Bethel Inn turns 100; plans for second century

(Note: Information and some quotations for the following account are taken from archives of the Bethel Historical Society and from Donald G. Bennett’s Bethel Journals website.)

    When the Bethel Inn opened in 1913 the Oxford County Citizen newspaper reported, “There was never anything quite like it in Bethel before.”
    And that was exactly the intent of Dr. John Gehring and his patients, who included philanthropist William Bingham II of Cleveland.
    The inn was built initially to host patients suffering from nervous disorders and exhaustion who had come to Bethel for treatment by Gehring. They were mostly well-to-do, and they and their doctor felt the boarding houses where they had been staying were inadequate.
    The inn was born in the ashes of another hotel, the Prospect, which had burned in 1911. The new project was helped by Bethel voters, who approved a tax exemption for the hotel for 10 years.
    While there were five investing patient/partners, the inn in effect became a co-partnership of Bingham and one other, William Upson.
    In the design of the hotel, “the Inn’s front rooms over the lobby were arranged en suite for the comfort of Gehring’s patients, while the back rooms were single rooms designed primarily for nurse and attendants.”
    But the patients also lent a hand – literally – in early construction of the golf course. A few of the holes “had been roughed out by Gehring’s patients during their work therapy session west of the doctor’s house (off Broad Street).”
    When the inn’s doors opened on July 12, the Citizen described “throngs of delighted, enthusiastic and expressive guests, (560 in the evening by actual count and over 300 in the afternoon)  ... delicious refreshments were served continuously during afternoon and evening in the private dining room, where Mrs. Claney and her assistants were tireless in the attentions. Indeed everybody in the whole house, and everything was devoted to the happiness of the guests. The music of the McGee Orchestra of Berlin, N.H., stationed in the music room added very much to the enjoyment and spirit of the day.”
“The inn’s interior follows the Colonial [revival] architecture of the outside. As one enters the attractive lobby one finds one’s self facing a wonderful vista of green trees and hills framed in the broad windows and doors of the western wall. The lobby is in rich brown coloring, the paper blending perfectly with the tone of the beautiful cypress finish.”
Over the next few years the inn partners bought nearby homes and lots, including several to be used as guest “cottages.”  Also added was land on Songo Pond, where a lake house was built.
Work continued on the golf course, and in summer 1915, “The golf links are improving daily and the recent heavy rains has put the putting green in excellent condition. Water pipes are being laid to all the greens so that from now on they will continually be in the best of shape.”

The inn began drawing guests beyond just the patients of Dr. Gehring , some traveling by train and others by car.
Accounts from the early days also described their comings and goings: “Dr. and Mrs. Merrill-Gates of Washington arrived on the 16th for dinner and were so well pleased with The Inn and its environments remained until the 19th and reluctantly left for the White Mountains, and their daughter and friend arrive on the 20th to remain several days and later will follow her father.”
It was also common for guests to stay for the entire summer season.
The inn stayed open all winter as well and offered an ice skating rink, trails for skiing and snowshoeing, and a one-third-mile-long toboggan run with an elevated take-off ramp. Through the 1930s there were few paying winter guests, but the inn was kept fully staffed despite losing about $100,000 a year.
There were also some economic dampers at work during the early 20th century that affected how the wealthy spent their leisure time and money, according to Randy Bennett, executive director of the Bethel Historical Society. They were, he said, “the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, which made the income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system in 1913, and the 1929 stock market crash.”
But Bingham the philanthropist continued to help fund the inn’s operation. In the late 1920s, he bought out Upson to become the sole owner, according to Stan Howe, BHS executive director emeritus.
From 1940 to 1961, the inn closed during the winter, but according to written accounts Bingham “only approved this change in policy as long as all employees were to be paid a full year’s salary unless they got other jobs. Closing in the winter cut the inn’s annual deficit down to about $45,000.”
Bingham was known for his generosity toward his employees. In fact, when he died in 1955, he left each employee $100 for each year they had been employed.
Howe said the inn “was one of the favorite things Bingham ever did. He was very proud of the inn, and very particular about it. He was very concerned toward the end of his life what would happen to it.”
Bingham’s sister, Frances Payne Bolton, told him she would see that it was sold to someone who would have the same standards as he or she would buy and operate it herself, Howe said.
