George McCormick stands in the hallway of the historic Hotel Lakeside. McCormick is writing a book about the hotel’s upcoming 250th anniversary. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

BY SHERI TRUSTY

This summer, George McCormick has been researching, remembering and writing in an effort to complete a book on the history of Hotel Lakeside before its 150th anniversary in 2025. McCormick knows a little about the Lakeside Chautauqua community. He’s been a part of it for 88 years.

“My parents brought me here when I was three months old in 1936,” he said. “I’ve come back most all summers for 88 years. I live in the cottage my great-grandfather owned.”

McCormick also has an insider’s knowledge of the history of Hotel Lakeside because he worked as a houseman at the hotel from 1955 to 1960. He and the other staffers lived in a dormitory that once stood near the hotel. He and his assistant would rise at 3 a.m. to spend the day cleaning floors, scrubbing the elaborate wooden stairway and washing the second-floor porches that once graced the side of the building.

George McCormick holds onto one of the original dining room chairs that have been in Hotel Lakeside’s restaurant since it was built in 1875. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

Hotel Lakeside was built in 1875, in a time when most guests arrived by steamboat and locals traveled by horse and buggy. Although Hotel Lakeside was an upscale hotel, it was the middle of the 19th century, so there was no hot water available in the rooms.

“There was a barber shop in the hotel, so men could get shaved every day. It had a room in it with a bathtub for men, but the women couldn’t take baths,” McCormick said.

The hotel’s famous guests include President Rutherford and Lucy Hayes. Its infamous guests include several generations of raccoons that continually confounded the maintenance crew by taking up residence in the hotel’s walls and ceilings, making scratching noises and hissing through vents.

In 1973, about 75 people gathered here, in the lobby of Hotel Lakeside, to fight to preserve the hotel from demolition. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

“You hear stories about ghosts here,” McCormick said. “There were never ghosts. There were raccoons in the walls.”

McCormick is grateful the Lakeside community has the opportunity to celebrate the hotel’s 150th anniversary because it was nearly torn down in the 1970s. Management at the time had visions of a modern shoreside community with contemporary-style buildings. They viewed the historic hotel as worthlessly antiquated.

“They said people didn’t want to come to Lakeside because of the old buildings,” McCormick said.

In 1973, a local man organized a meeting in the hotel lobby to discuss saving the structure. Management didn’t intervene because they thought the grumblings of a handful of people couldn’t fight their efforts to modernize Lakeside.

“About 75 people showed up in the lobby to save the hotel. They persuaded the management to sign a pledge that they wouldn’t tear down the building,” McCormick said.

This photo shows how Hotel Lakeside looked in 1892. (Submitted photo)

From that group sprang the Friends of the Lakeside Hotel, an advocacy and support organization that still protects and improves the hotel today.

“I’m glad we’ve been able to save it,” McCormick said. “If not for the Friends, I don’t think we could have.”

McCormick’s book, with a working title of “150 Years of Hotel Lakeside,” is expected to be available for purchase by November.