Welcome to the virtual museum of
Hotel Balmoral on Mount McGregor: A resort with all the necessary improvements for comfort and health of patrons in 1883.
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List price: $12.99
To sort out the facts about the events at the hotel from the fiction of the book, the author invites you to help build a virtual online museum of documentation of the Victorian resort on Mount McGregor in Wilton, NY.
You may know of Mt. McGregor as the site of the Ulysses S. Grant Cottage.
The author's invitation:
I don't mind being wrong, but I don't like to mislead.
I need your help. Help me to set the record straight.
My fiction sometimes jumped to conclusions on the basis of very few clues in the historical records.
What was life really like for the guests and workers at the resort on the mountain?
I believe that you can help us answer that question.
This web page has two purposes.
1. To create a virtual documentary museum of Mount McGregor covering 1883 through 1885.
2. To to produce an Internet revision of parts of the book on the basis of recommendations from readers.
And there really is another purpose:
To share the excitement of discovering and sharing information.
What actually took place in America about a hundred years ago when people with visionary schemes tried to create the good life?
What was exciting about their world for the people who came to the hotel ?
What did they hope to do with their money?
In short, what was the American dream as the Victorian era drew to a close and this country was finding itself after the end of the war that General U. S. Grant called the "rebellion?"
Stuart Stiles
SO
Get your ticket and board the little Mt. McGregor train!
Your trip will take you back in time to the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century.
The Henry Denton, a shiny new steam engine locomotive will lead you to the mountain and the John Brill, another shiny new engine at the back of the train will push during the climb up the nearly thousand feet to the peak of McGregor.
Wouldn't it be great to find paintings, photographs, or engineering drawings that show details of the Mt. McGregor train? How about discovering who its engineers were, or the identity of both people for whom the engines were named?
The train only goes to the Hotel Balmoral and back, but you can have a great ride and an amazing time discovering what happens while you are at the resort.
I wondered, what the Hotel Balmoral looked like? Here is one version of its image as the hotel presented itself on an advertising pamphlet.
Wouldn't it be great to know what the hotel looked like in photographs, floor plans, room decor, and architectural details?
Can you provide any other images that will help us to get a clear picture of what the Balmoral looked like?
Here is an example of material that we can use on this page:
November 2011:
Thanks to a note from William Underhill I have learned that the hotel was not ready for the 1883 season, as the book title suggests. Its grand opening was in 1884, and he sent a copy of that announcement.
This is the kind of evidence we need if we are ever going to correct my fictionalization of the place. I created for the sake of the story that I wanted to tell.
The pamphlet informs us that "The Art Gallery, so popular in the last season, will be again open with a large and beautiful collection of paintings." There was some sort of season in 1883. Where did guests who visited the art gallery stay during the 1883 season?
Was there any place they could stay on the mountain? Did they have to stay at other lodgings, such as the hotels in Saratoga?
It seems that every document we find raises more questions!
December 2, 2011:
Bill has also written that December 1, 2011 marks the 114th anniversary of the fire that destroyed the Hotel Balmoral. Now we have the first and last dates for the operation of the hotel.
January 9, 2012:
Most of the illustrations in the book are from period publications about Mt. McGregor or the Baloral hotel. These two were adapted from documents provided by Minnie Clark Bolster, author and archivist of the legacy of Saratoga Springs, New York.
February 20, 2012
Artist Lake:
Duncan McGregor had a new lake made on the mountain. Wondering how the lake might have looked when the Balmoral was near it, I looked for a photo postcard from a later date. This is the one I found:
After removing the structures and rendering the copy as a watercolor in Photo Shop, this is what the lake might have looked like in the 1883-1885 era:
March 7, 2012
On July 12, 1885, the New York Times contained an article that is filled with optimism about the future of the Balmoral Hotel. Bill Underhill sent this clipping:
"Mount McGregor property will be improved another year by the erection of a number of cottages. At present the only cottages on the grounds are those of Joseph W. Drexel, which is occupied by Gen. Grant, and of W. J Arkell, of the Albany Journal. When the narrow gauge road was built from Saratoga to the summit of the mountain the road bed was so prepared as to enable the substitution of a broad gauge for this experimental track. The Hotel Balmoral will also be enlarged. There is not a passenger train arriving at Saratoga that does not bring visitors who go up to Mount McGregor in the hope of seeing Gen Grant upon the cottage veranda."
April 10, 2012
Several pages of Taintor's 1892 guidebook, "Saratoga Illustrated" contains a description of the train ride to Mount McGregor. Although it was not read until after the Hotel Balmoral stories were written, it looks a lot like the way that ride was envisioned for this book. Check it out at the link below:
An excursion to Mount McGregor
Come back often to follow the search that will be reported here.
Author's Note: Now that the book is in circulation, several rough spots have been identified by some "friendly reviewers."
I can not say that the errors were intentionally placed in the text, the way I was told as a child that the gypsies who visited Saratoga in those long ago days demonstrated their human imperfection by weaving small errors into their baskets and other craftwork. I just did not catch my errors. Neither did the computer's spelling and grammar checker.
Here are what we have found so far. If it clarifies the story, feel free to re-read the pages with these corrections.
Page 39 "When I got to my room, I took my magnifying glass to study the coins."
Page 58 "Those boys were forced then to go to Canada with them, but you were lucky."
Page 63 "In my hotel model the rail line will already be on the set for the child."
Page 105 "General Grant so lately rested."
Page 111 "Sylvester, Nathaniel Bartlett, The Historic Muse of Mt. McGregor, 1885.
Hopefully there will be no need for more of these corrections.
Return to the book list.
E-mail address for this virtual museum is balmoral@frontier.com
Write to the museum web e-mail to buy a signed book at the $12.99 (plus tax and shipping.)
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