Fall Weekends
A LITERARY RETREAT:
CHAUTAUQUA’S SPENCER HOTEL
By Arthur Page
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Literary-themed rooms at the Spencer include Jane Austen with murals depicting the English countryside. Mural painted by Nancy Wells.
Photo by Korey Rorison. |
Owner Helen Edgington describes the 97-year-old Spencer Hotel as a “Victorian boutique inn.”
The four-story hotel, with long porches on the front side on each floor, is a prime example of why the Chautauqua Institution was designated a National Historic District back in 1989. And while the interior includes chandeliers, light fixtures, furnishings, and wood treatments that hearken back to a Victorian age, the king-sized beds and whirlpool baths in many rooms, the ports for laptop computers in every room and the fact that the hotel is marketed as a conference center are clear reminders that it is grounded in 2002.
“The Spencer,” Edgington adds, “fills a market need that was not being addressed here and does so with all of the twenty-first-century comforts and the charm of the nineteenth century.”
Each of the Spencer’s twenty-six rooms is furnished and decorated based on one or more works of a single author, whether he or she is a novelist, poet or playwright. Among them are Charles Dickens, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, John Keats, Lewis Carroll, and E.B. White. On the distaff side, rooms are dedicated to Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, Beatrix Potter, Lillian Hellman and Charlotte Bronte. Biographies of all authors are available in their respective rooms.
You can bet that the authors so honored have at one or many times been the focus of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, founded in 1878. This book club has enrolled at least 500,000 readers in the past 124 years.
The name of the author to whom the room is dedicated is painted on the door of each guestroom at the Spencer. First-time visitors approach each door with anticipation; stepping into each room is not unlike opening a special gift from a friend.
Consider the room dedicated to Isak Dinesen, author of Out of Africa. Murals have been painted on the ceiling and walls so it appears that the king-sized bed is positioned under a safari tent pitched in the middle of an African savanna. One flap of the tent has been raised, providing a panoramic view of the plain as it stretches to the horizon. A giraffe cavorts in a clump of trees in the distance. The tent flap near the whirlpool tub next to the bed is still lowered, providing privacy. Two wooden giraffes stand next to the sink.
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The Isak Dinesen room where the mural depicts a
tent pitched in te African savannah, Mural painted by Nancy Wells. Photo by Korey Rorison. |
Helen Edgington turned the Spencer Hotel into a literary gift to the Chautauqua Institution—only a ninety-minute drive from Buffalo and located fifteen miles north of Jamestown—after purchasing it in February 1997.
Edgington began her self-described “love affair” with Chautauqua during her first visit in 1965. She returned each subsequent year for the summer season, living off-season in Indiana. Of her purchase of the hotel, she says, “I thought that if I could give back to this place where I had come for years to be restored and if I could give other people an environment where they could be restored ... then that would be my legacy to Chautauqua.”
Edgington opened the hotel for the 1997 summer season after a six-week construction blitz.
“I had worked in historic restoration and interior design, but nothing this large,” she notes. “The hotel then had forty-three rooms when I started and it required a total, total rehab. I could have built a new building more easily,” she recalls.
At season’s end, Edgington went back into construction mode and it was then that she struck upon the idea of a literary-theme hotel with rooms decorated author by author.
“I spent the winter overseeing construction during the day and reading into the night, choosing authors. I had hundreds of books; that was quite a process. Finally, I focused on people of strength and courage who had persevered, and then also some of the ‘classics.’”
Deciding the decor for each room was a collaborative effort between Edgington and the late Nancy Wells, a local artist who painted all of the rooms with murals and special treatments with the exception of the Isabelle Allende room, where the work is that of Rita Argen Auerbach.
The number of guestrooms at the Spencer has been reduced as Edgington discovered her clientele wanted larger spaces; there now are five suites and one apartment—all with kitchenettes — available to guests. Weekly rates, including taxes, during the 2002 summer season ranged from $1,230 for a room with a double bed to $2,033 for the apartment. Off-season rates by the day and week are available; call 716-357-3785 or 1-800-398-1306 for information and reservations, The Spencer’s Web site at http://www.thespencer.com/ will provide you with a peek at many of the guest rooms.
In fact, off-season is a good time to visit the Chautauqua Institution. While the flurry of 2,000 events of the nine-week summer season are over, there is no gate fee and automobiles are permitted on the grounds. And while many of the Victorian homes and cottages may already be tucked under canvas covers, it’s still a treat to stroll the quiet streets by moonlight or walk the shores of Lake Chautauqua during the day.
For off-season events, including horse-drawn sleigh rides in the winter and “55-Plus” weekend programs in spring and fall, check out Chautauqua Institution’s Web site at http://www.chautauqua-inst.org/
For her guests, Edgington has assembled three self-guided tours of Other attractions and addresses are available at http://www.tourchautauqua.com.
Arthur Page is director of the Office of News Services at the University at Buffalo.
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