A Grand Hotel Yawns, Leaves a Wake-up Call for Next Spring

BRETTON WOODS, N.H. —  “Leaf peeping” season is about over in northern New Hampshire, and the mountains’ spectacular palette of red, yellow and orange has begun to fade.

Still, it was startling--and ominous--the other day when Manfred Boll suddenly saw snow flakes swirling off the back veranda of the Mt. Washington Hotel here.

Boll, who manages the hotel, was waiting for his fiancee to step from a horse-drawn carriage so that they could be married on the hotel lawn in view of Mt. Washington, highest peak in the Northeast.

The couple said their vows as the hotel staff cheered and sipped champagne, but there would be no honeymoon.

Instead, Boll and the 350 hotel employees face a massive task right now--they must race the weather to shut down the immense hotel for the winter, as the staffs have done every year since the establishment opened in 1902.

Window Shock Absorbers

It will take a month just to drain the water pipes. Then, 110 gallons of antifreeze will be poured into the bathroom fixtures in every one of the 200 rooms. The 100 huge windows along the veranda must be fitted with shock absorbers to withstand 75-m.p.h. gales.

But in a few weeks it will all be done, the grandfather clock in the lobby will be stopped and the doors will be locked. The hotel will then belong to “The Princess,” as the staff calls the ghost of a former owner.

“Every October we must put the hotel to sleep for the winter,” says Bea Dorsey. “It’s a little sad but it’s exciting too.”

Dorsey, who guides guests around the hotel’s 2,600-acre grounds, had just returned from a hike up mile-high Mt. Washington, where the season’s first snowfall left 4.7 inches on the summit.

The mountain has dominated local life and legend for more than two centuries, and guidebooks are full of superlatives about it.

Crawford Trail, chiseled out in 1819, is the oldest continuously used mountain trail in America. Nearby, the world’s first cog railway clicks its way to the top. In 1934, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the highest surface wind speed ever recorded occurred on Mt. Washington--231 m.p.h. It flattened an eight-inch-wide flagpole as though it were a cocktail straw.

Private Rail Cars

But in 1902, the great mountain got some competition in its role as supplier of superlatives. That year, a Pennsylvania railroad investor named Joseph Stickney opened the Mt. Washington Hotel as a summer-only resort for wealthy families all over the Northeast.

At first the guests arrived in private Pullman cars, later in motorcars which were stored in a 200-slot garage with chauffeur quarters.

The hotel, which has its own Post Office and ZIP code, is called the largest wood stucco structure extant in America. It takes half an hour just to walk around it.

It is probably best known as the site of the 1944 Bretton Woods International Monetary Conference, which established the post-World War II financial structure that lasted until the 1970s.

Between now and Oct. 18, Herb Boynton, the hotel’s vice president for property management, won’t get much sleep as he prowls the grounds with a two-way radio, exhorting the huge staff to prepare the hotel for closing.

In the kitchens, maitre d’ Michael Kadri counts mounds of silver and china plates so that he will know how many replacements he must order over the winter.

Jim Drummond and Vin Spiotti are getting ready to wrap all of the furniture, paintings and historic photographs in paper and large cotton sheets.

Bob Mountain, who must drain the water pipes, makes a list of the trouble spots in the 85-year-old plumbing.

Boiler Fired Up

“When we’re ready to drain the pipes,” Mountain said, “we fire up the boiler full bore, open all the radiators in the rooms and then shut her down. It creates a vacuum that pulls all the water out.

“But you’ve got to hurry. Your enemy is up there,” he said, pointing to the signs of winter dusting the top of Mt. Washington in the distance.