After Bingham’s death a career hotel operator, Guy Butler, bought the inn. The three cottages, known as The Harriette, The Park, and The Straw House, were renamed The Oaks, The Pines and The Elms, respectively. (The Elms is today the Bethel Historical Society”s Robinson House.)
With the establishment of Sunday River Ski area in 1961 and a contract to house engineers and crews building the Telstar satellite station in Andover, Butler decided to stay open for the winter and try to attract skiers.
But the inn made only $6,000 -  the amount spent on advertising – so winter operations were again shelved.
In 1966 the inn was sold back to Bingham trustees and operated as the Bethel Holding Company. The golf course was lengthened to regulation size, thanks to the purchase of more land.
But in 1979, with a further decline in business, the bank holding the mortgage was ready to sell off the 100-acre property piece by piece.
were served continuously during afternoon and evening in the private dining room, where Mrs. Claney and her assistants were tireless in the attentions. Indeed everybody in the whole house, and everything was devoted to the happiness of the guests. The music of the McGee Orchestra of Berlin, N.H., stationed in the music room added very much to the enjoyment and spirit of the day.”
    “The inn’s interior follows the Colonial [revival] architecture of the outside. As one enters the attractive lobby one finds one’s self facing a wonderful vista of green trees and hills framed in the broad windows and doors of the western wall. The lobby is in rich brown coloring, the paper blending perfectly with the tone of the beautiful cypress finish.”
    Over the next few years the inn partners bought nearby homes and lots, including several to be used as guest “cottages.”  Also added was land on Songo Pond, where a lake house was built.
    Work continued on the golf course, and in summer 1915, “The golf links are improving daily and the recent heavy rains has put the putting green in excellent condition. Water pipes are being laid to all the greens so that from now on they will continually be in the best of shape.”
    The inn began drawing guests beyond just the patients of Dr. Gehring, some traveling by train and others by car.
    Accounts from the early days also described their comings and goings: “Dr. and Mrs. Merrill-Gates of Washington arrived on the 16th for dinner and were so well pleased with The Inn and its environments remained until the 19th and reluctantly left for the White Mountains, and their daughter and friend arrive on the 20th to remain several days and later will follow her father.”
    It was also common for guests to stay for the entire summer season.
    The inn stayed open all winter as well and offered an ice skating rink, trails for skiing and snowshoeing, and a one-third-mile-long toboggan run with an elevated take-off ramp.
    Through the 1930s there were few paying winter guests, but the inn was kept fully staffed despite losing about $100,000 a year.
    There were also some economic dampers at work during the early 20th century that affected how the wealthy spent their leisure time and money, according to Randy Bennett, executive director of the Bethel Historical Society. They were, he said, “the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, which made the income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system in 1913, and the 1929 stock market crash.”
    But Bingham the philanthropist continued to help fund the inn’s operation. In the late 1920s, he bought out Upson to become the sole owner, according to Stan Howe, BHS executive director emeritus.
    From 1940 to 1961, the inn closed during the winter, but according to written accounts Bingham “only approved this change in policy as long as all employees were to be paid a full year’s salary unless they got other jobs. Closing in the winter cut the inn’s annual deficit down to about $45,000.”
    Bingham was known for his generosity toward his employees. In fact, when he died in 1955, he left each employee $100 for each year they had been employed.
    Howe said the inn “was one of the favorite things Bingham ever did. He was very proud of the inn, and very particular about it. He was very concerned toward the end of his life what would happen to it.”
    Bingham’s sister, Frances Payne Bolton, told him she would see that it was sold to someone who would have the same standards as he or she would buy and operate it herself, Howe said.
    After Bingham’s death a career hotel operator, Guy Butler, bought the inn. The three cottages, known as The Harriette, The Park, and The Straw House, were renamed The Oaks, The Pines and The Elms, respectively. (The Elms is today the Bethel Historical Society’s Robinson House.)
    With the establishment of Sunday River Ski area in 1961 and a contract to house engineers and crews building the Telstar satellite station in Andover, Butler decided to stay open for the winter and try to attract skiers.
    But the inn made only $6,000 -  the amount spent on advertising – so winter operations were again shelved.
