Archives at Cornell

Newspaper articles on Slaterville hotel fires

Collection — manuscript box: 49 - folder 1

Identifier: 2467m

Scope and content

Typewritten transcripts of articles in the Ithaca Journal on the fires that destroyed the Magnetic Springs Hotel and the Fountain House. The article on the Magnetic Springs Hotel is dated December 23, 1911; the article on the Fountain House is dated November 10, 1916. The 1911 article includes information on how the fire was put out and how the horse-drawn fire trucks of the Ithaca fire department responded. Both articles contain information on the history of the buildings destroyed.

Dates

1911-1916.

Language of Material

In English.

Biographical / Historical

The Magnetic Springs Hotel in Slaterville, New York, already an old structure in the 1850s, was owned for many years by W.J. Carns and his son. They sold it to Henry F. Lyme and his son in 1907. The Fountain House, built in the early 1870s, was initially intended as a kind of sanatorium, given the presence of magnetic mineral springs nearby. W.J. Carns bought the Fountain House around 1891. Martha B. Carns ran the hotel there until about 1915, when her brother Lyman B. Carns took over ownership.