T's Travels

Hotels of the Past, #39

The Hotel Belvedere in Apollo, PA, burned down a couple of nights ago. I have driven past it many times without giving it a thought beyond "boy, that building is huge!" It was a commanding presence even though it's been vacant a long time. I'll let the Dark Matters & Mysteries blog fill you in a little more.

Duffy's Tavern, Boalsburg, PA

Show of hands—how many of you Penn Staters from the east have been to Boalsburg? I do not mean driving through on 322, I mean actually going into town. Okay, how many of you have been to Duffy’s Tavern in Boalsburg? No, not the Boalsburg Steak House (now Kelly’s) with the cow on the roof. I mean Duffy’s Tavern just off the square in the sweet little town of Boalsburg. I will admit—until recently this writer is guilty of having never set foot (or car) in Boalsburg proper.

Passing though and meeting a friend for lunch. Didn’t feel like dealing with the traffic and weather of downtown State College. I said I felt like “tavern food,” friend Patty said “Duffy’s in Boalsburg.” (She’s been there but then again she’s local.)

The building has been around since the early 1800s (history here) and was actually owned by a Duffy at one time (extra points for any readers who know the radio show of the same name!). After a devastating fire in the 1930s, the new owners salvaged what they could of the original to use in the rebuild. Today Duffy’s is a classic Pennsylvania tavern, warm and comfortable, yet with a few surprises.

Winter means soup, right? Crab bisque for me and chicken corn chowder (soup of the day) for Patty. Sandwiches: I had a hankering for grilled cheese and Duffy’s answered with quite the combination: white cheddar cheese, very thinly sliced Granny Smith apples, thick bacon, and Dijon aioli on sourdough bread. Delicious as that was, however, Patty’s sandwich was the star of the meal: she had a chivito. What, you’ve never heard of the national sandwich of Uruguay? Shaved beef, cucumber, onion, bell pepper, lettuce, tomato, and chipotle mayonnaise on a ciabatta. We could not quite figure out how the beef was seasoned but it was delicious.

You don’t dine with Patty without going full Monty—meaning dessert. Lemon cream cake? Or how about a little bourbon bundt cake? Oh no, I couldn’t! Well, maybe a little . . .

It should be no surprise that Duffy’s is now on my permanent list of options for dining in the area. I even took a little stroll in Riley on Main, a lovely home décor and gift shop right next door to Duffy’s. Don’t know why I missed Boalsburg all these years but I won’t anymore.

Cambridge Springs, PA

Before people had hot tubs in their backyards . . . before beauty salons advertised “day spa” facilities . . . even before many people had indoor plumbing . . . the only way to sit and soak in hot water was to go to a hot spring. So that’s what people did.

As Europeans settled across what became the United States, they began utilizing the hot springs used by Native Americans. Doctors sent their patients to bathe in the hot springs and drink the mineral water known to cure everything from psoriasis to dyspepsia. Hot springs were curative.  Hydrotherapy—still used today for stiff muscles—was very popular.

By the second half of the 1800s, however, the springs became recreational as well as medicinal as resorts sprung up. While many Pennsylvanians have heard of Bedford Springs, probably few are familiar with Cambridge Springs, a small town on Route 6 between Erie and Meadville in the northwest corner of the state. At its peak Cambridge Springs had “more than 40 hotels, spring houses, and rooming houses” serving the masses coming to bathe and recreate. At the height of the fad “eight trains a day” brought visitors to the town.

As Mary the Photographer and I drove across the metal bridge over French Creek and into town it was hard to imagine that this little town was once so bustling. Our destination was the Riverside Inn, the last operating vestige of Cambridge Springs’ resort heyday. Most of the old hotels are gone, victims of fire or the Great Depression. The Riverside continues on as a hotel, restaurant, and dinner theater.

We found the Riverside just off the main drag. This great Victorian lady sits among trees near the creek, its wraparound porch stretching leisurely on either side of the front entrance. It was easy to picture women in big hats, sitting in rockers on that porch, fanning themselves on a hot summer day. Mary and I walked inside to the large lobby, past the sweet Victorian touches such as a fainting couch and love seat, looking for the restaurant for lunch.

Once we were seated by the lace-covered window I looked around the room we were in—the dining room is very large, just like one would expect in a resort. We were having a late lunch so there weren’t many people there. I could just imagine the waiters running back and forth between the kitchen and the guests, trying to serve the hot, hungry crowds. Our server, however, had the freedom to relax with us and we had a nice conversation about the history of the Riverside.

With its warm décor it was harder for me to imagine this building as any sort of a medical facility but they had doctors on staff and did offer what they called “electrical treatments” in addition to the springs. Obviously trying to quell anyone’s concerns about the medical side (or maybe just to reel more guests in), a doctor employed at the resort assured potential guests that “there is nothing at all at the Riverside to remind one of the unpleasant features of a sanitarium." With that I would agree.

