Description
William Cooper founded the village of Cooperstown in 1786, and in 1799 built a large mansion inherited by his son, the novelist James Fenimore Cooper. It was located near the outlet of Otsego Lake, the beginning of the Susquehanna River. A fictionalized version of Otsego Hall appears as "The Mansion House" in his 1823 novel The Pioneers. The bricks-and-mortar version fell into disrepair during Cooper's years of travel in America and Europe; in 1834 he renovated it according to the new Gothic Revival style, pictured here in an undated stereocard.
Cooper died in 1851, the mansion was sold and converted into a hotel, then burned down in 1853. Its brick and timbers had an afterlife, however, when his daughter Susan Fenimore Cooper--an important nature writer--salvaged them to build what she called the "Riverside Cottage." The original Cooper estate now is home to the Baseball Hall of fame and its grounds.