    In 1966 the inn was sold back to Bingham trustees and operated as the Bethel Holding Company. The golf course was lengthened to regulation size, thanks to the purchase of more land.
    But in 1979, with a further decline in business, the bank holding the mortgage was ready to sell off the 100-acre property piece by piece.
The Rasor years
In 1979 advertising executive Dick Rasor of New York, burned out from that lifestyle, was looking for a business to buy in Northern New England.
    “I wanted to own my own business, something that was marketing-driven,” he said.
    He looked at stores, real estate companies and other possibilities.
    But then he began to realize how under-marketed hospitality businesses were, and he began to look more closely at them, starting in Vermont.
    His search also took him eastward, to New Hampshire and Maine.
    “When I looked at the Bethel Inn, I fell in love with it, and with the town,” he said.
    In May of 1979, he bought the entire property for $450,000, and looked forward to a new life in rural Maine.
    But Mother Nature quickly gave him a dose of reality.
    The summer brought gas rationing, and the winter was one of the greenest in memory. By late January there was some snow, “but only 10 or 20 percent of what we usually got,” he remembers.
    But a boost came in the form of a brainstorm by Sunday River Ski Resort owner Les Otten, who teamed up with Rasor to bring a truckload of manmade snow to the Boston Common, in order to advertise that Bethel had skiing.
    “That single event put Sunday River and Bethel on the map in Boston,” said Rasor.
    But his new business still needed other financial support, so he returned for several years to his advertising job. He came back to the inn full-time in 1986.
That was when he made what he says was easily the best decision in his years of ownership.
    “The expansion,” he said. “I said, ‘We can’t just sit here with 60 guest rooms and a nine-hole golf course.’”
    So he went to the bank to borrow the money to build 40 new condominiums and - at the same time - borrow against those profits to expand the golf course to 18 holes.
    The bank balked.
    But, said Rasor, when he presented 40 signed contracts for the condos, along with a 10 percent down payment on each, he got his money.
    Doing both expansions concurrently, he said, was important in order to have the course ready when the new condo owners moved in.
    Another part of the package was a recreational center that included a heated, outdoor swimming pool.
    “I give Les Otten credit for that,” said Rasor. “He did it first at Sunday River, and I wouldn’t have had the courage if I hadn’t followed his lead.”
    Among events hosted over the years, Rasor counts the annual Jeep Jamboree and the Fall Festival Pro-Am Golf Tournament as some of his favorites.
    He’s also proud of an inn statistic showing that resort guests spend a total of 51,700 overnight stays in Bethel a year, benefiting both the inn and other businesses, he said.
    Also important to him, he said, is the “loyalty and professionalism of key long term employees in the success of the resort.  Just as critical has been the ability of these fine folks to transition from hourly employees to supervisory and management levels.”
    As examples he cites Managing Partner Allen Connors, who first worked at the inn as a teenager in 1981; Executive Chef Robert Bates, who started as a line cook in 1988; and three who started as waitresses: Dining Room Manager Mitzi Naples (1998), Head of Group Sales Diana Polli (1992) and Wedding Coordinator Mary Brown (1981).
    Like other businesses, the inn has had to adjust to change brought on by computer technology and communication. Online information has greatly changed reservations bookings. Today, said Rasor, people will wait until the last minute to book in order to first check the weather and search for online deals.
 “It used to be that we would know by May 15 what 80 percent of our bookings were through the fall,” he said. “Now we only know about 20 percent.”
    Asked if he had any regrets over more than three decades at the inn, Rasor said only that he wished he had not needed to do business with seven different banks, “four of which are now out of business. The banking situation has always been difficult,” he said, and the recent recession took a toll.
    But, said Rasor, at the end of 2012 the inn settled on a new 20-year financial package that he hopes will get it off to a good start in its second century.
    Immediate plans call for improvements or upgrades to the furnishings and bathrooms in 25 of the older rooms, “bringing them up to today’s standards,” he said. The work will be done mostly this spring, ready in time for the summer.
    Down the road, said Rasor, there are plans for other facilities improvements as well as new condominium development.
    This summer will bring an official centennial celebration, likely taking place around the time of the annual Bethel Art Fair in July. The timing will nearly coincide with the actual 100th anniversary of the 1913 opening on July 12.
    “We’re planning a dinner gala,” said Rasor.