Mount Washington Hotel
Encyclopedia
The Mount Washington Hotel opened in 1902 near Mount Washington
, in the town of Carroll, New Hampshire
. The area is better known as Bretton Woods
, and includes the Bretton Woods ski resort
nearby. It is located at the northern end of Crawford Notch
, 6 miles (10 km) east of the village of Twin Mountain, New Hampshire
, along U.S. Route 302
.
It is owned by the Orlando, Florida
-based CNL Financial Group via its CNL Lifestyle Properties Group and is operated by Omni Hotels & Resorts
under the official name of Omni Mount Washington Resort.
, Massachusetts
who had made a fortune before the age of 30 as a Pennsylvania
-based coal
broker
. In 1881 Stickney and a partner had purchased the Mount Pleasant Hotel nearby from lumberman John T.G. Leavitt, a large early hotel that was later demolished. Subsequently, Stickney began work on his Mount Washington Hotel. He brought in 250 Italian
artisan
s to build it, particularly the granite
and stucco
masonry
. Construction started in 1900 on the Y-shaped hotel, which opened July 28, 1902. At the opening ceremony, Stickney told the audience: "Look at me, gentlemen ... for I am the poor fool who built all this!" Within a year he was dead at the age of 64.
His wife, Carolyn Stickney, summered at the hotel for the next decade, adding the Sun Dining Room with guest rooms above, the fourth floor between the towers, and the chapel
honoring her late husband. Under its capable first manager, John Anderson, the hotel was a success. But the advent of income tax
, Prohibition
, and the Great Depression
curtailed the hospitality business. In 1936, Mrs. Stickney's nephew, Foster Reynolds, inherited the hotel, which closed in 1942 because of World War II
. A Boston syndicate bought the extensive property for about $450,000 In 1944. The Bretton Woods
monetary conference took place that year, establishing the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund
. The owners were paid $300,000 for the loss of business and promised a daily room charge of $18 per person for the 19-day conference.
The Mount Washington Hotel and Resort is one of the last surviving grand hotel
s in the White Mountains
, and includes an 18-hole Donald Ross-designed golf course, as well as a 9-hole course on its facilities.
It was declared a National Historic Landmark
in 1986.
The hotel opened for its first winter season in 1999. Before that year the hotel would close to guests late in the fall and open in the spring. The entire hotel was overhauled before the winter, with efficient windows installed in the entire hotel.
In January 2009 the Mount Washington Resort completed a 50000 square feet (4,645.2 m²) addition that includes a 25000 square feet (2,322.6 m²) spa and a 25000 square feet (2,322.6 m²) conference center.
In November 2010 it was revealed that CNL is seeking to trademark
the Mount Washington name. CNL said they were just directing their efforts against other hotels in the area that have the mountain's name and not other businesses that also have it.
, when it was searched by the TAPS
paranormal investigation team on February 6, 2008.
In the local area, it is well known for a tradition of grand firework shows for Independence Day on the Fourth of July and on New Year's Eve at midnight.
Mount Washington (New Hampshire)
Mount Washington is the highest peak in the Northeastern United States at , famous for dangerously erratic weather. For 76 years, a weather observatory on the summit held the record for the highest wind gust directly measured at the Earth's surface, , on the afternoon of April 12, 1934...
, in the town of Carroll, New Hampshire
Carroll, New Hampshire
Carroll is a town in Coos County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 763 at the 2010 census. The two largest villages are Twin Mountain and Bretton Woods. Carroll is an important access point for recreational areas in the White Mountains, including many 4,000-footers, the Zealand...
. The area is better known as Bretton Woods
Bretton Woods, New Hampshire
Bretton Woods is an area within the town of Carroll, New Hampshire, USA, whose principal points of interest are three leisure and recreation facilities...
, and includes the Bretton Woods ski resort
Bretton Woods Mountain Resort
Bretton Woods Mountain Resort is a ski area located in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, across from the Mount Washington Hotel.-Location and terrain:...
nearby. It is located at the northern end of Crawford Notch
Crawford Notch
Crawford Notch is the steep and narrow gorge of the Saco River in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, located almost entirely within the town of Hart's Location...
, 6 miles (10 km) east of the village of Twin Mountain, New Hampshire
Twin Mountain, New Hampshire
Twin Mountain is a village within the town of Carroll in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It is named for two prominent summits which rise to the south of the village, North Twin Mountain and South Twin Mountain ....
, along U.S. Route 302
U.S. Route 302
U.S. Route 302 is a spur of U.S. Route 2. It currently runs 171 miles north from Portland, Maine, at U.S. Route 1, to Montpelier, Vermont, at US 2...
.
It is owned by the Orlando, Florida
Orlando, Florida
Orlando is a city in the central region of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of Orange County, and the center of the Greater Orlando metropolitan area. According to the 2010 US Census, the city had a population of 238,300, making Orlando the 79th largest city in the United States...
-based CNL Financial Group via its CNL Lifestyle Properties Group and is operated by Omni Hotels & Resorts
Omni Hotels & Resorts
Omni Hotels & Resorts is a privately held, international luxury hotel company based out of Irving, Texas. The hotel brand consistently ranks "Highest in Guest Satisfaction Among Upscale Hotel Chains" by J. D...
under the official name of Omni Mount Washington Resort.
