(left) Grand Central Hotel. (right) Putnam’s Tavern and Boarding House

[From the Fall 2023 Showcase of Homes Magazine]

Written By Charlie Kuenzel  |  Photos Courtesy of the George S. Bolster Collection

The history of Saratoga Springs has so many aspects and topics in the long timeline of the city. One of my favorite topics is the discussion of the grand hotels that flourished during the 1800s in the number one tourist destination in the country, Saratoga Springs.

Saratoga Springs was initially defined as a health resort because of the vision and work of Doanda and Gideon Putnam. In 1802 they built the first hotel, known as Putnam’s Tavern and Boarding House. That hotel had a capacity to serve 70 guests within its walls and area residents were amused by the venture and laughed thinking that a hotel built in a total wilderness could be successful. But successful it was. After the first season the demand was there to visit Saratoga Springs and the Putnams added additional rooms to prepare for the next season. 

Gideon and Doanda also enhanced the area around Congress Spring for easier access, discovered the Columbian Spring and added a bathhouse. These additions and more allowed the visitor to experience the health aspects of the city and the lodging in their hotel made for a more comfortable visit to our village. The Putnams had discovered the key aspects to success in the early 1800s… good food, good lodging and the elements for a health resort experience that allowed Saratoga Springs to begin growing immediately. It took a few years to demonstrate the need for even more hotels, but the Putnam family was ready and when the need for such was demonstrated they started construction of another very large hotel called Congress Hall across the street from their original tavern and boarding house. 

In the summer of 1832 only the second rail line in the State of New York would begin to bring summer visitors to our city. The increase in transportation speed and comfort because of that train service would cause a need to build more and more hotels in the next few years and begin to define a summer visit to the Spa. Grand hotels would become the norm and truly define this great destination for more than the next one hundred years. The need for the best of everything to be served in Saratoga helped to make this little village attract some of the biggest personalities in our country during the 1800s and beyond. It was all about the hotels and the accommodation and activities they provided.

(pictured above) Congress Hall Dining Room

One interesting comparison between present day Saratoga Springs and the city in the 1800s is the number of hotel rooms. Although difficult to get a true count, we estimate that in the later years of the 1800s Saratoga Springs offered between 10,000 to 15,000 rooms counting all the hotels, boarding houses, and private room rentals. Today Saratoga County has about 4,000 rooms. Why the smaller number today? Transportation is the answer to the number of rooms today versus 150 years ago. In the nineteenth century transportation was slow and people that had made long trips to arrive in Saratoga spent weeks if not months in the city on vacation. The automobile drastically changed travel habits and the very large hotels had become too large to accommodate this more transient population. The large hotels were taken down and more efficient hotels with fewer rooms replaced them in our landscape.

Even though those large hotels of years ago don’t exist today, the numbers associated with them are very interesting to consider as we try to understand the history of this great city. First is the knowledge that for a short time in our history we had four very large hotel properties that eclipsed the many smaller properties. The Grand Union, United States, Congress Hall and the Grand Central were the big four. The last year the big four graced our skyline was 1874. A fire on October 1, 1874, destroyed Grand Central, which was never rebuilt. From 1874 on, the big three anchored the list of visitor options to our city. Many people had favorite properties since each hotel had seemed to attract a distinct demographic. Some hotels were more religious, some more political and the people they attracted seemed to be very loyal to their hotel for repeat bookings year after year. 

Those numbers tell a very interesting story, let’s look at the number of hotel rooms… The Grand Union was the largest hotel with just under 1,000 rooms, the United States Hotel at 800, Congress Hall at 600 and the Grand Central at about 500 rooms. Even the so-called smaller hotels were impressive in room numbers with the Clarendon at 250 rooms, Windsor at 150, Columbian at 125 and the Adelphi at 75. I’m reminded when I travel today that properties that seem large to me usually have 125 to 250 rooms. The size of these Saratoga hotels that don’t even exist today were huge. There were countless boarding houses and private rooms in local residences that rounded out the list of possible lodging spots, as well as many smaller hotels that have not been listed here.

The largest hotels were large in every respect. The Grand Union Hotel had 500 rocking chairs on the front porch alone and had a dining room that could serve 1,500 people in one sitting. The Grand Union Hotel occupied 7 acres of property and had 1.5 miles of interior hallways. When the hotel was remodeled in 1872 it required three acres of carpeting and one and a half acres of marble counter-tops to complete the work. The Grand Union had an Opera House that seated 1,500 people and employed Victor Herbert as its general music director. Not to be outdone the United States Hotel countered by hiring John Phillip Sousa as its music director!

All the large hotels offered the American plan which gave you a room but also provided three meals a day. To feed the masses of visitors was a huge daily job. Many locals were in the business of supplying vegetables, fish, livestock, chickens, and more on a daily basis. The railroad brought much needed supplies to the city daily from the Atlantic coast and beyond. We were entertaining the wealthiest people in the country, and they demanded the best that could be supplied at the time. The food demands were staggering. The Saratogian newspaper reported that on one day in August of 1892 guests at the United States Hotel required the following food items for their dining pleasure. The list included 400 dozen eggs, 500 pounds of butter, 700 quarts of milk, 340 chickens, 220 quarts of ice cream, 2,000 ears of corn, 10 barrels of potatoes, 4,000 tea biscuits, 30, 3.5 lbs. bluefish, 10, 30 lb. salmon, 2, 80-pound turtles for soup, and various cuts of beef, pork and lamb. That was consumed in one day, at one hotel.

The Saratoga hotels were the life blood of the city. These large hotels were very much like the cruise ships of today. Once a guest was checked in, they were supplied with their meals, entertainment and sleeping accommodation for their stay. It was a one stop destination for all that people desired daily. But Americans did eventually desire more entertainment and the residents of Saratoga Springs were very kind to provide horse racing, casino gambling, alcohol, and nightly dances that further enhanced their visit to the city. All these elements helped to propel Saratoga Springs to become the number one tourist destination in America in the 1800s.  ...And still a great destination today!