After lunch we had a good opportunity to look around the inn. Down the hallway from the dining room was a large glass case with Victorian costumes. On the level beneath us was the dinner theater, where a bus group was watching a comedy—we could hear them laughing, which I understand, is the best medicine. The dinner theater operates all year, with a wide range of plays and holiday events bringing visitors to town.

We drove out of town looking for other signs of the Cambridge Springs of 1900. Our server had said that a few other structures had been hotels but they don’t stand out among the buildings. The town was also home to Alliance College, which welcomed President William Howard Taft at its dedication in 1912 and closed in the 1980s. In 1904 Cambridge Springs hosted a chess tournament at the Rider Hotel (lost to a fire in 1931), which led to a chess move being named for the town.

Today Cambridge Springs is a quiet little place where presidents and chess players are just memories. But the Riverside Inn can still remind visitors of the glory days.

Photo by Mary Brenner

Judy's on Cherry (and the Pagoda), Reading, PA

Unusually warm November weather brings the temptation to play hookey from work (winter is out there somewhere!) and get out on the road. Mary the Photographer, of course, is retired so for her it’s just taking advantage of a gorgeous late fall day. So that’s what we did.

I took the shunpiker's route from Harrisburg to Reading—weaving up and down country roads, sometimes on Old US 22, sometimes not. Once we were on 422 I started reminiscing about taking that road to Hershey as a kid. I pointed out where my father was so pleased to buy us all 15-cent hamburgers, how we never got to eat at the Ranch House Restaurant (still there!), and all those other landmarks of my memory.

In Wernersville I noticed an old building with a mansard roof, many windows, fancy entrance; it was obvious it had been a hotel in the late 1800s. Then we saw another one, and another one. I didn’t know of any business in Wernersville that would have required that many hotels, so once I got home I looked it up. At the turn of the century (late 1800s-early 1900s) Wernersville had been a resort town, like Cambridge Springs and Jim Thorpe! (Far more recently it had also been home to the Gosselin family, but until the day there’s one titled “Terry the Writer and Mary the Photographer,” this blog doesn’t cover reality shows.) Today the Heidelberg Heritage Society is headquartered in Lerch Tavern, on the main street of Wernersville. Looks like I’m going to have to make a trip back there one of these days . . .

But I digress. This was supposed to be a non-work day. Mary and I were headed to Reading. Plans included lunch and a visit to the Pagoda because Mary (gasp!) had never been there. With a little research I found a restaurant in center-city Reading that sounded perfect. As we drove through West Reading, though, I thought about ditching it in favor of one of the many little restaurants that lined Penn Avenue, where people were sitting outside enjoying the day and their meals, but I didn’t. I had selected this place on Trip Advisor reviews and what I was in the mood to eat. Judy's on Cherry was it.

We found the restaurant pretty easily, with parking right out front. The building had been a farmers’ market; the brick exterior and wooden floors remain, as well as the high wooden ceilings. The atmosphere is inviting and warm (maybe it’s that hearth-fired oven); I like that it doesn’t look like anywhere else I’ve ever eaten. The menu has some unique qualities as well: butternut squash soup with crab and curry, “Cowboy Ciao” (smoked salmon, arugula, bruschetta tomatoes, couscous, roasted corn, nuts, dried fruit, pesto buttermilk dressing), and “Mediterranean Mezze Tasting Plate” (chickpea, garlic ground almond and yogurt, and fig black olive tapenade, roasted red pepper, feta and thyme relish, crispy flatbread).

Speaking of that flatbread, our server brought us some just after taking our order. It was warm and delicious. I resisted eating more than one slice, though, because I had already ordered the butternut squash soup and mini crab salad sandwich combo. Mary chose the Enraged Penne Pasta (spicy plum tomato sauce with fresh basil and parmesan cheese), which went very well with the flatbread. The food was delightful—my soup smooth but not too creamy, the crab sandwich a perfect size for a side, plus a little salad of greens with a very light dressing. I could have stopped there and been quite happy.

But on the other side of the wine list was the dessert menu. I had to look. And there, right in the middle of the list, was “Mrs. Wesner’s Coconut Layer Cake.” What could I do? A really good coconut cake is very hard to come by. So often they are bright-yellow, tough, oily concoctions with inches of fluffy sugar troweled on and a smattering of coconut on top just so they can call it “coconut cake.” Based on my lunch, though, I thought maybe, just maybe, this one would be different.

I’m so glad I did. It was the best coconut layer cake I have ever eaten. It tasted like I had made it (and wouldn’t I like that recipe so I could). The cake itself was laced with coconut, the frosting was delicate (not too thick or too sweet), it was perfection. I thought about taking some home, but it wouldn’t have done me any good—that too would go away (be eaten, possibly by my husband) and then I would still have to drive back to Reading for more. So it will live in my memory (and some day I will be back in Reading . . .).

