Bygone Hudson Valley

The Crescent Hill Lake House was a boarding house that once stood near the top of Coy Road in Ardonia (known as Hait Hill or Crescent Hill at the time). Local farmer and businessman Anson Armstrong contracted with builder Charles Gee to have a 40-room boarding house added on to his modest home in 1906, anticipating that he would fill the house with surveyors and workers involved in the construction of the New York City aqueduct. The aqueduct crew contracted with him for a two-year period, but many of them men stayed just through that first summer or found housing closer to work sites in the Catskills, so by the fall of 1906 Armstrong rebranded the boarding house as the Crescent Hill Lake House and called the lake in the valley below “Crescent Lake.”

Despite offering water views, boating, a piano, a telephone and farm fresh food, Anson was only able to rent half the rooms over the next two seasons. By 1910 he closed for the summer and leased shares of the farm to neighbors, eventually moving to Orange County. John L. Lawler of Newburgh purchased the boarding house in 1912 and ran it for several years, advertising it as a Christian boarding house and noting its proximity to area churches. At some point the boarding house changed hands again and became known as “Mafio Villa,” before burning down in April of 1923.