When I first decided to live in Saratoga Springs, I remember coming up Broadway
across from Congress Park and seeing a huge banner across the street proclaiming that a “FACADE RESTORATION PROJECT” was underway. The year was 1977. There was a shabby (even then) Woolworth’s Plaza across from the small brick library (now the Saratoga Arts Center) on the corner of the park, at Spring Street. Not knowing the history of the town at that point, I had no idea that the stately Congress Hotel– once the largest such structure in America– had stood where the prototype strip mall and parking lot were then. As I proceeded up Broadway, there was some kind of massive renovation going on– a crane, some lifts, and a guy with a hardhat directing operations. Apparently the work being done was to try to save some massive columns holding up a portico on the front of an ancient-looking hotel on the left side of Broadway. It seemed a very precarious job– I had the sense that the work was being done just in time, before the front of the 4-story building keeled over. I also had the impression that Saratoga’s downtown seemed like a Hollywood set: that the FACADES lining Broadway were somehow supported and propped up by 2X10″s and that there was not too much substance behind the scenes.
Turns out that edifice being saved, and ultimately restored, was the Adelphi Hotel, and the man directing the column repair was Rich Martin, of Northern Dean Construction– an esteemed contractor to this day. It also turns out that it happened to be the 100th anniversary of the Adelphi’s original construction, in 1877. Unbeknownst to me (like a lot things) at the time, this leftover behemoth of the Victorian era was also the first property– commercial or residential– to have been sold for the staggering sum of $100,000. in the City of Saratoga Springs. (The first residential home in the City to hit that price-mark, as I understand things, was not sold for $100K until 1979, but that is a story for another day.)
A couple by the name of Sheila Parkert and Gregg Seifker had been drawn to Saratoga, like many of us, by the attraction of summer concerts at SPAC– specifically by the NY City Ballet, in their case. They thought it would be a great idea to be part of the revival of this somewhat worn-down town, and to provide a suitably historic venue where the ballet crowd could gather and summer visitors could congregate, rather than have to settle for the local Holiday Inn or other such “modern” accommodations. Their vision, is retrospect, was both timely and auspicious, and saving this “grand dame hotel” building from the prior century as they did certainly contributed to the fact that Saratoga’s Broadway district was recently awarded the distinction of being voted among The Top Ten Main Streets in America.
I would illustrate how close this town was to the complete demise of its Golden Era by quoting here from George Waller’s great coffee-table book, called SARATOGA: Saga of an Impious Era, written in 1966:
Saratoga’s Broadway, today, is an awkward pause between the past and the present, an uneasy union of the old and the new, with none of the grandeur and just a trace of the charm that made it one of the most famous main streets in America. The grounds on which the grand hotels stood facing one another across the wide, tree-lined thoroughfare are occupied by shops, stores, restaurants, supermarkets and such, and all but a few of the tall, arching elms have died…
…and at the busiest section of Broadway a pair of small, venerable hotels, the Rip Van Dam and The Adelphi (the latter featuring a piazza and wicker rocking chairs) stand side by side as stubborn monuments to a departed era.
In the post-World War Two years there was not, apparently, much nostalgia for the past, and the United States Hotel (at the southwestern corner of Division Street and Broadway) was demolished in 1946, and the mighty Grand Union itself suffered its demise in 1952. Waller describes bulldozers knocking down beautiful, arching elm trees that had graced Broadway since it emerged as a resort in 1827, and we have to wonder how even more amazing this upstate town could have been as a throwback to an earlier era had more of the amazing architecture and landscaping of the 1800’s had been preserved more fully.
But the fact is that much of what is pictured in George Waller’s tome, and George Bolster’s classic archival photography collection of this City’s Golden Age, is gone, and not replaceable. That makes the survival of The Adelphi (and the still-sturdy but less-glamorous
Rip Van Dam next door) all the more remarkable. These were considered, back in the day, smaller second cousins to the stupendous Broadway monoliths that met the wrecking ball. We can thank the much reviled Saratoga Preservation Society, and archivists like Waller, and Bolster, and Grace Swanner, and James Kettlewell, among others, for fostering the sense of history and import that these older buildings and traditions lent to our City, hence saving it from totally destroying its past in the name of “modern progress.”
