1866-1867. The latter was originally the offices of the New Hampshire Statesman newspaper. Both buildings are still standing, and are still easily recognizable from their 19th century appearance.

On the far side of the Statesman Building is the corner of Depot Street, and then on the on the other side of the street was Bailey’s Block, which was built in 1874. Later known as Smith’s Block, it stood here until it was destroyed by a fire in 1960, and it was replaced by a one-story commercial building that now stands on the site.

Further in the distance in the first photo, with the tall windows on the upper floors, was Phenix Hall. This was an important city landmark in the second half of the 19th century, and its large auditorium served as a venue for many political gatherings, speeches, and other events. Perhaps the most notable visitor here was Abraham Lincoln, who delivered a speech here on March 1, 1860, several days after his famous Cooper Union speech in New York City. At the time, Lincoln was still a relatively obscure midwestern politician, but his speaking tour through the northeast helped to establish him as a major contender for the 1860 election.

The original Phenix Hall was destroyed by a fire in 1893, but true to its name it was soon rebuilt as the New Phenix Hall. Like its predecessor, it continued to be used as an event venue for many years, with prominent guests such as Theodore Roosevelt, who spoke here during his 1912 presidential campaign. The building was damaged by yet another fire in 1956, and was underutilized for many years during the second half of the 20th century. However, it is still standing, and is the subject of an ongoing restoration project.

On the other side of Phenix Hall, in the distant center of the first photo, is the three-story Phenix Hotel, which was built in 1857. It is difficult to tell now, but there are portions of this building that are still standing. As shown in the first photo, it originally had three stories and a flat roof, but it was later altered with the addition of a fourth story that was topped by a Mansard roof. This roof was eventually removed in 1947, and then seven years later all of the upper floors were removed, leaving only the one-story structure that stands today.

Further in the distance, the buildings become less discernable from this vantage point. However, there are a number of 19th century buildings that still stand today, including perhaps most notably the Eagle Hotel, which had been a favorite for New Hampshire politicians for many years.

Overall, the street itself could hardly be any different, with the horse-drawn carts on a rutted dirt road giving way to the cars that now pass through here on US Routes 3 and 202. However, most of the buildings from the first photo are still standing in some form or another, and the scene is still easily recognizable from the first photo. Because of this level of preservation, this section of North Main Street is now part of the Downtown Concord Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.

Eagle Hotel, Concord, New Hampshire (2)

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The Eagle Hotel on North Main Street in Concord, around the 1860s-1880s. Image courtesy of the New York Public Library.

The scene in 2022:

As explained in more detail in the previous post, the Eagle Hotel was the leading hotel in Concord during the 19th century. It opened in 1852 on the site of the earlier Eagle Coffee House, which had burned in 1851, and it remained in business for over a hundred years. Because of its location across the street from the State House, it played an important role in state politics. Many legislators stayed here when the General Court was in session, and politicians would often gather here for meetings.

Several presidents visited the hotel, including Concord resident Franklin Pierce, who lived in the hotel for several months between his election to the presidency and his inauguration in Washington. Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and Benjamin Harrison also stopped at the hotel during visits to Concord, as did Richard Nixon on two occasions in 1954 and 1959, when he was serving as vice president.

The first photo was probably taken in either the 1860s or 1870s, and it shows the original exterior appearance of the hotel. However, the building underwent major changes in 1890. It included interior renovations, such as the installation of an elevator and a central heating plant, and it also included exterior work. The original gable roof was removed, and it was replaced by a fifth story with a flat roof. The porches on the front of the building were also removed at some point during the 19th century, although this apparently happened before the roof, because there are other photos that show the building with no porches but with the original roof.

The hotel ultimately closed in 1961, but it is still standing as one of a number of historic 19th century commercial buildings here on North Main Street. Other surviving buildings in this scene include Stickney’s Old Block at 120-132 North Main Street. This was built in 1851, replacing an earlier building that had been destroyed in the same fire as the Eagle Coffee House. A portion of the building closest to the Eagle Hotel was demolished in 1885 to build the existing New Hampshire Savings Bank building, but aside from this the remaining sections of the older building are still standing. On the other side of the Eagle Hotel is the Merchants Exchange Block, which was also built after the 1851 fire. As was the case with Stickney’s Old Block, a portion of it was later demolished, but the part visible in this scene is still here. All of these buildings, including the Eagle Hotel, are now part of the Downtown Concord Historic District, which was added to the National Register in 2000.

