Sharon Springs is a village in Schoharie County, New York, United States. As of the 2020 census, Sharon Springs had a population of 483. Its name derives from the hometown of the first colonial settlers, Sharon, Connecticut, and the important springs in the village. Likewise, Sharon Springs, Kansas was settled by former residents of this upstate New York village.
The village of Sharon Springs sits in the northwestern part of Schoharie County in the town of Sharon, approximately west of Albany, the state capital. The city is surrounded by rolling hills and nestled in a winding valley, as well as being near to some of New York State's most popular attractions. Howe Caverns is to the south, while The Mohawk River and Erie Canal are to the north. The Adirondack Park is further north, about one hour away, and the Catskill Park is to the south. Cooperstown, home to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, The Fenimore Farm & Country Village and the Fenimore Art Museum, are to the west.
Since the mid- to late-1980s, Sharon Springs has gained increased local attention and prominence in Schoharie County. Entrepreneurs from outside the region started businesses and restored its structures, prompting regional and New York City media to track the progress. It has gained the attention of Korean spa investors, but their plans are currently unrealized. Sharon Springs was recently featured on a cable reality television series, and provided a backdrop for a memoir. The company Sharon Springs, Inc. has begun work on the baths and allowed for people to book stays online at the village's Roseboro Hotel. Significance Sharon Springs is recognized by both the National Register of Historic Places as well as New York State's Register of Historic Places as a historic spa village. Many of its historic spa-related structures were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 as the Sharon Springs Historic District. At one time, mineral springs were used for medical treatments and in the summers wealthy families from New York City would travel up to Sharon Springs for the spas. From 1836 to 1860, several large hotels were built in the village, though today they are abandoned. The collection of fully and partially restored 19th-century structures and ruins can be accessed year-round.
The most famous of the springs in the Village is the so-called Gardner Spring, which was owned by the owner of the Pavilion Hotel. As reported in the New York Times on August 30, 1875:
Sharon Springs has drawn people to the area because of the Village's four different mineral waters and the water's healing qualities. The village has sulfur, magnesia, chalybeate and 'Blue Stone' springs., During the 19th century, Sharon Springs grew into a bustling spa, and at the peak of its popularity, Sharon Springs hosted 10,000 visitors each summer, including members of the Vanderbilt family and Oscar Wilde, who also gave a lecture at the now-demolished Pavilion Hotel on August 11, 1882. Direct ferry-to-stagecoach lines connected New York City to Sharon Springs, followed by rail lines connecting the Village to New York City, as well as to Boston via Albany.
History Prior to being settled by Great Britain as part of the country's Province of New York, Sharon Springs was frequented by the indigenous Iroquois population for its healing waters. After Britain's Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Crown formed Tryon County in 1772, which lay at the westernmost reaches of the original Thirteen Colonies. Sharon Springs, then known as the town of New Dorlach, was settled circa 1780. Tryon County stretched from the Adirondack Mountains to the Delaware River and boasted a pre-Revolutionary War farming community of 10,000 people, known as the "Breadbasket of the Colonies".
During the American Revolution, the Town of Sharon participated very little in combat, though it did see some battles. One significant moment was the Battle of Sharon, which was fought on July 10, 1781. Approximately 300 British and Iroquois troops commanded by John Doxtader camped at the Sharon Springs Swamp, near the present-day intersection of Route 20 and County Road 34. The group burned down 12 homes in a small Canajoharie River settlement and claimed victory in the Battle of Currytown on July 9. Colonel Marinus Willett of the American forces headed to their camp with a force of 150 men. Willet attacked the redcoats in the dense swamp, killing 40. Doxtader's men fled and Willett claimed The Battle of Sharon as an American victory.Source: www.myamericanwar.com/battles/810710
During and after the Revolution, Sharon Springs was part of the town of Schoharie in Tryon County. In 1784, Tryon County was renamed Montgomery County to honor General Richard Montgomery, an American war hero who gave his life trying to capture the city of Quebec. In 1791, Otsego County was broken off from Montgomery County, and in 1795, Schoharie was formed from adjoining parts of Otsego and Albany counties. The town of Sharon was formed shortly after in 1797. 74 years later, Sharon Springs was set apart from the town of Sharon in 1871, when residents incorporated it as a village.
Immigration According to an article published in the New York Times (August 26, 2000), Sharon Springs lost its fashionable Social Register set to the horse-racing attractions of Saratoga Springs. Wealthy Jewish families of German origin, who were unwelcome at Saratoga due to the prevailing social bias of the time, filled the void and "made Sharon Springs a refuge of their own." Eventually, these families moved on to other, more modern resorts, and the Village began to fade economically. Other factors that exacerbated the Village's early 20th century decline were Prohibition (which reduced the need for the local hop harvest) and the opening of the New York State Thruway (which routed traffic away from the area).
