Old Schwenksville hotel to get another life as Woodside Lodge

In the 1920s, Philadelphians went by the trainful to cool off on the banks of Montgomery County's Perkiomen Creek, hike nearby Spring Mountain, and rock on the porches of Schwenksville's resort hotels.

But the belching locomotives are gone now. So are the summer hotels, save for one.

The Woodside Inn, scarred by weather and plundered by vandals, sat vacant for two years before Rick and Gayle Buckman fell in love with its past and decided to give it a future.

"I just kept driving by and thinking, 'I want to save this building,' " Gayle Buckman said. "We have a thing for local history."

The Buckmans, owners of the Spring Mountain Ski Area in Spring Mount, bought the two-story, 12,000-square-foot cast-off on East Park Avenue for $108,000 on April 1.

In January, after a $1.5 million renovation, the couple will reopen it as the Woodside Lodge at Spring Mountain.

It will have eight two-room suites, a bunk room for 10, a modern pub, and a restaurant - with a chef who used to cook for Will Smith and the rock band Aerosmith. Many of the guests are expected to be patrons of the Buckmans' ski resort three miles away.

"The whole reason we went with overnight lodging is that we get requests all the time," Rick Buckman said, "and we've been sending them to the hotels [at the turnpike exits]."

Gayle Buckman combed local archives to learn the building's history. The inn, with 41 rooms, was built by Morris Carl in 1925; outside were three tennis courts. A second building just down the road, known as the Annex, took the overflow of guests. The cool breeze and the beaches that existed along the Perkiomen Creek made Spring Mountain "the place to be for the first half of the 20th century," she said.

"For people in Philadelphia, this was the Poconos," Rick Buckman said.

Hotel guests were called die summer frischlers, or "those summer people who came to refresh themselves," Schwenksville bicentennial historian Joseph L. Behmer wrote in 1976.

They stayed at inns, as well as local boardinghouses. The Woodside Inn - known then as the Woodside Manor - the Perkiomen Inn, Spring Mountain House, the Cedars, and the Weldon House were among the options.

"The high spot of the day for the local residents was to meet the trains that carried all of the vacationers," Behmer wrote.

Once installed, the visitors typically stayed one or two weeks. They canoed, swam, hiked, played tennis, and roamed an outdoor amusement park along the Perkiomen, Gayle Buckman said.

When they took meals in the hotel dining room, they were served by the same person throughout their stay.

"Every morning you had to come out and sing the Woodside song," her husband said of the waitstaff.

The fortunes of the summer hotels rose and fell with those of the railroads, according to Behmer. Railroading peaked from 1900 to 1920.

After World War II, passenger service in Schwenksville dwindled to one daily train in each direction, and by 1960, service had been discontinued, Behmer wrote.

The inn hosted its last guest in the 1970s when the big resort hotels went out of fashion. The property became a nursing home for a while, and later a restaurant called the Woodside Inn. The eatery closed two years ago.

A search for menus from the 1920s was not successful, but the inn's new chef, Michael Kenney, of Collegeville, hopes to offer simple dishes, such as homemade soups, quiches, salads, and brisket. He is best known as private chef for the family of screen star Will Smith and three members of Aerosmith.

"Because we are a bed-and-breakfast, we will be catering to our guests' needs - whether that be a handmade burger, a brioche club sandwich, or a tempting seafood bouillabaisse with saffron aioli on a cold winter evening," Kenney said.

To mine the memories of those who knew the place, the Buckmans held an open house in June. Three hundred people showed up, including Alice Beltz, owner for 35 years ending in the 1970s.

They brought with them old pictures, postcards, and brochures, which will be displayed in the lobby.

"What's worth keeping," Gayle Buckman said, "are the memories people have of being here."