It may be Paris in April, and Miami or the Riviera in January, but it has always been Saratoga in August. This fostered a necessity to house guests, whether they were seeking the curing waters, or the fickle whims of fortune at the track or faro tables.
Accommodating guests in Saratoga Springs was the fruitful brain-child of the municipal founder Gideon Putnam, who somehow fantastically envisioned a resort community only a scant few years after the the United States shed the bonds of Colonial rule. Putnam’s Tavern and Boarding House, later called Union Hall, and then the Grand Union Hotel, was the well-spring of Saratoga. [Read more…] about Saratoga’s Grand Union Hotel, the Leland Brothers & A.T. Stewart