Eagle Hotel, Concord, New Hampshire

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The Eagle Hotel on North Main Street in Concord, around 1907. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2022:

The Eagle Hotel, shown here in these two photos, is part of a well-preserved group of historic buildings that line the east side of North Main Street, directly across from the New Hampshire State House. This had previously been the site of the Eagle Coffee House, which opened in 1827. However, that building was destroyed by a fire in 1851, and it was subsequently replaced by the present-day building. It has undergone several major renovations since then, but it still stands as an important landmark in downtown Concord.

The new hotel was completed in November 1852, and it was featured in a November 10, 1852 article in the New Hampshire Patriot and State Gazette. The article included the following description:

The main edifice occupies 115 feet front by 40 in width, four stories high. The roof is nearly flat, and tinned. The front of the lower story is of handsomely dressed Rattle Snake granite. The superstructure is of elegant pressed brick. It is ornamented with a handsome façade, embracing two piazzas, each forty feet in length, over the main entrance to the hotel. The windows are covered with green Venetian blinds. On the first story of the main building are the office of the hotel, with two spacious stores on either side. There is also an ell of brick, with tinned roof, in the rear of the main building, in which are the kitchen, gentlemen’s ordinary, and two stories containing sleeping chambers. The whole building contains about 100 rooms.

In the front of the second story of the main building are a pair of public parlors to be used for gentlemen, a large saloon, 40 by 30 feet, and another pair of parlors for ladies. The floors of the former are covered with elegant Brussels carpeting, and the latter with tapestry carpeting. The furniture is of the most elegant description. The windows are handsomely curtained, and the rooms filled with sofas, lounges and chairs, of every variety of shape, covered with brocades and velvets, mirrors, &c. The ladies’ parlors contain two new and superior pianos, one of Boston and the other of New York manufacture. The suits of parlors are connected by folding doors. The main entries run lengthwise of the building, and separate these parlors from the sleeping chambers in the rear, and a ladies’ ordinary on the same floor in which tables may be laid for 70 persons. The latter is so arranged that, by means of folding doors, it may be converted into two or three spacious parlors with bed-chambers adjoining.

The third and fourth stories are conveniently divided into parlors and sleeping rooms.—Some of the former are arranged with one or two bed-rooms adjoining, for the use of families.

In the first story, as we have already remarked, is the Office of the Hotel. The main entrance to it is from Main street; and one door north there is a private entrance for ladies to the parlors and rooms above. The Office is about 40 feet square. From this room, flights of winding stairs communicate with the stories above, leaving an oval space through which light is admitted from a sky-light of stained glass in the roof. The Reading-room is in the rear of these stairs, on the same floor and connected with the Office by arches. Both rooms, including the entries above, are warmed by a large furnace in the basement. Adjoining the Office, is a barber’s shop and wash-room, furnished with warm and cold water from a cistern below. These rooms, as well as all the dining-halls, parlors, entries, kitchen, &c. are to be lighted with gas as soon as the new gas works go into operation. In the Office, there are 70 bells connecting the various rooms; also speaking tubes connecting with the entries above, kitchen, &c.

The large kitchen in the basement of the ell is the great curiosity of the establishment. It is about forty feet square, and fitted up with a superior cooking-range, furnaces, ovens, sinks and other apparatus of the most modern improvements for promoting culinary operations. Adjacent to the kitchen, is the meat-room, pastry-room, a baking-room containing an extensive oven of the latest improvement, a wash-room with furnace, boilers and patent drying-rack, the ironing room, shed, &c.

The gentlemen’s ordinary is in the ell, immediately over the kitchen, and on the same floor with the Office. It has an entrance from the latter, and also by a wide stair-case from the parlors on the second floor. It is a spacious hall, 70 feet by 40, handsomely finished and will be lighted by three chandeliers. In it tables may be laid for about 180 persons. It is to be warmed by a large furnace below. The sleeping rooms are large and airy. The whole building is ventilated from the roof, and each of the rooms have an opening, which may be closed at pleasure, over the doors. The windows, also, throughout the house, are made to open at both top and bottom. There is a large water cistern in the attic by which water is to be supplied to all the rooms below.

