SOMERS, N.Y. - In Somers, everything old is new again -- and vice-versa – at least where the town’s most iconic building is concerned.
And that’s, as Martha Stewart would say, a good thing.
Whether you know its history or not, there’s no mistaking The Elephant Hotel’s name.
After all, it’s painted in nearly two-foot-tall whitish letters across the 200-year-old landmark’s red-brick façade.
According to national preservation experts, not only can such signs contribute to the character of buildings and districts, they can be valuable just by themselves.
So when Yorktown contractor and Somers resident Eric Spitale was engaged last July to paint the eaves, soffits, shutters, sills, widow’s walk, portico, and other wooden bits and pieces of Town Hall, he soon realized there was an extra challenge to be faced.
The importance of fixing up the sign without messing with its aesthetics – or making it look brand-new – was emphatically conveyed to Spitale by Marty Stole, a member of the Somers Historical Society.
The Elephant Hotel, Stole told him, wasn’t just an old building. It’s a piece of history, like the Liberty Bell and the Washington Monument, and needs to be treated with “more TLC than you ordinarily would,” Stole said.
If any work was to be done on it, there were a bunch of hoops to jump through.
According to Stole, once he was aware of the significance, Spitale got so excited about getting the job that he put in a “really low bid.”
“I like the fact that there’s someone in town who does things not just for the money, but to be able to say that ‘I did that,’” he added.
(The last time anyone had gone near it with a brush was about 15 years ago.)
After falling down the rabbit hole of research – to the extent that he drove his wife, Leah, and their kids Sadie and Skylar nuts talking about “ghost signs” and such – Spitale decided to bring in the big guns.
It was his first historic project and he was, to say the least, both excited and anxious.
(That took a change order which added $10K to the $108,000 project, but it was something that the Town Board was happy to approve at its last work session.)
Tackling the Elephant Hotel’s precious sign now are artisans from Painted Pieces Art & Graphics whose main “bread and butter” is murals.
Mural painting is a centuries-old craft that’s rooted in skill and precision, according to the Long Island firm.
Heading the team is Fernando Leon, who learned the trade from his dad.
(Back in the late 19th- and mid-20th centuries, such folks were thought of as a rugged, resourceful lot with a dedication to their craft – painting external signs and murals as advertisements -- that bordered on monomania. They worked like dogs – hence the moniker “wall dogs.”)
Maintaining that “old” patina requires lots of patience.
Each new layer of paint has to be gone over with a wire brush in order to break up its surface and mimic the effects of years and years of natural weathering, then sealed and painted again.
In the end, folks shouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the old old sign and the new old sign.
Which is exactly what local historians were hoping for.
(It should be finished by the time this newspaper hits the streets, Spitale said. It should last about a decade before it will need touching up.)
There are other neat things to note about the Elephant Hotel.
Watching as the painters perform their death-defying feats atop neon-green lifts, is a new bronze statue of “Old Bet,” the elephantine star of a menagerie owned by early circus pioneer, Somers’s own Hachaliah Bailey. The building was constructed around 1825 in her honor. The old “Old Bet,” which was made out of reinforced concrete, succumbed to old age and was replaced to great fanfare in 2024.
To Spitale, who grew up in Long Island, the painting project was more than just a job, it was a chance to learn more about his adopted hometown.
His company mostly does civil construction – parks, fencing, baseball backstops, rail trails, etc. – and painting public buildings.
This was Spitale’s first historic site job and, hopefully, he said, not his last. It was Leon's third.
Next on the agenda is a visit with his offspring to the historical society’s Museum of the Early American Circus, which is located on the Elephant Hotel’s third floor.
Stole was pleased with how it all turned out.
“We all knew something about the Elephant Hotel, but learned more than we knew,” he said.
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