|
|
|
|||||||
|
|
Cooperstown By Nancy and Richard Woodworth Few places its size (population,
2,200) are so embedded in the American consciousness as the upstate New
York village of Cooperstown. Native son novelist James Fenimore
Cooper gave it and Otsego Lake, his “Glimmerglass,” a romantic place
in the history of literature through his Leatherstocking Tales.
Abner Doubleday supposedly invented the game of baseball here, and the
Baseball Hall of Fame stands as the shrine to America's national
pastime. The Farmers' Museum captures the spirit of New York State's
rural life of the 19th century. Although Cooper and Doubleday get
most of the credit, the impetus for the Cooperstown we know today
stemmed from latter-day native sons, the Clark family of Singer sewing
machine fame. The house that Edward S. Clark built in 1932 on the Cooper
property beside Otsego Lake is now the Fenimore Art Museum, a showcase
for the New York State Historical Association's masterful collections of
folk and decorative art. Stephen C. Clark Sr. paid $5 for an early
baseball that led to the formation in 1939 of the National Baseball Hall
of Fame. He founded the Farmers' Museum in 1943, the third prong in his
visionary effort to develop for Cooperstown a clean industry, tourism.
Another prong has emerged with the evolution of the Glimmerglass Opera,
thanks to more local benefactors, the Busches of beer fame. The three museums – celebrating
baseball, art and rural life – reflect the essence of small-town
America and inspire for Cooperstown the logical moniker, “The Village
of Museums.” But Cooperstown is no mere display-case relic. It's the
living Norman Rockwell town where oversize flower baskets hang from the
downtown lampposts, flags fly in front of homes large and small along
its tree-shaded streets, there's only one traffic light and, but for a
new CVS pharmacy, no outside chain store or motel has been allowed to
sully its all-American purity. "Time has stood still here and
people fight tooth and nail to keep it that way," says Laura
Zucotti, the ex-New York restaurateur who opened the J.P. Sill House
here as a B&B. And well they should. Cooperstown is a neat and
tidy-looking community with an air of obvious prosperity. The Bassett
Hospital, affiliated with Columbia University, is the village's biggest
employer and a training site for doctors. The impressive Clark Sports
Center is a multi-purpose counterpoint to baseball's historic Doubleday
Field. Main Street is dominated by the institutional presence of the
Hall of Fame and the lakeshore by the stately Otesaga resort. The Otesaga, a few old inns and small
up-the-lake motels monopolized visitor accommodations until 1984, when
the first B&Bs emerged. That year, four pages in the 36-page
Cooperstown Area Guide were devoted to accommodations. A decade later,
the guide had swelled to 72 pages, 32 of them for lodgings – by 2002,
52 of the 112 pages were so dedicated.
Many were opened by former metropolitan New Yorkers who found
nirvana here away from the mainstream. Cooperstown, enveloped in hills, is
not really on the way to anywhere else and therefore access is
difficult. That helps explain its singularity, but scarcely prepares
unsuspecting visitors for what they find – a picturesque, tranquil
lakeside village that's far more than a baseball shrine. Here is a
Brigadoon dreamland suspended in time.
Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
page |
Full destination index | |
|
||||||||||||||||||
