The history of Windermere Avenue brought to life

On Sunday Feb. 15, Greenwood Lake residents packed the library to learn about the history of its main street, Windermere Avenue, as researched and described by Zoey Savale, a local resident and guest presenter of the Greenwood Lake Historical Society.

This is the historical society’s second event in a series of upcoming programs about the village’s history and home of Orange County’s largest fresh water lake.

Society Historian Marilyn Hayden introduced Zoey Savale.

”Around 1909 or 1910,” began Savale, “the state graded the road over Mount Peter and down through the village. Advertisements proliferated for acres of land for sale in plots for hotels, villa sites and town life on the north shore of Greenwood Lake. It was quite flowering; it was a surprisingly beautiful and healthy combination of mountain lake and valley views pronounced from personal observation of connoisseurs to be equal in picturesque scenery to Lake George or the Windermere in the Lake Country of England, where the name came from.”

A hotel, swimming pool and a renowned restaurant

The north end of Windermere Avenue begins for most observers from just beyond where Route 17A veers off toward Sterling Forest. Where the Optimum Internet building stands now was once the home of the Linden Hotel, a beautiful big and very elegant venue with a swimming pool, that included a renown German restaurant.

In the late 1800s the village had begun to organize properties into a grid around the farmland that occupied the area just north of the lake. Hotels, stores, and homes gradually began to dot the area adjacent to Windermere Ave., the long straight horizontal main street that took visitors down to the shore of the lake itself.

”When I was 10 years old, “continued Savale, “we had wooden cases of glass bottles of soda delivered once every two weeks by Friendly Beer and Soda (one of the businesses that still occupies the site on Windermere Ave.) and brought them with suspicious looking orange and indistinguishable dark red liquids (with some clear) but I am reminded of how it looked back when I was a kid.”

In the 1930s there was a Raynor’s Market on the Avenue, across from the Waterstone Road intersection, while at the same time they owned another, very successful market in the Village of Warwick on Main Street. Next door there was Rangone’s Wine and Liquors, and the Ball Shop, which became one of the favorite local hangouts for teenage boys.

Across the street was the Church of the Good Shepherd, an Episcopal Church, which was the only house of worship for many years. On the church property stands an historical marker that describes trees that were planted in honor of Hedley Cooper, an Anglican priest who came to work at Church of the Good Shepherd just before World War One.

After the war broke out he volunteered, went to Europe and was killed in France. The congregation loved him so much that they planted two little pine trees, that now 50 years later are quite huge.

To local residents WWI was heartbreaking especially because there were a great many German immigrants who had learned to like the area and who became successful vaudeville performers in nearby New York City.

Death at the Night Owl

Savale’s presentation was full of anecdotes about incidents surrounding businesses on Windermere Avenue. “Across the street from the church on Waterstone Road, was the Night Owl Café, an infamous bar and entertainment spot. One night a customer dropped dead at the bar but instead of telling anybody, the other patrons at the bar picked the body up, took him across the street and threw him over the stone wall into the churchyard on Saturday night. The next morning, my aunt Dolly walks in and discovers that there’s a dead body. So she and a colleague called the police who picked up the body and gathered his belongings. And nobody said a word about how he got there until about 40 minutes later.”

Zoey finished her narrative that included the rest of the buildings that were located farther down the street and closer to the beach area. There was a beautiful stone building that was started about 1927 and then took maybe three or four years to work on and then in the 50s they added an additional the school part on the side: it’s the Church of the Holy Rosary, a Catholic church.

At the end of the street was the Windermere Hotel on the lakefront, located right where the existing bathrooms are located for Thomas P. Morahan Waterfront Park. If they were discrete and quiet, some local residents were allowed to go to Windermere Hotel’s private beach, a summer resort for wealthy families from New York City.