Hague Hotels

In the early 1800s, Jabez Patchen built a one-room cabin on the present site of the Silver Bay Association. Inspired by the success the hostelry at Sabbath Day was enjoying, Seneca Prouty purchased the Patchen cabin at an uncertain date and enlarged it into a farmhouse to accommodate travelers. Raising the Patchen dwelling upon stout beams and using the original foundation, he built a new ground floor beneath. The 10’ by 12’ kitchen in which Prouty’s good wife held forth has an interesting history. In 1885, when John Jay Wilson bought the establishment, he turned the kitchen into a bedroom. It was in this room in 1887 that the stork arrived one night carrying a rather large bundle. When it was opened, out tumbled the Braisted twins, James and John--the first twins to be born on what was to become the Silver Bay Association property. Subsequently Prouty’s kitchen and dining room were moved 300 yards south to become the original part of the present Maple Cottage.

Between 1885 and 1897, Judge Wilson expanded the farmhouse into a small hotel. Improvements such as a large one-story dining room built on the north side and a veranda surrounding the house added to the attractiveness of the house. Known first as the Wilson Hotel, the story is that the name “Silver Bay” sprang to Wilson's lips as he beheld the bay “swathed in its mantle of liquid silver.” 

In 1897, Silas Paine stayed at the hotel and fell in love with the locale. He then bought an adjacent piece of property where he had plans to develop a farm. He built a farmhouse and a barn. There is a story that when Paine heard that Wilson was going to operate a bar at the hotel, he became so incensed, being a man of abstinence, that he bought the place lock, stock, and barrel. There are varied opinions on the purchase date, one being 1897 and the other 1899.

In any event, Paine expanded the Silver Bay Hotel by the addition of what is now the center wing and north wing of the Silver Bay Association Inn. It was advertised at the inn and surrounding cottages could accommodate 350 guests, although other sources list the number as over 600. Paine operated the hotel on a commercial basis for approximately two years.

The hotel offered a fleet of Whitehall row boats, St. Lawrence river skiffs, and a yacht, the Oneida, kept to accommodate the crowds of young men and women who were guests, as well as the men who accompanied the conventions. 

A very large display of Mr. Paine’s specimens of preserved animals and birds, as well as a collection of weapons and munitions of the French and Indian war found in the area, were available for guests perusal. A brochure states that “a room has been devoted to a collection of the flora of Lake George--not pressed in books in the old fashioned way--but placed in frames, like pictures along the walls, where they could be easily examined and studied. […] A whole building is devoted to a rare collection of the birds and animals to be found in this region, nearly 300 specimens, each bird with its nest and eggs and young, surrounded by the foliage in which it makes its home--and each animal in the same way in its natural surroundings.[…] There's no spot of equal length in Americas that has been so many times fought over as the shores of Lake George. The relics of these old wars--arrowheads, spears, tomahawks, cannonballs, bayonets, muskets, and all the paraphernalia of the camp and battlefield--are turned up by the plough or fished out from the bottom of the lake. Two rooms have been devoted to a collection of these historical relics and the portraits of the French, English, Indian, and American soldiers who have fought there. With these collections are also gathered the books pertaining to them, so that the amateur and the student can find all the helps necessary for their use.”

A store was stocked with groceries, grain, and other goods required by guests. There was a very large ballroom music hall in the annex, as well as a blacksmith shop “where first class work is done.” The hotel boasted fine grounds for various games and a bathing facility along the shore of Lake George. Land conveyance was provided to points of interest. Advertisements listed entertainments such as billiards, tennis courts, baseball, golf links, sandy beaches, and dozens of cozy nooks. These advertisements pointed out that a very pretty chapel was nearby, which we assume was the Grace Memorial Chapel on Sabbath Day Point.

One brochure reads as follows:

PURE WATER from Mountain Springs

PURE AIR FROM Mountain Forests

PURE CREAM, PURE MILK

FRESH VEGETABLES raised right on the place.

Good horses and easy carriages

BUT

You cannot get any intoxicating liquors here

THERE IS NO BAR

--SILAS H. PAINE

Hotel Majestic

West 72nd Street

New York

In 1902, Payne agreed to reserve the use of the hotel for Christian conferences and missionary education. In 1904, he sold the property for half its value ($70,000) to those operating in the conferences. That year it was incorporated as the Silver Bay Association, now known as the Silver Bay YMCA of the Adirondacks. In 1927, the Wlson House, part of the original hotel, was torn down by the Silver Bay Association to build the south wing.

Researched by Gerald Crammond and Dorothy Bronner in May of 2010 

Sources:

Silver Bay Association Pictorial History, 1992

Lake George and Surroundings, 1901

(Images of America Series) Lake George  by Gail Halm and Mary H. Sharp, 2000

The Silver Bay Story  by E. Clark Worman, 1952

Old Lake George Hotels by Betty Ahern Buckle, 1986 

Lake George All About It by J. W. Abrams, 1903

Benjamin Van Buren's Bay  by Charles G. Gosselink

ANDIA-AT-ROC-TE  by Clifford King, Jr., 1935

Online sourcs