Artist Hunt Slonem is still in mourning over the fiery destruction of the historic Rexmere Hotel in the Catskills just a week before he was going to close on the 1897 building.
The seven-story structure in Stamford, NY, which had one of the earliest Otis elevators, burned to the ground in March in a six-alarm electrical blaze that drew 300 firefighters.
“It’s a tragedy. I’m really heartbroken,” Slonem told me.
The painter — who owns two plantations near New Orleans as well as the Cordts Mansion in Kingston, NY — said, “This is my passion. I want to save American history. I thought I could spend the rest of my life fixing it up.”
The Rexmere, known as the Queen of the Catskills, stopped operating as a hotel in the 1950s. It then housed a vocational school. Slonem planned to house his vast collection of 19th-century furniture there, creating a decorative arts museum.
“It wasn’t meant to be,” he said.