“This is the biggest building in the community, and it has really stood out as both a beautiful building and a very sad reflection on our history [because] it has been in decay for a very long time,” said Jan Jaffe, president of Wellington Blueberry, a community-based multimember LLC established for the Wellington Hotel project.

The old hotel is a 12,000 square foot, three-story Italianate-style building with a wraparound porch and historic moldings, wall finishes, and crafted parquet flooring. First called the Ulster House Hotel, it was built in 1882 to serve the burgeoning tourism industry in the Catskill Mountains, just a train ride away from New York City.

“New Yorkers were able to take a train from Grand Central Station up north, and it was so beautiful,” said Joseph Prieboy, director of the Shandaken Historical Museum, which serves Pine Hill and the eleven other hamlets in the town of Shandaken. Back in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, to those accustomed to the hustle and bustle of city life, Prieboy said the Catskill Mountains were “considered kind of idyllic and utopian.”

A Period of Deterioration

After spending half a century as the premier destination for vacationers from the Big Apple, the Catskill Mountains grew quiet again in the 1930s. During the Great Depression, household incomes sank, and later, automobiles became more popular, the railroad suffered financial trouble, and America’s vacationing patterns shifted. The Catskill Mountains' heyday as a vacation destination, and with it the Wellington Hotel’s, came to an end.

Today, the Wellington is one of the few surviving examples of the large-scale wood-frame resorts built in the Catskill Mountains during the tourism boom period. The hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, and Pine Hill National Historic District earned the same honor in 2012.

“A lot of locals who are trying to work in local businesses struggle to find housing because they can’t afford to purchase, and then the rents are really high,” explained Colleen McMurray, executive director at The Pine Hill Community Center. “Folks are trying to either commute or are moving out of the area; they're being pushed out because there is nowhere for them to live.”

When the Wellington Hotel’s long-time owner put the dilapidated building on the market in 2022, rather than be intimidated by the price tag or the cost of needed repairs, Pine Hill residents saw an opportunity to rescue an endangered piece of architectural heritage and do something transformative for their struggling community.

Together, twenty community members raised enough money to purchase the old hotel. That group later organized as Wellington Blueberry, naming the corporation after two of the hotel’s former and informal names. Now, Wellington Blueberry and community partners are pursuing an ambitious plan to rehabilitate the historic hotel.

Their project will preserve the Wellington Hotel’s historic character while transforming the space into ten rent-affordable apartments, a grocery store, and a cafe. The apartments will serve those who work in the area but are being forced out due to the high cost of living, such as teachers, service workers, or small business employees. Meanwhile, the store and cafe will provide new shopping and dining opportunities for locals and tourists alike and reduce the need for locals to commute for groceries.

The National Park Service has already approved initial drawings for the project. Prieboy said that maintaining the hotel’s historic character “will enable people to experience not only the clean air and clean water and beautiful environment, but also what life was like at the high point of the golden age of the Catskills.”

A Community Effort

To develop the property, Wellington Blueberry has partnered with RUPCO, an affordable housing development nonprofit headquartered in the neighboring city of Kingston. RUPCO agreed to take on the project after CEO Kevin O’Connor visited Pine Hill and saw the Wellington Hotel for the first time. “I was really struck with the quintessential need of small rural communities to both preserve their heritage, but also to provide affordable housing,” said O’Connor. “This building is in danger of falling down and being lost. But if we preserve it and provide an important function today, like workforce housing, it will be here one hundred years from now.”

With initial plans approved and a developer on board, all that remains is for the Pine Hill community to raise the remainder of the funds needed to carry out the project. Wellington Blueberry created a non-profit organization, called Friends of Pine Hill Historic District, to accept grants and contributions for the cause. The non-profit will also own and manage the renovated hotel once it reopens to the community.

Already, locals have contributed $640,000 toward the project. In August 2024, Ulster County Economic Development was awarded an Empire State Development Restore New York grant of $1.6 million to support the hotel’s rehabilitation. State and Federal Historic Tax Credits are expected to contribute about $2 million (if you have not yet, take action to support historic tax credits). However, for the project to be realized, the hamlet of Pine Hill will need to secure over $3 million in additional grant funding and donations .

Organizers hope that the Wellington Hotel’s recent designation as one of the nation’s most endangered historic places will raise its profile and help make it one of many successful preservation and development projects to come in Pine Hill and Shandaken. “By revitalizing and providing a community space, the Wellington is going to inspire other businesses to think about their facade, to clean things up, to think about the houses that are falling down or businesses that have gone under,” said McMurray. “Folks will start thinking about how we can bring them back to life and represent the life and the passion of the community in the face of some of these old buildings.”