Johnstown Hotel, Johnstown, NY
Audio Excerpt | Current Photo | Historic Picture

Interview with: Mr. Robert Cross, whose father was instrumental in making the hotel a reality.
Interviewed by: Ryan Callery, Cassie Cirillo, Justine Case, Christopher Lavigne, Erica Kelly and Deb Callery
Interview date: June 12, 2001

Transcript of audio excerpt:

Deb Callery: Please tell us what you know.

Bob Cross: The hotel was built, just this part here, it was built during the prohibition in 1927. That's when prohibition was in effect. Then in 1933 they repealed the 18th Amendment and we could have liquor, well beer. It started out beer.

Interviewers: We just learned about that

Bob Cross: It started out 3.2 beer, 3.2% beer. Then, business was so good at the hotel that they put an addition on and then they put the barroom downstairs on the lower level and that was a real nice bar, it was a taproom, we called it a taproom and it had an entrance down there and you could also jet to it from the first floor in the lobby of the hotel.

Deb Callery: Excuse me, when was that built downstairs, do you know? I'm sure it was there in the 70's, of course.

Bob Cross: Oh yeah, I would say in the '30's.

Deb Callery: It goes back that far? I didn't know that.

Bob Cross: I think so. The first manager of the hotel was a man by the name of Perkins and he died and then there was a fellow by the name Vince Dolson and I
think then one of the Bowne's Frederick Bowne, I think was a manager and then Buck Ramsey for years and years and years and then it became a Treadway Inn.

 

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