Late 19th-century baseball booster George Pardo could be a sore loser. Pardo, owner of the American House Hotel at the northwest corner of South and Glen Streets in downtown Glens Falls, sponsored the local amateur baseball team, The Pardos, from 1875 to 1883.
The American House c. 1875. Photo courtesy of The Chapman Museum.
When the team was playing on the road, Pardo would sit on the hotel porch, overlooking South Street, and wait for the players to return to Glens Falls.
“Late at night, when we would return from Corinth, Lake George or some adjacent place, the old man (Pardo) would be up on the front porch to know what success we had met with,” Addison B. Colvin, the team’s manager, recalled decades later. “If the team lost, Pardo would swear and sic his dog on the players,” Colvin said. “If we won, as we frequently did, a fine dinner was served to us.”
More than a century after Pardo’s death in 1898, the historic red brick building where Pardo operated the American House is getting a face lift.
Developer Chris Patten is renovating the building for a mixed-use, new urbanist complex with Craft on 9 restaurant and other commercial tenants on the ground floor. Craft on 9 is relocating from Moreau. The upper floors will be renovated for about 20 apartments.
The existing red brick building replaced a previous hotel structure that burned in 1879. Pardo, who operated the hotel for 38 years, was among a string of operators over the decades of the hotel known at different times as the American House, Hotel Ruliff and Plaza Hotel.
The re-built American House c. 1880. Photo courtesy of The Chapman Museum.
In 1895, rooms with steam heat rented for $2 a night – the equivalent of about $61 in current dollars.
Daniel Robertson, a former pitcher for the Pardos, told a similar version of Colvin’s story about Pardo and baseball in a speech to the Glens Falls Rotary Club on Sept. 27, 1923. “Occasionally we would have a game and Uncle George would ask us how it came out, and if we told him, ‘We licked them today,’ he would say, ‘That is right. Come in and get supper,’” Robertson said. “But sometimes when we got the worst of it he would say, ‘Get out of here. I won’t have any damned dirty ball players hanging around my hotel.’”
Other players on the team were Dudley Ferguson, James McGrievey, Ed Reed, later a Glens Falls mayor, George Aiken, Will Wing, Will Capron, later a Glens Falls assistant fire chief, and H.A. Hurtubis.
Pardo also enjoyed fishing. In 1897, Pardo and his nephew brought back to the hotel about twenty “good-sized” pickerel from a fishing trip at Katskill Bay on Lake George. “The entire catch was exhibited in the hotel office during the evening and attracted the curiosity of visitors,” The Morning Star reported.
In 1896, Pardo sent back to the hotel 12 black bass, the largest of which weighed five-and-one-half pounds, that he caught on the east side of Lake George. In 1889, Pardo offered sage culinary advice to a Morning Star reporter. “Broil a black bass, and I would rather have it than a salmon prepared in the same manner, but the bass is not so good boiled.”
Pardo died of a heart condition on March 17, 1898 in his room at the hotel. The Morning Star said of him: “Mr. Pardo had long been an honored and prominent citizen of Glens Falls. He was a man of rugged and sterling integrity, positive of his likes and dislikes, but beneath a stern exterior he carried a warm and charitable heart.”
Pardo, the oldest of eight brothers, was born in Burlington, VT on Feb. 9, 1819. As a boy, he moved to Whitehall to learn the bakery trade from his uncle. He then worked as a baker in Troy for several years before returning to Whitehall, where he worked as a general agent for the packet lines until he entered the hotel business.
Sources: Letter from Addison B. Colvin to Roy Akins, Aug. 5, 1937; The Morning Star, Oct. 30, 1896; Jan. 18, 1897; May 28, 1889; March 18, 1898; The Post-Star, April 12, 1922; Sept. 29, 1923; Nov. 19, 1926; Oct. 1, 1964; The Lake George Mirror, June 5, 1895.
Maury Thompson was a reporter for The Post-Star for 21 years before he retired in 2017. He now is a freelance writer and documentary film producer specializing in regional history. Join Maury on April 10th 2019, 7pm, at the Crandall Public Library Folklife Center Community Room for a preview of Snarky Aardvark’s film, Charles Evans Hughes and the Adirondacks, focusing on the Glens Falls/Sandy Hill segments. Maury, producer/co-director, will be providing an update on research and the status of the entire documentary, expected to be released in 2020. See the trailer here.