The hotel was constructed between 1900 and 1902 at a cost of $1.7 million (approximately $52,244,000 today) by Joseph Stickney, a native of Concord, New Hampshire who had made a fortune before the age of 30 as a coal broker in Pennsylvania. In 1881 Stickney and his partner, John N. Conyngham, had purchased the nearby Mount Pleasant Hotel (a large early hotel that was later demolished) from lumberman John T.G. Leavitt.[5] Subsequently, Stickney began work on his Mount Washington Hotel. He brought in 250 Italian artisans to build it, particularly the granite and stucco masonry. Construction started in 1900 on the Y-shaped hotel, which opened on July 28, 1902. At the opening ceremony, Stickney told the audience, “Look at me, gentlemen … for I am the poor fool who built all this!” Within a year he was dead at the age of 64.[6]
His wife, Carolyn Stickney, spent her summers at the hotel for the next decade, adding the Sun Dining Room with guest rooms above, the fourth floor between the towers, and the chapel honoring her late husband. Under its capable first manager, John Anderson, the hotel was a success. But the advent of income tax, Prohibition, and the Great Depression curtailed the hospitality business. In 1936, Mrs. Stickney’s nephew, Foster Reynolds, inherited the hotel, but it closed in 1942 because of World War II. A Boston syndicate bought the extensive property for about $450,000 In 1944. The Bretton Woods monetary conference took place that year, establishing the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The owners were paid $300,000 for the loss of business and promised a daily room charge of $18 per person for the 19-day conference.[6]
The Mount Washington Hotel and Resort is one of the last surviving grand hotels in the White Mountains and includes an 18-hole Donald Ross-designed golf course, as well as the hotel’s original 9-hole course designed by A.H. Findlay.