The Adler Hotel was the fourth and final location that we traveled to on our week long Urban Exploration trip in July 2010. Some last minute research by my brother yielded this gem of a location. We drove almost three hours from Elmira to Sharon Springs and had no problem finding the Old hotel on Adler Drive. We parked and walked up to the hotel and made our way in.
The lobby had three beautiful sets of double doors with a windowed arch above each. The drapes softened the afternoon light that streamed through boarded up front doors.
The front desk held many interesting relics from years past. An old switchboard that once routed calls for the hotel still had patch cords running everywhere and listings for local businesses that had long since closed their doors.
The main lobby divided the ground floor in half and separated the entertainment and the dining side of the hotel. The entertainment wing had a small game room with a few old puzzles and board games scattered around the floor.
The main room on this side of the building was a small theater complete with an old curtained stage which was home to the bulk of the hotel’s old chairs.
On the opposite side of the building was a very large dining room and kitchen area.
We started to make our way up to the second floor and the guest rooms. The rooms were an unbelievable sight to behold. Every room had wallpaper and decorations from the 60’s and 70’s. The various designs of wallpaper in each room always were unique and quite humorous. Some had brightly colored garish designs, others had a silver reflective surface that was almost mirror like. Whoever was the wall paper supplier for Sharon Springs must have had a hay day installing all these wacky designs.
Another thing that none of the rooms lacked was a vintage telephone. Most were jet black and only dialed the front desk’s switchboard; a few in the larger rooms had options when dialing out.
Quite a few factors came together to make the Alder a fantastic place to shoot. The color coordination of the room’s carpet, sheets and bedding, and wall
paper, and the obviously recent use of many of the rooms by squatters and homeless. People who had used these rooms recently had taken the blankets and hung them up over the windows (presumably for privacy and also to keep out drafts in the winter). So in an already green themed room, the sun streaming diffusely through a heavy green blanket, made for magical color tones and light in the scene.
We continued through each room in the hotel, some rooms appeared more inhabited than others. We worked our way up floor by floor. It was in the upper 90’s, one of the hottest days of the year so when we arrived at the top floor the temperature became unbearable and we back tracked down the stairs.
-Written by Walter Arnold Photography. Photos by Walter Arnold Photography unless otherwise noted.
Thanks to the fellow photographers who joined me on this trip:
Will Arnold: www.twarnold.com
Andy Wheeler: www.adwheelerphotography.com
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Great photos. I wonder how bad off the Hotel is at present. An FB post showed it and I went down the rabbit hole looking at old info on it.
I found this hotel through a friend of mine who lives up that way. Being from Florida myself I can’t simply take a drive to see it for myself. It has been placed for sale again and it’s cheaper than most houses down in Florida with very little land. Thank you for these pictures, article and to everyone commenting I love hearing stories of experiences. It really gives life to the place. You captured this so well, I need more! I’m absolutely in love with it!
P.S. I meant to add that we were told by many in town, and in the hotel itself, that this had been one of the sets considered for Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING movie. But Mike will be but they ended up going with a hotel in Washington state I believe or Oregon. I can’t remember the name of it but I can picture it in my mind. Either that or this is just a tale from urban legend but having stayed there I can assure you that it would’ve been a great interior set for that movie!
My family and I stayed there for a few days in the summer of 2000 so I know it was operational at least through then. It was quite an experience and the wallpaper was indeed trippy. In that big rambling old hotel there were maybe 30 guests when we were there and there was evening entertainment in the old theater reminiscent of the “borscht belt” in the nearby Catskills. All of the patrons were older Jewish people and just loved our boys who were both under five at the time. Meals were strictly kosher and we enjoyed trying new food although it probably wasn’t the best hotel food I’ve ever had. The grounds were semi-ruinous and I don’t think the pool was open. It was definitely in its last days. This was before the Beekman boys arrived but Doug and Garth had their wonderful café up the road. There were still a lot of Hassidim in boarding houses and I met several people who had been in the German camps as someone else wrote about above. Thank you for the wonderful photography—I’m glad you were able to capture it.
As for the haunted question we did not experience anything but the place is definitely creepy in the sense that it holds a lot of history and sort of the sadness of long ago summers that no longer exists. Gone are the days when families would travel for a week or two at a time to one old New York or New England resort and have everything provided. If there is a certain kind of lingering sorrow and strangeness to upstate New York which I think attracts a lot of people. It’s hard to define but anyone who lives there can tell you. I think there must be a lot of odd energy vortices and it wouldn’t surprise me if Sharon Springs has several.
