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A Living Legacy PDF Print E-mail
Written by Bryant F. Tolles, Jr.   
Friday, 02 March 2007

Mount Washington Hotel, the White Mountains, New Hampshire
A Living Legacy
The Grand Resort Hotels of the White Mountains

Driving along winding, wooded highways, visitors to the White Mountains region of New Hampshire are often stunned when suddenly from the camouflage of rock walls and dense forest rise the shining parapets and tiled roofs of the legendary grand resort hotels.  Relics of a lost era of unhurried leisure and luxury, the few remaining ‘grands’ whisper secrets from another age while offering modern amenities and a level of impeccable service unrivaled today.

Glen House
Glen House
    Since before the Revolutionary War, Americans have embraced travel and the ritual of vacation for its aesthetic and intellectual stimulation, religious enlightenment, improved physical and mental well-being, social interaction, recreational involvement and change from routine life.  The resorts beckoned those with sufficient means to meet with others of similar interests, mix with peers, and possibly, to climb the social ladder. The grand hotels provided a public, theatre-like setting for guests to display wealth, social standing and fashion, and allowed them to be in the audience, too, observing their peers performing from the same script. The typical guest of a century ago aspired to be seen and admired in a social environment where appearances were everything.  Highly prized, too, were the aura of exclusiveness and the ambiance of romance.
    The White Mountain grand hotels often sprang from humble beginnings. Legend has it that the Mountain View House was born by chance: On a rainy summer night in 1865, a stagecoach carrying well-to-do passengers was passing through Whitefield on its way north from Boston.  On the hills outside the village, the stage encountered impossibly muddy roads and could not go on without repairs.  To seek refuge, the passengers were directed to the small farmhouse of the Dodges, where they were warmly welcomed with fine overnight accommodations and delicious food.  The next morning the guests were awestruck by the magnificent, nearly 360-degree panoramic views.  Impressed by the hospitality of the Dodges and the beautiful, inviting natural surroundings, the guests asked their hosts to let them stay a few days longer.  The following summer they returned for a lengthier sojourn, inspiring the Dodges to enlarge their farmhouse to take in vacationers.  The origin of the Mountain View Grand is similar to other grand hotels.
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Deer Park
    The appearance and location of these resorts were often determined by the surrounding landscape.  Although many of the earliest hostelries simply grew organically to meet the needs of increased patronage and reflected the New England sensibility of simplicity, later ‘grands’ were designed to reflect and harmonize with their settings.  Many were constructed to take advantage of spectacular mountain panoramas, lovely valleys, rapidly flowing rivers and streams, dramatic precipices, enchanting waterfalls or other natural features.
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The Mountainview Grand
    What often drew tourists to the White Mountains was the sense of living in civilized luxury on the very edge of primitive, sometimes-threatening wilderness. By their very location, the hotels were often forced to become their own self-contained kingdoms: raising food; stabling horses; creating trails and recreation for guests; scheduling entertainments so their clients could see and be seen (activities that required several de rigueur changes of clothing each day); in some cases, even generating their own power.  Paramount of the innkeepers’ tasks was maintaining the illusion of utopic community unsullied by the normal course of life.  
    The grand hotels capitalized on the popular passion for good health and physical fitness in the 1880s. They supplemented old, well-entrenched practices of the evening promenade, the seeking of cures and other sedentary pursuits with a rich array of sporting activities including hiking, fishing, boating, bicycling, golf, tennis, lawn bowling, croquet, badminton, archery, horseback riding, polo and baseball.  When automobiles, a new sporting toy for the rich, appeared around 1900, the hotels responded with a formula for financial success by constructing scenic roads on their grounds, as in the case of the Mount Washington Hotel, or facilitating access to such roads by self-publishing maps and leading tours.  
    During the 1880s and ‘90s America’s grand resort hotels faced increasing competition from one another and, in order to bring distinction to themselves, largely departed from older styles of architecture, seeking differentiation through distinctive new styling.  Owners, financiers and their architects strove to create unique pleasure-providing hotel complexes that married fantasy, glamour, remoteness and affinity with the natural world.  While maintaining the hotel’s traditional low-rise, horizontal massing, they ingeniously adapted styles from the European past, like the Spanish Renaissance and the Moorish, to the American scene.
