Paul Smith's Hotel

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Paul Smith's Hotel, circa 1892

Paul Smith's Hotel, formally known as the Saint Regis House, was founded in 1859 in the town of Brighton, New York as one of the first wilderness resorts in Adirondacks by Apollos (Paul) Smith. In its day it was the most fashionable of the many great Adirondack hotels, patronized by American presidents Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge, celebrities like P.T. Barnum, and the power elite of the latter half of the 19th century, such as Whitelaw Reid. Smith died in 1912, but the hotel continued under his son, Phelps, until it burned down in 1930.

For years the hotel was kept intentionally primitive, offering neither bellboys nor indoor bathrooms. It started as a seventeen room inn, though by the start of the 20th century it would grow to 255 rooms with a boathouse with quarters for sixty guides, stables, casino, bowling alley, and a wire to the New York Stock Exchange. It also had woodworking, blacksmith, and electrical shops, a sawmill and a store. Stagecoaches delivered guest to the hotel until 1912, when a short electric railroad connected it to the nearest main line.

Smith was a Vermonter who had been a boatman on Lake Champlain; later he ran a small hotel on nearby Loon Lake. In the town of Brighton Smith bought fifty acres on the Lower Saint Regis Lake for three hundred dollars and built a primitive hotel. He was an excellent host, a charming story teller with a quick wit, and he was known for treating everyone the same. He was also a shrewd businessman, and his wife, Lydia, was good at managing the details of the operation. Smith's real estate transactions were legendary— in one transaction, he bought thirteen thousand acres (53 km²) for twenty thousand dollars, and then sold five acres of it for the same price. At one point he owned thirty thousand acres (120 km²). When he sold land, it was generally to his wealthy clientele, many of whom built "Great Camps" on the nearby lakes, using lumber from Smith's mill.

Paul Smith's College was built on the site of the hotel, funded by the estate of Smith's son Phelps, who died in 1937.