As we left the restaurant, I told Mary to look up the street. There, looking down on us, was our destination, the Pagoda. A short ride later, we were on Duryea Drive, headed up. Warm fall day, enough leaves still on the trees to make it pretty. On the way up I told her about Charles Duryea testing his cars on that very road by having his daughter do the test-drive (see my first book). We rounded one final curve, and Mary finally got to see the Pagoda that I’ve raved about for so long. It was closed (it’s open weekends so you can buy souvenirs and climb to the top) but there were many people outside enjoying the weather and the view of Reading. I never get tired of it. After that we drove the rest of the way up the mountain to the Fire Tower and where the hotel was (see my next book [almost done, I swear!] for that history) before heading down again toward home.

What a great way to spend a day off—driving the countryside with a friend, eating at a really nice restaurant, and catching waves of both history and memories. I will be back at work tomorrow but the mellow from today will stay with me. Everyone needs to play hookey once in a while.

Photos of soup and Pagoda by Mary Brenner

Hotels of the Past (#38)

And we're back to Harrisburg for this one. According to my research this massive hotel sat on the northeast corner of Second and Strawberry streets--yes, right where the Harrisburg Hilton is today.

I found this hotel through an unusual route. In working on my family genealogy I did some research on the Robert Lamberton family, a very prominent Pennsylvania family in the second half of the 1800s. A Dickinson graduate and local attorney, Robert Lamberton was named president of Lehigh University in 1880. (History people, stay with me. The rest of you are free to look at the pictures and then move on.)

Robert's wife was Annie Buehler, one of six children of William Buehler, who at one point ran his family's very respectable Buehler's Hotel in Harrisburg. This is the hotel Charles Dickens stayed when passing through Harrisburg during his first visit to the United States in 1842 (to read about where he stayed in York, see Hotels of the Past #31).

Text from the historical marker in Harrisburg (I'll have to go take a picture of it one of these days):

On the site directly across the street stood the Eagle Hotel, a three-story brick structure opened by George Buehler in January of 1812. It was here that Charles Dickens stayed when touring America in 1842 during which time he authored American Notes and in which he praised the hotel's proprietor. The Eagle Hotel was enlarged under the new ownership of the Bolton family in the early 1860s when it was renamed the Bolton Hotel. At that time, a series of neighboring townhouses that had earlier been joined together to form the Eagle were capped with a fourth and fifth floor and adorned in Second Empire architectural styling. Both the Eagle and the Bolton represented popular destinations for noted individuals and politicians of the 19th century. The building was demolished in 1990 to accommodate the development of the adjacent Hilton Harrisburg.

By 1915, when the postcard was sent, the hotel was advertising itself as "the Commercial man's best friend" and "the only Family Hotel in the city" (guess that makes it the Hampton Inn of its day).

An article that appeared in the Harrisburg Telegraph on January 6, 1928, describes some of the history of the Buehler Hotel/Bolton House:

 

Why was I following this trail even though I'm not at all related to Annie Buehler Lamberton? My great-great-grandmother, Mary Spain, an Irish immigrant and widow who lost all three of her children when they were young adults, was the cook in the Lamberton home for 40 years. I can only imagine the relationship those two women--Annie and Mary--had, but I would love to know more.

Hotels of the Past (#37)

Searching the Web for pictures of old Pennsylvania hotels I found a blog with a long, detailed, and fascinating piece about the Hotel Walton in Philadelphia. Looks like I'm not the only one who likes to collect these histories.

And then I came across the very grand Bellevue Stratford:

I was reminded of this place yesterday while listening to an episode of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, a radio show from the 1950s. Johnny Dollar was a freelance insurance investigator and for this particular case he traveled to Philadelphia, where he stayed at the Bellevue Stratford, convenient to the offices he went to on Walnut Street. This postcard looks like it's from the 1970s, which would place it more in the era of the Legionnaires' disease outbreak and just before (little-known fact) Bob Beru was the head concierge (his day job, that is).

Hotels of the Past (#36)

Harrisburg, our dear state capital, has always seemed to have a dearth of downtown hotels for some reason. There was a time, however, when hotels dotted the streets and innkeepers had to compete for business from those wanting to stay in the city.

I found this postcard for the Columbus Hotel in Harrisburg on Cardcow--not exactly enticing to this 21st-century observer (in fact, that innkeeper's face is a little creepy) but maybe at the time it made them stand out. Once I saw the back I was amazed the postcard made it to its destination (I needed Google to figure it out):

So what happened to the Columbus Hotel? Like so many similar buildings at the time, it fell victim to a fire in the early 1900s (although I doubt most fires were started by an explosion in a neighboring hat store).