Eagle Mountain House, New Hampshire
Eagle Mountain House
    With these new stylistic expressions and increased physical scale, ownership of the grand hotels fell to wealthy investors and management groups, while their clientele became even more affluent and cosmopolitan.  To meet more sophisticated tastes, recreational, social, cultural and other programs and services became more elaborate and specialized, and resorts, in many instances, developed into virtually self-contained cities.  Continuing a pattern initiated earlier in the century, the main hotel structures were supplemented by smaller buildings hosting support functions:  guest cottages, dormitories for workers, manager’s cottages, kitchen and storage outbuildings, power houses and heating plants, horse and automobile barns, hotel farms, sports clubhouses and other facilities.
    Since their creation, grand resort hotels have grappled with two seemingly exclusive goals: to offer guests something different from the everyday urban or suburban existence and, at the same time, to run hotels as efficient, machine-like business ventures, bringing consistent profit to their owners.  As models of smooth and effective operation, the nineteenth-century hotels introduced the American public to important conveniences and innovative advances in technology before they were generally available in the American home.  Inventions such as improved fireplaces, steam heat, gas and electric lights, improved sanitation and water systems, elevators, bell and telephone communications, and box-spring mattresses seemed especially exotic when found on the very brink of wilderness.
    By the first decade of the 20th century, however, the White Mountain grand resort hotels had already peaked and signs of imminent decline were starting to appear.  In a curious, almost perverted way, the grand hotels were victims of their own fantastic success; as resorts strove to make themselves attractive by providing technological innovation, increased entertainment options, and stylish luxury, they became more costly to operate and the burden of expense was passed to the consumer.  Over time many hotels priced themselves out of existence, eroding the time-honored myth that they functioned solely for their guests’ personal enjoyment.
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Stunning Architecture
    The advent of the automobile is another identifiable reason for the decline of the grand hotels’ allure.  The increased freedom, flexibility and mobility of the automobile undermined the railroads that had been the traditional lifeline of the hotels.  Auto tours reduced the length of people’s visits and eliminated the older practice of single-destination stays of weeks’ or even months’ duration.
    In addition, family economics and changing lifestyles worked to the detriment of the grand hotels.  The inauguration of the federal income tax early in the 20th century reduced guests’ disposable income; as a direct outgrowth, fewer patrons of means were able to spend substantial amounts of money on extended vacations.  Later in the century, opportunities for long vacations were further reduced as more women took on full-time careers, allowing fewer extended periods of time away from home and job. In response to these factors, many affluent individuals and families chose to build their own cottages in the region, seeking the privacy, independence and appreciation of their own real estate.
    As a consequence of all these factors, the larger hotel operations faded quickly after World War I.  In fact, as the 21st century arrived, only four of the original 30 grand hotels remained:  The Wentworth, The Balsams, The Mount Washington Hotel, and the second Eagle Mountain House.  Their survival stemmed from excellent business management practices, effective marketing techniques, outstanding facility maintenance, and flexible, diversified social and recreational programming.
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The Mount Washington Hotel
    In 2002, after fourteen years of dormancy and four years of extensive renovation, the Mountain View Grand rejoined its sister grands, bringing to five the number of magnificent edifices beckoning guests to taste of an era when a sojourn was an all-encompassing performance played on the stage of veranda and dining room, golf course and riding path, all set in the glorious White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Bryant F. Tolles, Jr.
About the author:
Bryant F. Tolles, Jr. is Professor Emeritus of History and Art History at the University of Delaware.  This article is adapted from his 1998 book, The Grand Resort Hotels of the White Mountains:  A Vanishing Architectural Legacy by David R. Godine, Publisher.  
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 15 March 2007 )
 
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