I worked for one summer– 1981– as an overnight desk clerk at The Adelphi, and it was a memorable experience. At that point, there were only a few rooms renovated on the second floor, and no one was even allowed to venture onto the third or fourth floors, which were cordoned off. Even then, Gregg and Sheila had the vision of doing things in an eccentric, lush, and imaginative manner– the rooms had themes– The India Room, The Persian Room, and maybe there were some Far Eastern or Turkish Rooms too. The gorgeous front lobby had been refurbished and lavishly furnished with Victoriana of all sorts. I presided over a long wooden desk in front of a full-length wall mirror, and always recall how the ballerinas who came into the room would furtively glance at themselves, looking past me, as they elegantly strutted by. The back Courtyard was, even then, the pre-eminent place in town to sit and sip frozen daquiris and other frothy concoctions favored by the dance crowd. The mahogany bar in the back was dark and most of the crowd preferred the patio and back cafe seating, long before there was a pool out there. The July crowd was much different than the August crowd, when Gregg and Sheila would have to reluctantly say farewell to the balletophiles, and cater to the moneyed track crowd. It was open only from May till October, as it was not worth trying to heat the upper rooms or keep the bar open during the long and dreary offseason, in those days.
I would come in to work at 8 or 9 pm or so, and handled the check-ins that showed up late,
and act as an information booth for the comings-and-goings of the bar crowd. I might have slipped into the bar itself for a glass of red wine or two with Ron the bartender as the late-night stragglers finally left, and then there was an hour or two of just manning the desk, or sitting in those lush lobby chairs, meditating upon the changeover of night to morning as the street-sweepers seemed to drag the daylight along behind them, and the early-dawn joggers would emerge from upstairs to get a jump on the day. By 7 a.m. I was dragging, and anxious to be relieved. Sheila or Gregg would always comment on how disheveled I looked by then, and I always had respect for anyone working the “graveyard shift” from then on.
Gregg, sadly, ended up contracting some form of cancer in the 1990’s, and wore an eyepatch for a while, before passing away over a decade ago. Sheila Parkert became sole owner, and reportedly spent her summers either in Arizona or France, and from the look of her photo from 2006, looked pretty much the same as I remembered 25 years earlier. In that year, she placed the Adelphi on the market, somewhat ambitiously, for ten million dollars. It did not sell, and I doubt she really wanted it to, until recently.
In early 2012 it went on the market at a more “reasonable” $4.5 million, at which time a local group of investors snapped it up, and it made the news again. There were numerous stories written about it which you can find online– everywhere from the Saratoga Business Journal to The Albany Times-Union to Forbes Magazine– whose writer, Teresa Genaro, gave our city some great publicity by putting it out there for the well-heeled national crowd.
So here is the key summary– in 1976, a young ambitious couple on a shoestring budget buy this place for $100K. in a purely seasonal, somewhat dreary looking, past-peak downtown. They bust their tails trying to keep it afloat and habitable and solvent despite a half-century (at least) of decay and neglect, and somehow manage to not only make a living at it, but became a fixture of Saratoga’s summer scene. The town in the meantime comes back to life (that FACADE RESTORATION PROJECT having worked quite nicely, by the way) during the subsequent three and a half decades to the point where it finally sells for 45 times what they paid for it. It looks like a lot of profit, on the surface of things, but blood, sweat, tears, effort, vision, and tons of untold expense are factored in, I’m sure Ms. Parkert would say that she earned every dollar, after 36 years of stewardship. I congratulate her, in her well-deserved retirement, for the foresight and perseverance and sweat-equity which finally paid off, and for the fact that she and her late husband essentially saved an icon of Saratoga’s landscape in the first place.
There is old history, and a lot of new history, in this town, and I hope to keep writing about both. Thanks for reading this, and sharing my blog feed with anyone who may be interested.
Take care,
Wayne Perras, for WaynesWord2
via
www.saratoga.com
It took them four full years, apparently, to get it to a point where it was ready to