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Completed in 1897; burned to the ground by a massive fire in 1950.
Circa 1904. "Hotel Ausable Chasm, Ausable Chasm, N.Y." 8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Photographic Company. View full size.
So many of these grand, imposing Victorian style summer hotels were either taken down by kitchen fires or by suspicious fires when, with improved highways in later years, people started building vacation cottages on nearby lakes resulting in fewer reservations at these large resort hotels that required a lot of money to stay open.
Surprised it made its 53rd birthday! So many of those late 19th century wood buildings didn't make their 20th. Lots of 53 and 63 year old buildings in use today, but by comparison to today's architecture they still look completely modern and are of much more fire proof construction. A 19th century structure in 1950 looked, well, just Victorian and completely out of date and had appeared that way since the 1920's. A sad loss, though.
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