By Bill Burk
Bright green lawns stretch from the waterfront to the grand wrap-around verandahs where guests take tea in an afternoon breeze that drifts up from the shore. Families picnic on beaches while children and adults alike splash in the cool waters of the deep blue lake.
This is a favored place for travelers between Chicago and New York City, a place to rest on that eight-hundred-mile journey; feed the horses, restock supplies, let the children stretch, run, swim and play before packing up and moving on east or west as business or pleasure dictates. It was a long journey, back in the day, and accommodations on Chautauqua Lake expanded to meet the need for that increasingly popular trip.
This is the late 1880s and Chautauqua is framed with grand hotels up and down the lake, some of the most lavish resorts of their time, The Lakeview House, the Sterlingworth, Waldmere Hotel, The Greenhurst, all room-rich, with ballrooms, fine dining, and recreation options, accessible by lake on gigantic paddle-wheel boats, people-moving behemoths, that crawl up and down the seventeen miles of the lake from Celoron to Mayville.
You can find faded black-and-whites of those magnificent great-houses, you can imagine them.
Or you can go to Chautauqua Institution and walk the halls of the Athenaeum Hotel, secure one of the 156 rooms for a stay, and experience it in person.
One of the only remaining huge structures on the lake from that period (the Long Point bathhouse and the Skating rink at Midway are two others), the Athenaeum, built in 1881, leaves a print of that past on the Chautauqua region. It has accommodated too many dignitaries, entertainers, authors, pundits and generally famous people over the years to name, and enough United States Presidents to fill the hotel’s Heirloom Restaurant; Ulysses S. Grant, Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt all the way to Bill Clinton, who spent a week there preparing for his debate against Bob Dole. It’s halls are a fantastic journey into the past when the hotel was the largest wooden building in the eastern United States, it’s two-story porch supported by ornate columns with an expansive central tower.
But in 2023 it’s old. The natural demand for condominiums and creature-comfort lodgings have crept into the nostalgic institution, changing the quaint into the inconvenient for a new, younger cohort of visitors.
Renovations to the classic hotel aren’t new. The annex, built in the 1920s, was turned into a modern-hotel-like facility (AC, TV’s, running water) in 1998. The main hotel has seen about 60% of the rooms get a face-lift. Hamilton Houston Lownie Architects executed several projects, mostly addressing code compliance and aesthetics, including a 2013 renewal of five guest rooms, 2017 ten more rooms ($300,000 contract), the 5,000 square foot lobby was freshened, new color schemes to brighten the space, finding a wistful mix of contemporary and classical furnishings, drapery and design. HHL Architects also have a Phase II planned for the lobby to address sound control, light fixtures, chandeliers, pendants and sconces.
That brings us to today, and the $20 million renovation project to finish the renovation work.
Brittany Beckstrom, senior director for Athenaeum Hotel operations, was recently quoted in WGRZ Business First, saying, “Being able to expand into those shoulder months and make use of the public spaces during the holidays and even in those earlier months to make it a more comfortable space with weatherization (upgrades) will improve the events we already have.”
In Chautauqua there is an overwhelming, almost fanatical craving to maintain tradition and convention. Change comes nonetheless. The recent inclusion of a bar presence into the food and restaurant business inside the gates -The Afterwords Wine Bar in Bestor Plaza, Heirloom Restaurant and Lobby Lounge in the Athenaeum, The Double Eagle at the golf course, and 3 Taps Craft Bar- has changed the landscape of the institution. Converting their signature hotel into a year-round attraction was the next obvious transformation, opening the historical venue to the public outside the customary season of operations.