The Forge House: Owners, Proprietors & Managers, Part IX

The first meeting establishing the Old Forge Company was held in February 1896 and the syndicate determined to raise funds to enlarge the Forge House, doubling the footprint constructed in 1890-1891.

In a transaction dated April 13, 1896, Garmon and Crosby conveyed the Forge Tract’s 1358.62 acres to the new Company, excluding thirty lots totaling 16 acres purchased by others prior to the October 1895 meeting, for $1.00.

Earlier, the Richfield Springs Mercury in November 1895 reported that Adams paid the two men $25,000 for his 50% interest in the Company.

The deed still included the illegal right to raise the dam taken over by the state in 1879.

Contractor Charles D. West of Little Falls directed the Forge House construction team’s forty workers.

A new wing was built, matching architecturally the renovated wing rebuilt by Garmon & Crosby. Broad piazzas were built to surround the hotel’s front and sides.

Every room was repainted, repapered and refurnished.The new dining room was finished by July 1896 when Alexander Briggs added a collection of rare plants.

A new electric plant was installed to operate 250 incandescent lights.

New docks were built and a park made of the land south of the hotel with a dancing pavilion.

Newspaper reports claimed the enlargement cost $20,000.

The Company retained Alexander and Nellie Briggs for the 1896 season and the couple remained at their posts, to the Company’s consternation, longer than expected.

The Briggs’ lease with the Old Forge Company, in Nellie’s name, expired December 31.

But Alexander refused to turn over the premises until certain sums due from the hotel’s construction were paid to him.

The Company filed ejectment proceedings against Briggs, claiming that Briggs was indebted to the Company.

Briggs then claimed a misunderstanding, that they were merely awaiting arrival of the new lessee to take over the hotel.

They left accordingly and filed a separate suit to settle the claims issue.

Alexander and Nellie Briggs then became the first proprietors for the new Eagle Bay Hotel in May 1897.

In February 1898, the Briggs also purchased the Osgood Hotel in Ilion for their son Charles to manage.

The Boonville Herald reported in late December 1896 that a Buffalo native, Franc E. (“Ed”) Schenck, signed a 5-year lease of the Forge House beginning January 1897.

As with the Briggses, Schenck’s wife Augusta probably signed the lease.

The Schenck Family included his wife and daughter Irene.

In Buffalo, the Schencks operated the Erie Railway Depot restaurant in Buffalo.

In March 1895, the Adiron-dack League hired the Schencks to run the Mountain Lodge Club House at Little Moose Lake.

With the Forge House opportunity, Schenck left this position and was replaced by H. Dwight Grant.

F. E. Schenck also signed a one year lease to be the proprietor of the Kushaqua Lodge for the 1897 season.

The Kushaqua Lodge was a few rods from the Lake Kushaqua Station, midway between Paul Smiths and Loon Lake.

The property was sold in 1902 and the Stony Wold Sanatorium for tuberculosis patients was soon completed.

Stony Wold operated until 1955, one year after Trudeau’s in Saranac Lake, when more modern treatments became available.

The White Fathers purchased it for a seminary and sold it to the state in 1974.

Its buildings were soon torn down.

The Schencks, under Augusta’s signature, also became proprietors of William Moshier’s Inlet Arrowhead Hotel (formerly Hess Inn) in June 1899, an arrangement that lasted one year.

The Schencks hired Charles Moll as manager and Fred Warner as clerk for the Fourth Lake hotel.

At the end of December 1900, the Schencks ended their Forge House lease after four years and leased the Park Hotel in their native Buffalo.

This hotel was newly built to coincide with the Pan American Exposition, hosted by Buffalo that year.

President McKinley was assassinated at the exposition in September 1901.

The Schencks were soon replaced.

Ed may have become ill and was dead at the time of the 1910 census, which has Augusta listed as a widow with daughter Irene at Batavia.

Augusta’s occupation was “Manager, Hotel.”

While operating the Eagle Bay Hotel, the Briggs’ case seeking payments from the Old Forge Company was heard and settled “amicably” in June 1899.

While the Schencks were operating the Forge House, the Old Forge Company was involved in high profile court cases involving the Crosby Trans-portation Company’s controlling of steamer docking and fighting Collis Huntington to prevent the Raquette Lake Railway from being built.

The Company lost to the Railway which destroyed their steamer and railway monopoly of Fulton Chain traffic.

Also, legal fees and several unpaid mortgages were now becoming due.

In 1900, the state finally asserted its ownership of the ten acres by the dam.

State attorney Virgil Kellogg and Herkimer sheriff Daniel Stroebel evicted George Deis’ sawmill and the Parsons’ boatshop on the north side of the dam.

The Little Falls investors sold out to Lowville businessmen John Haberer and Eugene Arthur.

These individuals arranged the sale of the steamers and railroad to Dr. Webb in April 1901.

The Company properties would now be the Forge House and the unsold lots on the Forge Tract.

The Company now would concentrate on selling village lots.

Continued Next Week…