Sharon Springs was also associated with several beer barons in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most American hops were grown in a belt stretching from Madison to Schoharie Counties in upstate New York. Thus, this area attracted brewers who summered in the area, two of whom, Henry Clausen and Max Shaefer, built homes in the Village. The New York hops trade disappeared after the first world war due to the combined effects of competition from Oregon, a hops blight, and the coming of Prohibition.
From the 1920s to the 1960s, kuchaleyans flourished. These were self-catered boarding houses, and in Yiddish the name means "cook-alones." They were a more affordable alternative to the larger, more expensive hotels and were especially popular during the Depression and, after with poor, post-war refugees from Europe. Though none operated past the 1980s, one of them, "The Brustman House" on Union Street, survives as a retreat for the owners' descendants. This house's story is typical of the kuchaleyans.
As the cited New York Times article went on to explain that after World War II, Sharon Springs got a second wind from the West German government, which "paid medical care reparations to Holocaust survivors, holding that therapeutic spa vacations were a legitimate part of the medical package." In the summer of 1946, one of the busboys at the Spanish Colonial Revival style Adler Hotel was Edward I. Koch, the future mayor of New York City.
The 1970s through the 1990s saw the succession of secular Jewish tourists to Sharon Springs by Hasidim and ultra-Orthodox Jewish visitors, fed in part by a parallel displacement in the nearby Borsht Belt."Making Mountains: New York City and the Catskills," by David Stradling Their time in Sharon Springs is documented in "The Short Season of Sharon Springs," published by Cornell University Press in 1980. A host of Hasidim-owned and frequented hotels flourished in the Village, bridging the gap between Sharon Springs' shining past as a world-class resort for the rich and famous and its recent renascence as a regional travel and weekend destination.
Resurgence In the 1970s, concurrent migration of weekend hunters and union trade workers from the Downstate New York City suburbs began coming to Sharon Springs and Schoharie County. As suburban and urban hunters tracked deer in the area, they also introduced the once-endangered wild turkey to this and other rural areas. Unlike the Hasidim tourists, who have mostly moved on to other destinations and have dwindled in number, the first wave of suburban weekenders added to the community by building their families in the Village and relocating their full-time lives to their former part-time escape.
Sharon Springs, after drifting into a rundown state by the late 1980s, has seen resurgence in the 1990s. Much of it can be attributed to both a stabilization of the remaining historic structures (arson leveled many of the abandoned hotels) and an infusion of ambitious buyers from outside the area looking for an affordable community to start a business or to add rural weekends to their city life. The New York Times cites the revival to the "uninterrupted supply of affluent, educated second-homers from New York City (3.5 hours away) and Columbia County (2 hours away)... and the exponential growth of a new travel phenomenon, heritage tourism: the quest for things historic by well-heeled tourists."Glenn Collins, "Fragile Recovery for Village of Spas," The New York Times, August 30, 2000. Low real estate prices, early renovations, successful start-ups, positive press including back to back 'Escapes' New York Times articles in 2000, and later post-911 flight from New York City all contributed to an influx of entrepreneurs, artisans and artists.
Places of interest The restoration of The American Hotel on Main Street was among the first completed projects in Sharon Springs' rebirth. The structure was collapsing and abandoned when buyers bought it in 1996. The two buyers refurbished the three-story Greek Revival (c. 1847) into a functioning hotel with a full-service restaurant. The guest houses were renovated in 2005
The Klinkhart Building is also across from the American and formerly housed a 300-seat theatre. There are plans to renovate the building and develop a center for the Arts.
One of the grandest structures during the Village's Spa heyday is The Roseboro. Two local residents prevented the 150-room Roseboro from being demolished and began a massive restoration process. The restoration was never fully completed, but the Roseboro Hotel could now afford to hold shops. Since 2000, the building operates a functioning restaurant, banquet and retail space. It now houses an antique shop and a Victorian tea room.
Local successes and Village enterprise Another Village business is Beekman 1802 Mercantile, which was founded in 2008 by Dr. Brent Ridge and author Josh Kilmer-Purcell with the help of soap craftsman Debbie McGillicuddy. The business has been featured in publications and on The Martha Stewart Show. A Planet Green cable network reality television series, The Fabulous Beekman Boys, followed the efforts to build a rural business in 2010 and 2011. The show is notable for its cameo appearances by Martha Stewart, Rosie O'Donnell and other celebrities.
The 177 structures in the Village appear on the National Register of Historic Places as a mineral resort. The Village won a grant from the New York State Council for the Humanities to establish a self-guided walking tour through Sharon Springs in 1997. There are plaques that remain to present day in Main Street that allow guests to take the tour. Because many structures no longer stand today, historic photos and informative text on the plaques help visitors to imagine the town's grandeur of a prior time.