Crooked Lake Hotel: A Getaway For Celebrities

The Crooked Lake Hotel in Sand Lake, Rensselaer County, NY – now Old Daley on Crooked Lake – began in the early 1800s as a stage coach stop, Philip Upham’s tavern, along the plank road from Albany to points east. The building burned in 1850 and was rebuilt by James Mosher. In 1881, it was bought by the Brown family and became Brown’s Crooked Lake House.

The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute used Brown’s as a site for summer survey programs and was “filled to the brim” for a month with up to 80 engineering students. But Brown’s most famous guest was Theodore Roosevelt, who, as Governor of New York, would bring his family to Crooked Lake for the summer and commute back-and-forth to the Capitol in Albany as needed.

In a 1969 Times-Union column, Edgar Van Olinda wrote: “As a matter of record, [the hotel] was one of the last places the vice president visited before he went to Washington to become president of the United States following the tragic assassination of President McKinley in Buffalo, N. Y.”

The Minahan brothers leased what was then called the Wendell Inn in 1905 and purchased it a year later. They hosted Eleanor Roosevelt for lunch when Franklin D. Roosevelt was Governor.

Alpheus Winbert “Al” Coon, Jr. and wife Theresa acquired Crooked Lake in 1935. Al, ever the engineer, set about to upgrade, expand, renovate and modernize the place.

A May 1932 Troy Times article remarked about a newly added Dance Palace “constructed so that cooling breezes from Crooked Lake blow through it at all times, making it one of the most comfortable as well as one of the most attractive places to enjoy an evening’s dancing during the warm summer months.”

The newly re-christened Crooked Lake Hotel became a popular site for the big bands of the era in programs beamed across the country on radio; among them Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Les Brown (and His Band of Renown), Benny Goodman, and Guy Lombardo. Newspaper ads by the local Musicians Union noted that only union
orchestras were employed. The basement rathskeller was a speakeasy.

A motel was added across the street around 1955. A year later, fire destroyed the garage opposite the hotel. Thankfully, firefighters were able to protect surrounding structures, including the motel units, from damage; loss was confined to the garage and some vehicles and equipment inside.

In 1967, fire broke out in the kitchen during a fundraising dinner; damage was minor, but one firefighter was slightly injured.

An enclosed pool for year-round swimming was added in the early 1960s. It was removed years later due to extensive storm damage. Well into the 1970s, Crooked Lake was a popular restaurant, motel and event venue, hosting vacationing families, weddings, parties, and proms.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were regular guests in the early 1960s, traveling from New York by seaplane and secretly ensconced in the “remote country” hotel.

Crooked Lake was subsequently acquired by Dalmar Tifft and Mark Hammond and later by Paul Vincent before becoming Old Daley’s on Crooked Lake in 2010. It’s been renovated again and has become a premier upstate venue for parties and weddings, and dining.

Sand Lake Historical Society Gala

Old Daley’s on Crooked Lake will be hosting The Sand Lake Historical Society’s 50th Anniversary “Super Gala,” at 6 pm on Thursday, May 16, 2024. Old Daley’s is located at 2339 NY Route 43, in Sand Lake, NY. The event will feature a full dinner buffet, cash bar, dessert and coffee and tea.

The theme is “Come as We Were” and attendees are encouraged to dress-up as a Sand Lake resident (or visitor) from any time in our history. Attendees could be a mill-worker, a farmer, a gangster, a trolley-conductor, a vacationer, as they were in high school, as they are in 2024.

Tickets are available online here.

Peter Finn is the President of the Sand Lake Historical Society.

Illustrations, from above: Minahan’s Wendell Inn (Crooked Lake Hotel), 1914; Crooked Lake Hotel in the 1920s or 1930s; and the Crooked Lake Hotel in the 1950s (images courtesy Sand Lake Historical Society).