Every Monday we share an image on the Essex on Lake Champlain Facebook page and invite our viewers to play some Vintage Essex Trivia.
While we of course share a lot of artifacts and images of from or of Essex, this particular postcard is another artifact featuring a location nearby and not actually in Essex. Do you recognize it? Where is it? What has changed?
The caption tells is that it is the Westport Inn in Westport on Lake Champlain in New York.
Here’s what the community had to say about it:
Dianne Lansing: I think it might be the original Westport Inn. The Inn was torn down in the early 1960’s and it is now Ballard Park.
Curdie Gardner: That’s where my parents planted the square of flowers! I never saw what was there before…how beautiful!
Dianne Lansing: For what its worth, here’s some more info. Our wedding reception was held on the lawn of the Inn on August 25th, 1962. The Inn was no longer operating as such but the bar on the lower level was still open. Very shortly after that, the Inn was torn down. It may have even been the same year.
So it turns out this inn was torn down and the area is now Ballard Park! I never knew that. Thanks, Dianne, for sharing its fate. If it was removed in the 1960’s that means the postcard pre-dates whichever precise year that happened in that decade. Can anyone narrow down the year for us?
Does anyone else have anything else they would like to share about the postcard or the Westport Inn? Any memories? Please leave a comment below!
Share Your Essex Artifacts
If you want to share your old photos of Essex (or brochures; postcards; menus; tickets; any artifact) on the blog please email us at editor [AT] essexonlakechamplain [DOT] com.
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I worked in the dining room of the Westport Inn the summer of 1961, and over Labor Day weekend in early September of 1962. It was owned by Chuck and Sue LaForge and another couple, all relatively recent graduates of Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration. They also owned and ran the Equinox in Manchester VT and the Beekman Arms in Rhinebeck NY. I remember the DJs and staff from WPTR in Albany/Schenectady/Troy held “retreats” at the Inn and we, who loved the great rock ‘n roll they played were awestruck to be in the company of those “voices” we knew from the airwaves. Also, one weekend, Lee Marvin, not long after establishing his fame in the movie “Cat Ballou,” came to the Inn in his luxury yacht. He encamped in the top floor suite and would have pitchers of bloody marys sent up each morning…It was a truly neat inn, seemingly one of the last of its kind.