The opening of the hotel came at an auspicious time in Concord’s history. Early in November 1852, Concord resident Franklin Pierce had been elected president, and he subsequently moved into a suite here in the Eagle Hotel prior to his inauguration. It was during this time that the Pierce family suffered a tragedy that would set the tone for a very difficult presidency. On January 6, 1853, Franklin Pierce, his wife Jane, and their only surviving child Benjamin were returning to Concord from Andover, Massachusetts, when their train derailed. Franklin and Jane escaped serious injury, but 11-year-old Benjamin’s skull was crushed in the accident, with the president-elect being the one to discover his son’s lifeless body in the wreckage. Pierce continued to live here in the Eagle Hotel until his departure for Washington ahead of his March 4, 1853, although Jane did not accompany him to the inauguration. Both would suffer severe depression from the tragedy, and it likely contributed to Pierce’s largely ineffective presidency.

Aside from Franklin Pierce, the Eagle Hotel had a number of other prominent visitors during its heyday. Because of its central location in the city and proximity to the state house, it played an important role in the political, social, and economic life of the city. Several other 19th century presidents would visit the hotel, including Rutherford B. Hayes, who stayed here on August 22, 1877 during a trip through New Hampshire, accompanied by his wife Lucy, Vice President William A. Wheeler, and several of his cabinet secretaries. Twelve years later, on August 15, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison would also visit the hotel, where he had lunch during a brief stop in Concord.

In the meantime, the hotel building underwent several changes during the 19th century. It was expanded in 1872, and then in 1890 it underwent another renovation, which included both internal and external improvements. The Eagle Hotel became the first building in the city to have a central heating plant, as well as the first to have an elevator. On the exterior, the most noticeable change was the addition of a fifth story, which replaced the original gable roof. As shown in these two photos, the fifth story has a different window configuration from the lower floors, and there is also a horizontal band of bricks beneath the windows, where the old cornice used to be. The two piazzas, which were mentioned in the 1852 article, were also removed at some point in the 19th century, as were the window shutters that had once been installed on the front façade of the building.

The renovated hotel continued to play an important role in New Hampshire politics throughout the first half of the 20th century. Many state legislators stayed here while the General Court was in session, and they often held meetings here. Among those legislators was Winston Churchill, an American novelist who was, at the time, the best-known Winston Churchill in the world. Aside from his literary career, he was elected to the state legislature in 1903 and 1905, and in 1906 he published Coniston, which became the best-selling American novel of the year. It was a novel about New Hampshire politics, and it included a number of fictional places that were obvious stand-ins for real locations. These included the Pelican Hotel, which represented the Eagle Hotel. It was there that the fictional political boss Jethro Bass ruled the state from his “Throne Room” in the hotel.

Also in 1906, Churchill sought the Republican nomination for governor as an underdog candidate. Ahead of the party convention, he booked rooms here at the Eagle Hotel to use as his campaign headquarters. He ended up performing surprisingly well at the convention for an inexperienced politician, but narrowly lost the party nomination. Churchill would try again in 1912, this time as the Progressive Party candidate, but he finished third in the general election. He subsequently retired from politics, and later gave up on writing novels. And, as it turned out, his fame would be dramatically eclipsed by a different Winston Churchill on the other side of the Atlantic, who was also a politician and writer.

Even into the 1950s, the Eagle Hotel would continue to be a focal point for New Hampshire politics. Richard Nixon—who was vice president at the time—made at least two visits to the hotel. The first was on September 29, 1954, when he came to Concord to participate in the Republican state convention in advance of the midterm elections. He returned here five years later, on October 3, 1959, when he was in the midst of his own presidential campaign ahead of the 1960 election. He attended a reception here at the Eagle Hotel, and he earned the endorsements of both of the state’s U.S. senators. By the time New Hampshire’s primary election kicked off the election season five months later, Nixon was essentially unopposed and carried nearly 90% of the state’s vote, although he would ultimately lose the general election to John F. Kennedy.

Nixon’s political career would rise and fall a few more times in the coming years, but his visit to Concord proved to be the last hurrah for the Eagle Hotel. By this point automobile travel had made it easier for legislators to commute to Concord during legislative sessions, so there was less demand for long-term lodging here at the Eagle. The hotel also fell out of favor among the general public, which was a common trend for historic downtown hotels throughout the region. With interstate highways and other road improvements, it was now easier for travelers to bypass busy city centers. And, when they did need a place to stay, they tended to prefer convenient modern motels, which were right off the highway and had ample parking, rather than aging hotels in crowded downtown locations.

The Eagle Hotel closed in February 1961, and it was subsequently converted into a nursing home. However, it did not have much success either, and it closed in 1976. This was a time when many cities were demolishing their old downtown hotels and other historic landmarks as part of urban renewal projects, but the Eagle Hotel managed to avoid such a fate. Instead it was preserved, and today its exterior does not look significantly different from its appearance in the first photo, aside from alterations to the ground floor. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, and it is also a contributing property in the Downtown Concord Historic District, which was added to the National Register in 2000.

Great Gulf, Mount Washington, New Hampshire

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The Great Gulf, seen from just north of the summit of Mount Washington, around 1900. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2021:

These two photos show the view looking north from Mount Washington, with the Great Gulf in the foreground and the summits of the northern Presidential Range beyond it. Mount Washington is the highest peak in New England and the northeastern United States, and it stands at the center of the Presidential Range, a north-south oriented range that contains many other high peaks. The five highest peaks are named after the first five presidents, mostly in descending order of elevation, and each one is higher than any other mountain in the northeast outside of the Presidential Range.

Mount Washington, the highest, is 6,288 feet above sea level. It is followed by Mount Adams (5,774 feet), which is seen on the right side of this scene; Mount Jefferson (5,712 feet) on the left side of the scene; Mount Monroe (5,384 feet) out of view on the opposite side of Mount Washington; and Mount Madison (5,367 feet) on the extreme right-hand side of this scene.

Just out of view in the foreground on the right side is a portion of Mount Washington, which extends to the northeast away from the summit area. That slope of Mount Washington, along with the northern Presidentials in the distance, form the walls of the Great Gulf, a large glacial cirque. There are a number of different cirques around Mount Washington that were formed by glacial activity, including Tuckerman Ravine, Huntington Ravine, and Ammonoosuc Ravine. However, the Great Gulf is by far the largest of these, extended more than two miles in length and over a mile in width.

The first recorded description of the Great Gulf comes from Darby Field in 1642. Although this was still very early in the history of European colonization in New England, and several centuries before recreational hiking became popular in the region, Darby Field and his two Native American guides became the first known people to have climbed Mount Washington. This achievement was considered remarkable enough that John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, provided a lengthy account of Field’s expedition in his journal. Regarding the final ascent to the summit, Winthrop wrote:

They went divers times through the thick clouds for a good space, and within 4 miles of the top, they had no clouds but very cold. By the way among the rocks, there were two ponds, one a blackish water, and the other reddish. The top of all was plain about 60 feet square. On the north side was such a precipice, as they could scarcely discern to the bottom. They had neither cloud nor wind on the top, and moderate heat. All the country about him seemed a level, except here and there a hill rising above the rest, and far beneath them. He saw to the north, a great water which he judged to be 100 miles broad, but could see no land beyond it.

Although Winthrop’s description was secondhand information at best, the account seems reliable, since it contains information that Field would only have known if he had actually reached the summit. The “two ponds” are likely the Lakes of the Clouds, located along the ridgeline between the summits of Mount Washington and Mount Monroe, and the description of the “plain” at the summit likewise corresponds to reality. And, his description of the Great Gulf also helps to verify the account, since Field would have only known about “such a precipice, as they could scarcely discern to the bottom” if he and his guides had actually stood here at the edge of the Great Gulf headwall.

Aside from Field’s journey, there were very few recorded ascents of Mount Washington during the colonial period. However, this began to change by the early 19th century, as New Englanders began to travel to the White Mountains to experience the scenery here. By 1819 there was a footpath from Crawford Notch to the summit, and this was later followed by a carriage road in 1861 and a cog railway in 1868. The summit area became a seasonal community, with several hotels and even its own newspaper.

However, despite the extensive development on Mount Washington, the other summits on the Presidential Range remained largely untouched, as did the Great Gulf. Visitors were generally happy to admire these scenes from afar, and there were few landscapes that could compete with this view here in these photos. Writing in his 1856 book Incidents in White Mountain History, Benjamin G. Willey provided the following description of this scene:

[G]oing a few rods northward, you come to the brink of an almost unfathomable abyss, known as the Great Gulf. It is a rocky, precipitous descent of two thousand feet. Rising up opposite you from the bottom of this Gulf, almost perpendicularly, is the great range of mountains, comprising Clay, Jefferson, Adams and Madison. This vast range may be seen from their roots to their summits by one standing on the brink. Deep down in the very bottom of the hollow are rough, confused piles of rocks, with narrow and deeply-worn ravines between them. Springing up occasionally, near the very base of the mountain range, are tall spruces, while further up on their sides are birches and small firbushes. Toward the east, the Gulf has an opening, surrounded on all its other sides by mountains.

A few years later, in his 1860 book The White Hills: Their Legends, Landscape, and Poetry, described the scene in even more rapturous language, from an overlook on the nearby carriage road. He wrote:

Yet the glory of the view is, after all, the four highest companion mountains of the range. Clay, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, that show themselves in a bending line beyond the tremendous gorge at the right of the path, absurdly called the ” Gulf of Mexico,” and are visible from their roots to their summits. . . . Except by climbing to the ridge through the unbroken wilderness of the northern side, there is no such view to be had east of the Mississippi of mountain architecture and sublimity. They do not seem to be rocky institutions. Their lines have so much life that they appear to have just leaped from the deeps beneath the soil. We say to ourselves, these peaks are nature’s struggle against petrifaction, the earth’s cry for air.

This scene certainly captivated visitors, but few were adventurous enough to actually descend into this “unfathomable abyss.” Because of its remoteness, the upper reaches of the Gulf escaped large-scale logging, and even the trail builders of the late 1800s tended to avoid the area. A single hiking trail was built through the Gulf as far as Spalding Lake in the lower foreground of these photos, but it did not ascend the headwall of the mountains. Nor did it apparently see much use, because it did not see much subsequent maintenance.

The Great Gulf was still an essentially trailless wilderness when the first photo was taken around 1900, but this would soon change. From 1908 to 1910, Warren W. Hart oversaw the construction of a series of trails in the area, starting with the Great Gulf Trail, which traversed the Gulf, climbed the headwall, and ended near the spot where these two photos were taken. Another trail, named the Six Husbands Trail, was opened to the summit of Mount Jefferson by way of the steep slopes in the right-center of the scene. Two other trails—Adams Slide and the Buttress Trail—climbed Mount Adams, and the Wamsutta and Chandler Brook Trails climbed the northeastern slopes of Mount Washington from the Great Gulf.

At the time, the Great Gulf was still in private hands, but in 1916 it was purchased by the U.S. Forest Service. It subsequently became part of the White Mountain National Forest, and in 1964 it was designated as the Great Gulf Wilderness, which conferred greater protections on the land than other portions of the national forest. As a result, this view from atop the headwall looks essentially the same as it did over 120 years earlier, and in all likelihood it also looks the same as it did over 380 years ago, when Darby Field first described the “precipice” where he could “scarcely discern the bottom.”

Mount Washington Hotel, Carroll, New Hampshire (2)

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The Mount Washington Hotel, with Mount Washington behind it in the distance, around 1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2020:

As discussed in more detail in the previous post, the Mount Washington Hotel was the finest of the many grand hotels that were built in the White Mountains during the Gilded Age of late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was completed in 1902, and could accommodate 600 guests who paid the princely sum of $20 per night to stay here. From here, guests enjoyed expansive views of the White Mountains, including the Presidential Range, which forms a dramatic backdrop here in this scene. The hotel’s namesake mountain, looms in the distance on the right side of the photos, and some of the summit buildings are barely visible, some seven miles away and 4,600 feet higher in elevation.

Today, nearly 120 years after it opened, the Mount Washington Hotel still stands as one of the few surviving grand hotels of its era in New England. It has entertained many prominent guests over the years, and in 1944 it was the site of the Bretton Woods Conference, which was a meeting of delegates of 44 Allied nations to establish postwar international monetary policies. The hotel is now known as the Omni Mount Washington Resort, and in 1986 it was designated as a National Historic Landmark, making it one of only 23 properties in the state to earn this recognition.

Mount Washington Hotel, Carroll, New Hampshire

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The Mount Washington Hotel, with its namesake mountain behind it in the distance, around 1906. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

The scene in 2020:

The White Mountains became a popular tourist destination during the second half of the 19th century, and the region featured a number of grand hotels. However, few could match the Mount Washington Hotel, which was built here in the Bretton Woods area of Carroll, New Hampshire between 1900 and 1902. It was owned by Joseph Stickney, a coal tycoon who had been involved in White Mountain hotels since 1881, when he purchased the Mount Pleasant House. Located approximately where these two photos were taken, the Mount Pleasant House started small, but it was subsequently expanded under Stickney’s ownership and became a prosperous hotel.

Around the turn of the century, Stickney decided to build an even larger hotel across the street from the Mount Pleasant House. He hired noted New York architect Charles Alling Gifford, who designed this Spanish Renaissance-style building, as shown in these two photos. It has a Y-shaped footprint, and its most distinctive exterior features are the two large octagonal towers. The hotel was completed in 1902 at a cost of about $2 million, and it formally opened on July 31, with a ball that was attended by dignitaries such as Chester B. Jordan, the governor of New Hampshire.

Upon completion, the hotel had 352 rooms and could accommodate around 600 guests. A night’s stay cost $20, which was a substantial amount of money at the time, and it included the room and three meals. Writing about a month before it opened, the Boston Herald declared it to be “one of the largest and most perfectly appointed resort hotels not only in New England, but in the summer resort world.” The article continued with the following description of the hotel:

It will contain, besides the ordinary accommodations for the comfort of guests, many novel and attractive features. The music room is 115 by 73 feet in size, with a spacious stage at one end to be used for amateur theatricals, and the rotunda, which is 135 by 103 feet, is the largest in any hotel in New England. The octagonal dining room in the northwest wing is 84 by 84 feet, and will seat 500 people. On two sides are spacious galleries, which can be utilized for the orchestra. Every suite has a private bath, and the chambers are all very large.

On the ground floor are the indoor amusements, including billiard rooms, ping-pong tables, golf club quarters, gun room, clubroom, bicycle room, shuffle boards, a large play room for children, and a mammoth swimming pool filled with water from the Ammonoosuc River, and tempered by steam jets to the right warmth. The floor of the pool is tiled, and adjoining are dressing and toilet rooms, with facilities for Turkish baths.

The first photo was taken only a few years after the Mount Washington Hotel opened. It shows the building and grounds from the main road, about a half mile away. In the foreground is the bridge over the Ammonoosuc River and the long driveway to the hotel. In the distance is the hotel’s namesake mountain, Mount Washington, which stands beyond and to the right of the hotel. The summit is about seven miles east of the hotel, and about 4,600 feet higher in elevation. Rising 6,288 feet above sea level, it is the highest mountain in the northeastern United States, and it is flanked by other peaks in the Presidential Range, including Mount Jefferson on the far left and Mount Monroe on the far right.

The Mount Washington Hotel was a popular resort destination throughout the early 20th century, drawing prominent guests such as Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, Mary Pickford, and Babe Ruth. However, the most famous gathering here occurred in July 1944, in the midst of World War II, when 730 delegates from 44 Allied nations met at the Mount Washington Hotel. Known as the Bretton Woods Conference, this meeting was held in anticipation of the end of the war, in order to establish international monetary policies for the postwar world.

The Bretton Woods Conference delegates included many of the world’s leading economists, including Harry Dexter White, John Maynard Keynes, and U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., who presided over the conference. Among the agreements reached here were the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, along with policies for currency exchange rates. The conference led to what became known as the Bretton Woods system, which remained the predominant international economic system until the early 1970s.

In the meantime, the mid-20th century was a difficult time for the grand 19th century hotels in the White Mountains. Many succumbed to fire, while others faced a slow, steady decline as the buildings aged and tourist preferences shifted. However, the Mount Washington Hotel managed to avoid the fate of nearly all its contemporaries, and it still stands here nearly 120 years after it opened.

Today, there have been few significant exterior changes to the hotel, and the scene still looks much the same as it did at the turn of the 20th century, although the trees are now much taller and partially hide the building from this spot. Now known as the Omni Mount Washington Resort, it remains one of the premier hotels in the region, and it stands as a rare surviving Gilded Age resort hotel here in New England. Because of its historic significance, particularly with regards to the Bretton Woods Convention, the hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, and it was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.