Hotels of the Past (#35)

Feeling some of the holiday spirit today, so I searched for a postcard of the most logical place: Bethlehem.

Yes, Pennsylvania's own. This is the town's busiest time of year (probably also for little Nazareth, which is nearby). Bethlehem, as I've written about before, is a very pretty place with fun little shops and restaurants.

While I was searching for the postcard, I found Mille Fiori Favoriti,  a wonderful personal blog written by Pat. She shares her experiences and pictures--right now it's the snow in Colorado (where she moved last year). If you're looking for somewhere to go, I recommend her entry on visiting Christmas City!

Hotels of the Past (#34)

While my Irish sister Carol was visiting recently, we spent our first week walking around DC—the White House, the monuments, neighborhoods.  The second week of her visit, however, was the first week of the Government Shutdown so we had to find alternate entertainment. Friends of hers had visited Alexandria, VA, and recommended it. So on an unusually hot October day we hopped on the DC metro and left the District!

When we arrived in Alexandria, we decided to forego the free trolley that cruises up and down King Street (the main street) and walk through Old Town to the riverfront instead. That was a great way to see the little shops and restaurants. I was expecting total upscale but King Street had everything from funky to high end. It would be very easy to spend a day (and money) going from shop to shop.

We also passed a few hotels. The Hotel Monaco (a Kimpton Hotel) is built on the site of the Marshall House, a Civil War era establishment. I peeked into the hotel lobby because it looked unusual (what is now known as a "boutique hotel") but it was the plaque on the wall outside that really made me pause. (Of course I researched it when I got home and found its Wikipedia entry.)

 

When we finally got to the visitors' center—close to the river—we picked up brochures on walking tours. Some of the attractions and historical sites have an admission fee, but the visitors' center has a one-price-for-everything ticket that is cheaper than paying separately. (You don’t even have to visit everything to make it a bargain!)  I only had one place in mind, though, so we didn’t take that deal.

But before we took any tour, it was time for lunch. Yes, had to have vegetarian options. Also had to have cold cold drinks because it was hot. Carol chose Red Rocks Neapolitan Bistro with its $10 lunch menu. She had a lovely grilled vegetable panini (roasted zucchini and eggplant with goat cheese “served on fresh flatbread daily and accompanied by a side of mixed greens”) and I had the meatball panini just to see what it was (“homemade meatballs, aged provolone, roasted red peppers”). It was here Carol introduced me to Magners Irish Cider . Husb and I often drink Woodchuck at home, so I am familiar with hard cider. What I didn’t know, and Carol pointed out, is that Magners is supposed to be served over ice. It says so on the can. (American servers, please take note!)

After lunch we headed toward my destination: Gadsby’s Tavern Museum, which encompasses two buildings that were a tavern and the City Tavern and Hotel (the latter is still a restaurant). Gadsby’s, “America’s five-star hotel of the 18th century,” was the “center of political, business, and social life in early Alexandria,” according to their website. That means it was a place where “everybody knows [their] names”—presidents George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, and more. Thomas Jefferson’s inaugural ball was held there in a beautiful ballroom. Just like hotels of today, the building has been used as a meeting house, a performance space, and of course for overnight accommodations.

Anyone who attended elementary school in the Northeast has toured Colonial-era buildings, most of them homes. We’re all familiar with the narrow stairs and the fireplace in each room and the wooden floors. This was my first opportunity, though, to see a real tavern with meals on the first floor and bedrooms up above.

The 21st-century Gadsby’s is a wonderful piece of history lovingly cared for. Our tour guide was both informed and amusing (he’ll tell you the ghost story if you ask [every tavern has one]). The commercial ice well--so important for anyone interested in a cold drink!--has just been restored. And, as it used to be, rooms are available for rent by the public for events (although not for overnight stays).

I wanted to stay longer than our tour, just to look around and picture the history—think about the people who had walked those same floors—but we had dinner reservations in the District and so had to head on back to the Metro. On the way, I picked up a cool pair of Halloween earrings in a jewelry shop and Carol bought a little souvenir for someone back home. And as I walked past the restaurants, I made mental notes on places to eat so that I could lure Husb to come along to Alexandria. One day is a nice visit but it's not enough.

Photo of Magners Cider from their website. Photo of Gadsby's Tavern from their website.

Hotels of the Past (#33)

I love when I stumble onto new information by accident. I was looking for something totally unrelated and came across this postcard for sale on eBay:

To Penn Staters, the Autoport is a well-known State College landmark often used in location descriptions ("Is it before or after the Autoport?").  According to the eBay listing, this picture is from the 1940s. Of course then I had to look up the Autoport itself. You can find its history--as the first motel in Pennsylvania--here.