History
The hotel was constructed at a cost of 1.7 million dollars ($41.6 million in 2009 dollars) by Joseph Stickney, a native of WalthamWaltham, Massachusetts
Waltham is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, was an early center for the labor movement, and major contributor to the American Industrial Revolution. The original home of the Boston Manufacturing Company, the city was a prototype for 19th century industrial city planning,...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
who had made a fortune before the age of 30 as a Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
-based coal
Coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as anthracite coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure...
broker
Broker
A broker is a party that arranges transactions between a buyer and a seller, and gets a commission when the deal is executed. A broker who also acts as a seller or as a buyer becomes a principal party to the deal...
. In 1881 Stickney and a partner had purchased the Mount Pleasant Hotel nearby from lumberman John T.G. Leavitt, a large early hotel that was later demolished. Subsequently, Stickney began work on his Mount Washington Hotel. He brought in 250 Italian
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...
artisan
Artisan
An artisan is a skilled manual worker who makes items that may be functional or strictly decorative, including furniture, clothing, jewellery, household items, and tools...
s to build it, particularly the granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
and stucco
Stucco
Stucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...
masonry
Masonry
Masonry is the building of structures from individual units laid in and bound together by mortar; the term masonry can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are brick, stone, marble, granite, travertine, limestone; concrete block, glass block, stucco, and...
. Construction started in 1900 on the Y-shaped hotel, which opened July 28, 1902. At the opening ceremony, Stickney told the audience: "Look at me, gentlemen ... for I am the poor fool who built all this!" Within a year he was dead at the age of 64.
His wife, Carolyn Stickney, summered at the hotel for the next decade, adding the Sun Dining Room with guest rooms above, the fourth floor between the towers, and the chapel
Chapel
A chapel is a building used by Christians as a place of fellowship and worship. It may be part of a larger structure or complex, such as a church, college, hospital, palace, prison or funeral home, located on board a military or commercial ship, or it may be an entirely free-standing building,...
honoring her late husband. Under its capable first manager, John Anderson, the hotel was a success. But the advent of income tax
Income tax
An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or businesses . Various income tax systems exist, with varying degrees of tax incidence. Income taxation can be progressive, proportional, or regressive. When the tax is levied on the income of companies, it is often called a corporate...
, Prohibition
Prohibition
Prohibition of alcohol, often referred to simply as prohibition, is the practice of prohibiting the manufacture, transportation, import, export, sale, and consumption of alcohol and alcoholic beverages. The term can also apply to the periods in the histories of the countries during which the...
, and the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
curtailed the hospitality business. In 1936, Mrs. Stickney's nephew, Foster Reynolds, inherited the hotel, which closed in 1942 because of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. A Boston syndicate bought the extensive property for about $450,000 In 1944. The Bretton Woods
Bretton Woods system
The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world's major industrial states in the mid 20th century...
monetary conference took place that year, establishing the World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
and the International Monetary Fund
International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund is an organization of 187 countries, working to foster global monetary cooperation, secure financial stability, facilitate international trade, promote high employment and sustainable economic growth, and reduce poverty around the world...
. The owners were paid $300,000 for the loss of business and promised a daily room charge of $18 per person for the 19-day conference.
The Mount Washington Hotel and Resort is one of the last surviving grand hotel
Hotel
A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. The provision of basic accommodation, in times past, consisting only of a room with a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with modern facilities, including en-suite bathrooms...
s in the White Mountains
White Mountains (New Hampshire)
The White Mountains are a mountain range covering about a quarter of the state of New Hampshire and a small portion of western Maine in the United States. Part of the Appalachian Mountains, they are considered the most rugged mountains in New England...
, and includes an 18-hole Donald Ross-designed golf course, as well as a 9-hole course on its facilities.
It was declared a National Historic Landmark
National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...
in 1986.
The hotel opened for its first winter season in 1999. Before that year the hotel would close to guests late in the fall and open in the spring. The entire hotel was overhauled before the winter, with efficient windows installed in the entire hotel.
In January 2009 the Mount Washington Resort completed a 50000 square feet (4,645.2 m²) addition that includes a 25000 square feet (2,322.6 m²) spa and a 25000 square feet (2,322.6 m²) conference center.
In November 2010 it was revealed that CNL is seeking to trademark
Trademark
A trademark, trade mark, or trade-mark is a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or...
the Mount Washington name. CNL said they were just directing their efforts against other hotels in the area that have the mountain's name and not other businesses that also have it.
Culture
The hotel was featured in an episode of the television series Ghost HuntersGhost Hunters
Ghost Hunters is an American paranormal reality television series that premiered on October 6, 2004, on Syfy . The program features paranormal investigators Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson who investigate places that are reported to be haunted. The two originally worked as plumbers for Roto-Rooter as...
, when it was searched by the TAPS
The Atlantic Paranormal Society
The Atlantic Paranormal Society is an organization that investigates reported paranormal activity. Based in Warwick, Rhode Island, United States, TAPS was founded in 1990 by Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson. In 2004, the organization itself became the subject of Ghost Hunters, a popular weekly...
paranormal investigation team on February 6, 2008.
In the local area, it is well known for a tradition of grand firework shows for Independence Day on the Fourth of July and on New Year's Eve at midnight.
External links
- Omni Mount Washington Resort — official website
- Bretton Woods Mount Washington Resort — official website for the resort in which the hotel is located
- Virtual tour of the Mount Washington Hotel at historic-hotels-lodges.com
- "The Grand Hotels, the Glory and the Conflagration" at WhiteMountainHistory.org
- Historic Print Shop on the site described by Rick Russack, earmaked for restoration