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If you're lucky enough to live to old age, you haven't lived one life exactly, you've had several - you play different roles along the way.  That's true of old buildings, too.  In Saratoga Springs, you expect marquee names to have rich histories and they don't disappoint.  You have to dig only a little.

The Canfield Casino, for example, is where the club sandwich was invented (The Union Club of New York begs to differ).  

Since gambling was illegal (ahem) when local luminary John Morrissey opened it in 1870, it was called The Saratoga Club (versus casino, a no-no).  Now, of course, the Canfield Casino is home to the Saratoga Springs History Museum and is a venue for weddings, parties, receptions and the like.

In its time, Broadway’s posh Adelphi Hotel saw more than its share of A-list celebrities.  It still does.  

It’s where, in 1878, a year after the Adelphi opened, Morrissey died of pneumonia.  A celebrity himself, he lay in repose in the second-floor parlor that opened onto the piazza.  Such was his renown, the State of New York closed its offices and flags flew at half-staff.  The entire State Senate attended his funeral in Troy and 20,000 mourners lined the streets to pay their respects.  He was 47.

William McCaffery, a former conductor on the Rensselaer & Saratoga Railroad, inherited the Old Adelphi Hotel from his wife, Anna Perry, in the mid-1870s.  

He set about remodeling the facility and, in 1884, a flyer proudly announced, "The Adelphi has a large piazza, three stories high, fronting on Broadway, and elevated far above the street to command a fine view of Saratoga's most brilliant 

thoroughfare, and at the same time shield guests from street annoyances.  

“The rooms are large and very liberally furnished, and some are arranged in suites for family use, with every modern convenience, marble basins, hot and cold running water, clothes presses, closets, etc.”

Now revived, The Adelphi is expanding with condos, event spaces and still more rooms.

Citizens and visitors alike in the 19th century complained about soaring hotel and restaurant prices, just as they do now.  The costs, of course, didn't deter anybody from enjoying the town, just as they do now.

The Batcheller Mansion on Circular Street has stories as well.  

In 1873, George Sherman Batcheller, a Harvard-educated lawyer, commissioned an Albany architectural firm to create the magnificent mansion at 20 Circular Street, which he named Kaser-el-Nouzha - Arabic for palace of pleasure. 

Built at a cost of $100,000.00, its three floors contained eleven bedrooms, five bathrooms, two steam-vapor furnaces, a music room, and a library and was fully illuminated by gas light.  Dumbwaiters sent food from the large basement kitchen to the butler’s pantry off the formal dining room.  

Plans for the house were so astonishing and its modern features so effective they were copyrighted.

One of the home's first guests was none other than President Ulysses S Grant.  As he was being greeted with appropriate ceremony at the front door, carpenters, plumbers and painters were tumbling out the back.

Now, of course, the Batcheller Mansion is an up-market inn.  It's exterior, one of the city's most extravagant, is an elegant jumble of High Renaissance Revival, Italianate and Egyptian influences.  Somehow it all works.

Though not as glamorous, 42 Park Place at Five Points has a rich history too.  The building's home to The Little Market, a deli; Callista & Co, a salon; and Dirty Dog, a pet groomer, and the whole thing’s situated bang in the middle between downtown and the Track.  

Its past, of course, is quite different.

The early history is murky, but it may have started life as a boardinghouse.  We know for sure in the 19th Century it was a swank hotel, first the St James, then The Beckmore, catering to racegoers and tourists.  

The restaurant could accommodate 30 diners for posh candle-lit meals featuring the latest “modern cuisine.”  Attire for guests was, of course, bib and tucker and ball gowns, as you’d expect at a proper hostelry in one of the nation’s premier resorts.

42 Park Place caught my eye because from the front it suggests Manhattan’s Flatiron Building in miniature.  I worked there for a time, so my curiosity was piqued.

Circa 1900, the edifice at Five Points was crowned with a majestic dome which, in retrospect, seems a lot in a humble residential neighborhood.  Still, Saratoga Springs makes money on glamour and fin de siecle 42 Park Place was no exception.

In 1916, a fire tore through the hotel, a common occurrence for the era.  The only thing that saved the building was its brick exterior.   A haunting, grainy black and white photo shows the aftermath, ghostly icicles hang from wires.  The dome was destroyed, never to be rebuilt.

42 Park Place suffered other indignities as well.

On July 16th, 1903, bartender Marty Coyne was cut in the neck during “an affray,” missing his jugular by an inch.  No slouch, Marty was back behind the bar the next day.  The Daily Saratogian reported, “It was impossible to obtain further details of the fracas, because of the refusal of persons at The Beckmore to answer questions over the ‘phone.”

In May 1915, a fellow who’d rented the place for the summer nearly got arrested when he tried to enter.  James Magee of Schenectady failed to pay village taxes on the building, so Saratoga took ownership for the tidy sum of $928.63.

Today, The Little Market is still going strong under new management with a new menu and new dishes to try.

The Adelphi Hotel, The Batcheller Mansion and 42 Park Place are again living different lives – just as they’ve done for decades – and that, I think, reveals something about the relentless energy of the Spa City.