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Saratoga Springs By Nancy and Richard Woodworth Ever since George Washington came here following the decisive battle of the Revolutionary War nearby and tried – unsuccessfully – to buy one of the Saratoga springs, the high and the mighty have been drawn to Saratoga. They come for the restorative powers of its mineral-water springs, the only carbonated waters east of the Rockies. They come to watch the horses at America's oldest and most scenic thoroughbred race track. They come for the amenities of the meticulous Saratoga Spa State Park, a complex of columned brick Greek Revival buildings and archways harboring a resort hotel, a theater, swimming-pool pavilions and baths, all set among lawns and towering pines sheltering a golf course, a skating pond and more. They come for the concerts at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, summer home of the New York City Ballet, the Philadelphia Orchestra and many a visiting pop-rock performer. They come to eat and drink, to bet and be merry, to see and be seen. Saratoga, recently promoted as "the city in the country," is many things to many people. It's too many to be totally encompassed unless you come – as the Vanderbilts and Whitneys, the Paynes and the Phippses do – for the season. The season here is August, the traditional thoroughbred racing period (lately extended to five weeks and five days and opening in late July). With Saratoga's increasing emphasis on the arts, however, a secondary season is all summer long. Many a superlative applies to Saratoga. A Fortune magazine cover article in 1935 said the convergence of society and big money in Saratoga each August creates "America's dizziest season in America's daftest town." From the Gay Nineties on, more than 20,000 visitors could be housed in one of the world's great concentrations of grand hotels (all but two long since torn down). The rich and famous built "cottages" of 30 to 40 rooms along North Broadway and Union Avenue. Some of those Victorian mansions are still occupied by the moneyed regulars who come each summer. Others are rented out by Saratogans who flee the August frenzy. Still others have been turned into lodging establishments. Lately, Saratoga "has become a haven for B&Bs," according to Kate Benton, a native who returned with her husband to open her own. Indeed, B&Bs are opening "faster than we can keep track of them," adds Linda Toohey, executive vice president of the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber has adopted guidelines that new B&Bs must have innkeepers living on the premises, must serve breakfast and must operate at least six months a year. Saratoga bills itself as "the August place to be." But that's Saratoga at its most frenetic and most expensive. Go to Saratoga in August if you're into the racing scene. If not, go at less crowded, less pricey times to better savor the splendors of this urbane small city in the country. Material excerpted from Inn Spots & Special Places/Mid-Atlantic, by Nancy and Richard Woodworth. Copyright 2003. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
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