History of The Sylvan Inn

By Norm Wheeler
Sun staff writer
“There’s everybody’s own version of events, and then there’s what happened. All the loose ends you find in between are what make it interesting.” Rob Rader

Origins
On the wall of the Sylvan Inn hangs a stamped government document scripted in the florid calligraphy of the nineteenth century. It has the authoritative, definitive, official look of an unalterable truth, and it indicates that William Walker has made full payment and hereby records the Deed of Purchase and assumes Title to 72 acres of property in Glen Arbor on November 1, 1890. Another document, filed with the State of Michigan registering the Sylvan Inn as an official state historical site, recorded on August 6, 1975, identifies the construction date as “circa 1885.” So the building was built and then the land was William Walker’s. What has happened since, who lived there, and when they came and went (not to mention why) is a richer story to tell.
In Rob Rader’s book Beautiful Glen Arbor Township; Facts, Fantasy, & Fotos, published in 1977 by the Glen Arbor Township History Group, we learn that there was a dock owned by the Glen Arbor Lumber Company on Sleeping Bear Bay at the end of the old railroad grade that is now Sylvan Court, right next to the Inn. According to Bill Olson, (former owner of the inn with his wife Jenny from 1990 – 2000), that pier was the first one on the bay and its posts are still visible in the shallow water. In 1907, Gordie Earl sold his shingle mill there by the dock to John Nessen, who connected that dock to his other mill on Big Glen Lake (at the other end of Lake Street) with a rail line for his Porter train. On the property near the mill were several shanties for the lumbermen to stay. Did Nessen own one side of the railroad tracks and Walker the other? On whose land were the shanties? Bill Olson’s story goes that the Sylvan Inn was originally built by Walker as his home, but it was quickly changed over to a rooming house to accommodate the mill workers for whom there weren’t enough shanties.
But of course there’s another version: The Sylvan Inn used to be Nessen’s house. According to an interview of Pearl Sheriff in Oct. 1975, Rader’s book reports that Pearl worked for the Walker Hotel for Mrs. Estelle Walker Grady until it burned down in 1914. Then “Mrs. Grady and her husband, George, bought the Nissen (sic) house. They named it the Sylvan Inn. Mr. Grady managed the Inn and did a lot of business. The Inn was always neat and clean – George was a very fussy man.” Indeed, the picture of the inn on page 51 of Rader’s book shows it as Grady’s Inn. If the original Sylvan Inn had been Nessen’s house, how did it come to rest on Walker’s land? A careful search of tax records and land titles from a century ago might unearth the answer. For now, it remains one of local history’s mysteries.
The Grady’s
In the early 20th century there were several inns and hotels around Glen Arbor that catered to the summer tourists arriving by steamship at the docks on Sleeping Bear Bay. One of the most popular was Walker’s Inn. Rader’s book says, “But the Walker Inn was different because it was elegant. It had plush rugs, elaborate chandeliers and a beautiful ballroom. It was the scene of some of the most elegant dances in the entire northwest region.” Dr. Walker and his wife Eliza managed the Inn, and after the Walkers died ownership transferred to their daughter Estelle, who was married to George Grady. “But one winter’s eve in 1914 the Walker Inn caught fire. George and men from the town formed a bucket brigade from the hotel to the lake. The blaze was too heated, too far along to stop, and George, exhausted and grief stricken, had to be pulled away from the inferno.” Then George Grady took over the building that is now the Sylvan Inn. He “turned that inn, former quarters of lumberjacks, into a very nice place for people to stay. His cooking abilities were quite well known. But he never took in anyone he didn’t like.”
George and Estelle Grady owned the Sylvan Inn from1915 until the early 1960’s. As George aged his disposition apparently got more like the little cigar he always had in his mouth, from “particular” to “grouchy” to “crotchety” to “crusty.” Bill Olson tells a story he got from Gordon Plowman: “George Grady was cheap. When Gordon delivered wood and went to get more loads, George would throw some into the basement so when the total volume was calculated it was less than what had been brought.” Helen Peppler reports, “They were nice clean people, just different, real characters. He could be grouchy.” