Catskill Mountain House

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Catskill Mountain House around 1900–1910
Catskill Mountain House overlooking the lakes and the Kaaterskill Hotel

The Catskill Mountain House was a famous hotel on the eastern slope of the Catskill Mountains . It existed from 1824 to 1941. In 1963 the hotel was completely demolished.

history

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Catskill Mountains were discovered for the beginning tourism. The mountains could be reached quickly from the booming city of New York by steamboats. For this reason, in the fall / winter of 1823, a group of dealers from Catskill, New York (Catskill Mountain Association) built a hotel with 60 rooms that opened the following year. Appropriate paths and roads have been laid out so that the hotel can be reached by horse-drawn carriage. This also started the tourist development of the area. From 1839 Charles L. Beach (1808–1902) leased the hotel. The hotel was up for sale in 1845 due to economic difficulties facing the owners' association, and Beach bought it for $ 5,000. He had the hotel remodeled. The former Federal Style building became one in neoclassicism . After the renovation, it was considered one of the best hotels in the world. The hotel then experienced its heyday from 1850 to 1900 and accommodated high-ranking and prominent personalities. The US Presidents Grant , Arthur and Roosevelt as well as Washington Irving , William Cullen Bryant , Jenny Lind and Oscar Wilde were guests. Travelogue writers Henry James , Bayard Taylor and Harriet Martineau paid tribute to the hotel in their writings.

With the establishment of the Kaaterskill Hotel in 1881 on neighboring South Mountain, the hotel faced stiff competition.

The journey to the hotel turned out to be difficult and was only possible via a four-hour horse-drawn carriage ride from the port in Catskill . Therefore Charles Beach participated in the construction of the Catskill Mountain Railway and in 1892 he had a funicular railway built by the Otis Elevator Company from the Catskill Mountain Railway to the Catskill Mountain House. With the advent of the car at the beginning of the 20th century, the horse-drawn carriage connection and the funicular became uneconomical and discontinued. The prominent hotel guests also changed their orientation over time and discovered the Adirondacks (Lake Placid) as a new travel destination, while the remaining middle-class Catskills tourists stayed in much cheaper hotels. This led to the slow decline for the hotel. When the United States entered World War II, it was no longer possible to think of a hotel and that is why the Catskill Mountain House was open for the last time in the 1941 season. In 1952/1953 the owner Milo Claude Moseman tried to renovate the hotel. The construction company worked badly, so the project failed. In 1962, New York State bought the hotel and surrounding property for $ 61,000. Due to the nature protection requirements for the Catskill Mountains (Catskill State Forest Preserve), the area is to be preserved as wilderness and any existing buildings must be demolished. So on January 25, 1963 the hotel was burned down and removed.

Today there is a green area at the location of the hotel.

Building

The three-story, 58-meter-wide building had an entrance area with columns. The entrance area faces east towards the Hudson Valley. The 30 best rooms had windows facing that direction. Later another wing with a hotel room was added on the south side. The hotel recently had around 300 beds. In the northwest there were extensions for the economic facilities.

The hotel was originally designed in the Federal Style and was converted into a neoclassical style around 1850. The imposing row of columns in the entrance area was dismantled.

location

The Catskill Mountain House was located directly on the 450 meter high eastern slope of the Catskill Mountains at a height of around 670 meters. The place is also known as the "Pine Orchard". The hotel overlooks the Hudson River valley . South Lake is west of the hotel and North Lake is north . The development is through a street from Haines Falls . The Ulster and Delaware Railroad ran parallel to the road to Mountain House. The hotel was accessed from the east by a funicular .

Cultural reception

Thomas Cole : A View of the Two Lakes and Mountain House, Catskill Mountains, Morning

The Catskill Mountain House was a common motif for painters at the Hudson River School , including Thomas Cole and Frederick Church, who painted the building and the surrounding area from the neighboring Artist Rock.

literature

  • Roland Van Zandt: The Catskill Mountain House . Rutgers University Press, 1966.

Web links

Coordinates: 42 ° 11 '41.7 "  N , 74 ° 2' 4.9"  W.