Winchester Hotel

The **Winchester Hotel** is a 350-room Rustic Woodland-style hotel in Winchester, New York, twenty miles north of Ashford Falls and 80 miles north of Albany. It was built between 1906 and 1908 by Gage Winchester employing more than 125 Irish and Chinese laborers beside local workers, opening on July 4, 1908, catering mostly to travelers driving from New York City to Canada. It includes a restaurant, spa and bed-and-breakfast and a local gathering hall for special events.

Resting on twelve acres of land owned by the Winchester family, the property was inherited by Gage Winchester in 1906, the grandson of a former New York governor. A lumber and limestone baron, Winchester sought to restore and expand a former hotel and trading post that once stood on the property, but over time, the project expanded into a much more massive project than was intended, becoming the modern hotel. Even with a few investors, including Lincoln Hedison, the father of Carter Hedison, Winchester furthered more financing for construction of the hotel by selling parcels of the original family land to laborers and workmen. The community around these homes eventually became known as Winchester in the 1930s.

Completed in 1908, the location featured a hydraulic elevator, dual electric and gas lighting, running water, a telephone in every guest room and a fleet of vehicles that picked up guests from the train station in Ashford Falls. It gradually became known as the "stopping-off place" for many of the jet set traveling from New York City to points north, including actors and celebrities, captains of industry and politicians. Famous guests at the Winchester included Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Henry Ford, Nelson Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Errol Flynn and Olivia De Havilland, as well as two United States Presidents, such as Warren G. Harding and Grover Cleveland. During the Thirties, when Johnathan Trout was running the hotel, it gradually became a site for gangsters and mobsters smuggling illegal whiskey down from Canada. After Gage let Trout go and hired Howard Marcus, the hotel returned to some state of normalcy, but during the Fifties and Sixties, business tapered off as the airline industry cut back on travelers in the area.

Gage Winchester left the hotel in his will to be shared by his daughter, Monica Winchester and Marcus, who had become a long-time friend and confidante. However, while he was still alive, Monica's son, Ty Malloy, was blamed for a fire in the boiler room that took part of the employee quarters, the dining room and the lounge area. The actual origins of the fire were never resolved, but Gage Winchester kept the hotel open during restorations. After his passing in 1969, the hotel closed with much of the work incomplete in 1970.

With Monica's death in 1986, she left her shares of the hotel to her children, Ty Hedison, Blake Hedison and Rachel Hedison although Rachel eventually altered the will to gain full custody. Her father, Carter Hedison tried to illegally sell the property in in 1987 while also using the site for clandestine meetings with Dash Andrews and Louis Riley. Danny Featherstone also illegally lived here without permission through part of the Nineties.

In 1995, Marcus's heirs approached Blake Hedison for extra funding to finish the restoration and finally reopen the hotel.