page_title: Loon Lake, New York
section_title: Loon Lake House
hierarchical_section_title: Loon Lake, New York / History / Loon Lake House
caption_attribution_description: English: Loon Lake House
context_page_description: Loon Lake is a hamlet and a lake in the northeast region of Adirondack Park in the U.S. state of New York. The community is located on the east side of Loon Lake and 18 miles northeast of Saranac Lake and 27 miles north of Lake Placid.
  Loon Lake was one of several socially prominent destinations in Franklin County, New York, throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries; it featured the Loon Lake House resort.
context_section_description: In 1878 Mary and Ferd Chase purchased 10 acres on a bluff overlooking Loon Lake. They built The Loon Lake House, a 31-room hotel.  The resort's instant success allowed the Chase's to expand operations, and by 1893 the Loon Lake House's capacity reached 500 guests.  Eventually, the resort would expand to accommodate 800 guests across three hotel structures and 60 private cabins spread over the resort's 3,000 acres.  
  The resort had an expansive infrastructure that included two water systems, an underground sewer, an early electrical system, a dairy, vegetable and flower gardens, a large boat house, bowling alleys, and one of the Adirondacks' first golf courses, built in 1895.  (The Loon Lake Golf Course was abandoned in 2003.) 
  In its heyday the large resort hotel was as self-sufficient as a small town; the resort also included a general store, post office, and a large and elegant train station.  The train station originally served passengers of the Chateaugay Railroad, a branch of the Delaware and Hudson Railroad.  In 1892 the New York Central Railroad completed its rail line to Loon Lake, allowing passage directly from New York City.
  The beautiful landscape and luxury of the hotel attracted many public figures of the period. Presidents Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley enjoyed stays at the Loon Lake House during their tenures. Wealthy families of the period, including the Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Rothschilds, Rockefellers, and Guggenheims regularly stayed at the resort. Additionally, popular cultural figures, such as composers  Irving Berlin and George Gershwin, and authors Theodore Dreiser, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Oscar Wilde vacationed at the Loon Lake House.
  The Chases owned and managed the hotel from construction in 1878 until 1929. Business dwindled after the stock market crash of 1929, and Mary Chase was forced to sell the resort. In 1956, the primary building burned. The remaining assets, including the grounds and cabins, were auctioned off in 1957. The rise of private automobile use and widespread construction of highways had created wide competition for vacationers.
caption: Main house
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