Alexandria Hotel – also known as “the old brick tavern,” was built in 1805 by Paul Henry M. Prevost in what is now the Bridge Street right-of-way where it approaches the bridge. Note that these bricks, like the ones Prevost used for his houses, had to be brought upstream from Philadelphia in Durham boats at great expense.
Samuel Lott (1772-1819) was the innkeeper. He would eventually die while cutting down a tree. It was about to fall on a fence. He tried to push it away, but it crushed him against the fence.
In 1838 this inn was dismantled and replaced by the Railroad House.
Railroad House – The costly bricks from the old tavern were likely recycled to build this new and bigger hotel. It is believed that the old tavern had stood in the Main Street right-of-way, and that the new Railroad House was located a bit to the north.
The route for the railroad had been surveyed, but the Belvidere & Delaware Railroad's first train wouldn't reach Frenchtown until 1853. So the hotel's name was nicely forward-looking. A third story was added in 1850. If you look at the building from the east, you can see the difference in the brickwork.
Nathaniel Britton was owner and proprietor in 1860-65. (An 1860 map has someone named Mettler partnered with him.) In 1874 the proprietor was Jake Bloom, and in 1878-88, the proprietor was Joseph Opdyke. Col. Cornelius Hoff (1834-1919) acquired the property in 1865 and was the last owner of the Railroad House. (I don't think he was a real colonel. For some reason newspapers of the day liked to award that title to hotel owners.)
Warford House – In 1888 Thomas M. Warford (1853-1901) and his wife Francelia B. (1858-1938) rented the Railroad House from Hoff and were its proprietors. At the close of 1889, Francelia bought the place from Col. Cornelius Hoff and renamed it the Warford House, although it was, and still is, called The Lower, in contrast to The National Hotel, which is The Upper, because it's on higher ground.
Thomas' brother Johnson Warford and Howard Eilenberg were managers in 1900. Howard's tombstone calls him “Eilenberger,” although he usually went by the slightly shorter version.
In 1901 the hotel added a three-story, 40-by-45-foot addition that included a 27-by-33-foot dining room, a butler's pantry, a kitchen, 16 bedrooms and a bathroom. This gave the hotel a total of 30 guest rooms. Steam heat was installed in 1903. The accompanying photo was taken about that time. Note the old industrial buildings to the left (in what is now Sunbeam Lenape Park).
After Thomas died, horse dealer Elisha W. Opdycke married Francelia. Early in the 20th century she was advertising the hotel as “the pride of the valley.”
Francelia's daughter, Nellie, and her husband, Theodore Gray (1875-1918), were next in line, operating the hotel from 1906 until 1915 when Lincoln N. Burnham rented the place. In 1916 the Frenchtown Uptodate booklet touted its “steam heat, electric lights, baths, pleasant, well kept rooms, and one of the best stocked bars in the State.” Burnham moved along in 1918, and owner Francelia was back in charge. In 1933 she was still in the picture, running the room-rental aspect of Warford House, and Arthur E. and Caroline Painter were proprietors of the bar/restaurant. When twice-widowed Fancelia died, she was buried between her husbands.
In 1945 Chester Fargo was the proprietor, and Nellie was still the owner of the property. In 1946, burdened with debt, she sold it to Socrates Hero, who had just sold the Candy Kitchen restaurant to the Bournias family. Hero operated the Warford House for a few years. Fritz Otto Gessner was proprietor in 1949-51 and probably longer.
It is believed that room rental ceased during the 1960s.
Charles Vanderwarter owned the place from about 1964 until 1975, when he sold it to former trucking company executive Charles “Bucky” Mitchell of Neshanic. Soon he and his wife Loretta moved to Erwinna, Pa.
The Warford House was not a fancy place like it is now. News reporter Beth Kalet covered a March 9, 1980, fracas there that involved 35 patrons and 17 cops. It involved lots of pushing and shoving and yelling in front of the hotel, with police using their batons to restrain angry men. A man living upstairs had been the cause of the disturbance, according to Police Chief Ray Smith, who said he'd given the man 24 hours to leave town.
Editing the news item, I asked Kalet, “Where's the attribution on the brawling? Who's your source? Did Chief Smith tell you all this?”
“I'm my own source,” she said. “I saw the whole thing from my apartment.” She and her husband, David, lived on the second floor of the Gem Building right across the street.
In June, when the hotel's liquor license was up for renewal, Chief Smith advised against it. He told Borough Council that in the past 12 months, police had been called to the Warford House 18 times, while police were only called once each to the National Hotel and the American Legion Hall, which has a basement barroom.
Noted sci-fi writer Alfred Bester (1913-1987) wrote a letter to the editor that asserted downtown Frenchtown was pretty much a dump, and the Warford House was the only bright spot. He defended it as “an informal club where I can share conversation, laughs and drinks with pleasant people from all walks of life. We all feel alive and comfortable there. Conflicts and fights? Is there a tavern around the world where they don't erupt now and then?”
Council renewed the Mitchells' liquor license after some reforms were made.
Tragedy struck right after midnight on a very cold Jan. 21, 1982. Loretta closed up the tavern for the night before 1 a.m., but never arrived at her Pennsylvania home. Here's what apparently had happened: She was southbound on Pennsylvania Route 32 (River Road), and lost control of her station wagon, which plunged down the 20-foot riverbank into the shallow, frozen channel that separates New Life Island from the mainland.
Loretta made her best guess in the dark as to how to climb up to safety, and went to her right. But she found no good upward path. Eventually, foiled by the nearly vertical embankment, she succumbed to the below-10-degree weather and froze to death.
This occurred directly in front of the home of Joe Maxwell and Lew Zanelli, who lived on the west side of the road. But even in daylight Loretta's car was invisible to them because the shoulder of the road blocked the view down into the strait.
Bucky reported her missing right away, and police from Frenchtown and Tinicum Township, Pa., and New Jersey state troopers searched for her. Eight days later a State Police helicopter joined the search and her car was discovered.
It was my grim duty as a reporter to be on the scene when her body was being removed, and I couldn't help but notice that if Loretta had walked 500 feet to the left instead of to the right, she would have found an easy path to safety via the driveway that buses used to ford the strait to bring campers to the island.
Bucky sold the hotel in 1984.
Frenchtown Inn – In 1984 Bob Cobun, former owner of the Centre Bridge (Pa.) Inn, bought the Warford House, converted it from a bar & grill into a fancy restaurant and renamed it the Frenchtown Inn. Gone were the oilcloth on the tables, the pinball bowling machine in the barroom and the thick layers of gold paint on the woodwork back of the bar. The purple benches out front were removed uptown to the sidelines of the softball diamond on Plessey Field where they could complete their deterioration.
The next year he sold it to Robert and Holly Long of Holland Township, who sold it to Andrew and Colleen Hahr Tomko in 1996. Andrew is a chef trained in French cuisine, but the inn's style is New American. The Tomkos moved into the second story where they still reside. Their children, Paul and Danielle, were not the first kids to be raised in the hotel. There was at least one other – Grace Strine (Britton) who moved in with her mother in 1907 at about age 6 and didn't move out until she married.
Unfortunately for her, the fish taco had not yet been developed. I had some for lunch there last summer and they were delicious!
From “Rick's Frenchtown Encyclopedia”
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