The first time I got a good look at Sharon Springs was in the mid ’90s. I took a day trip from Schenectady on my motorcycle. As I passed some of the old hotels, I saw some Hasidic guests sitting on the porches and I felt bad being there, as it was Shabbos and I was rumbling through town on my bike. Again, this was about 1995-96. I was there today. The New Adler is still standing on Adler Ave., but the Old Adler, and the Washington which had been across South Street from it, were taken down so long ago that their lots don’t look like they ever had buildings on them. The fact that there were two Adler Hotels in Sharon Springs might explain the time line mix-up in this thread. Also, I was shocked to see that the Empire Hotel on Union Street is now a pile of matchsticks! It seems a heavy downpour last month caused half of the 5-story, 3-tower hotel to collapse, and nobody’s touched it since. It looks like London during the Blitz!
I’m fascinated by Sharon Springs and I really hope it finds its way back.
Reconstruction has begun on the Imperial Bathhouse. The rear of the building has scaffolding along the entire rear. New orange boarders have been put up to keep people out. I was there yesterday, doing a revisit. I’m a photographer as well. The Alder is boarded up tight and littered with posted signs. In in love with the history of Sharon Springs and would love to shoot the interior of the bath house and the Adler.
Lovely photos of the place trapped in a moment. It is (as I understand from some remarks & other photos) now a far cry from this funky state of ruin.
My fiance and I (now wife) stayed at the American Hotel in 2004 and both the Adler & Imperial Baths were in their final summer of operation.
An investment group bought those properties along with Columbia and Washington too. The plan being to update and focus operations on catering to Asian American visitors bused up largely from NYC. Unfortunately money was embezzled, a partner went to jail and time took its toll on all of the buildings. A reconstituted group announced in 2015 that they were going to go ahead with the plans from a decade ago with fresh funds. Although considerable damage over the years from the weather, et al puts the economic viability into doubt.
As of late 2015 no buildings have begun restoration let alone seem poised to return to operation for 2016.
This Hotel is up the way from my father in laws house. Is the hotel hunted???
I worked there during my college years 1995-1999 so it was open up to 2000 as far as I knew.
I worked at the Hotel Columbia down the street, summers from 1988-93. The Columbia and Washington hotels were run out of the Adler and were managed by the Adler’s owner’s brother-in-law. All three were still going in 1993, and I believe for several summers after that. The Adler would have lasted the longest. 2004 sounds right to me.
Thanks for sharing Keene!
Great pictures but your time line for the Adler is in correct. It stopped operating long before 2004. I was there in the early 1990’s and it was abandoned at that time.
Thanks Andrea! I got the closure info from Wikipedia (which as we know is not always correct!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adler_Hotel
Absolutely beautiful. The Adler was full of firsts for me. My first real job, my first experience and cherished memories of the hundreds of people who survived the holocaust, my first boyfriend, my first beer, bringing my first child there to meet the Yarkony’s and my wedding reception. This video really pulls on my heart! It also is full of memories of my family. My brothers and I worked there for many years. I especially look at the photos and still see my brother running the elevator and sleeping there on Fridays to turn on and off the lights and using the switch board. He has since passed and all the memories really are captured in these pictures!
Hi Miranda. What years did you work there?
Also missing were pictures of the spa area, where many Jews from the German concentration camps would come every summer and soak in tubs with sulfer water and get massages, compliments of the German government. Some of them had their camp ID numbers visibly tattooed on their arms. As a teenager working there I didn’t fully appreciate those I was assisting. Ironically, the masseur I worked with was German.
Too bad you didn’t get shots of the old elevator. It was manually operated.
Eugene, we must have missed that! I certainly would have wanted to shoot that! There was so much here to photograph it was overwhelming! 🙂
When I think of all the needy people who could use those beds…such a shame. Those clawfoot tubs are awesome!
This place is awesomly beautiful ! Great set of pictures !
These are great stuff. I don’t think we have anything like this in my neck of the woods. I am here on Vancouver Island BC. I really like your HDR treatments. Keep it up. I would love to find and old hotel like the ones you managed to explore. I will just have to keep coming back to your stuff. I had a site from an other shooter but have lost it, he was also on the east coast and went to a sanatorium as well as going over to Europe for shooting. Do you know of any other sites that may be interesting. Also tutorials would be great also. I just got back from South Africa and have been playing with some of the HDR’s. I will post them on my web site soon.
Take care and happy shooting.
Jerry
Awesome article bud!! I’ll try to get it on ABD soon. Busy, busy here in NY. Have a great holiday!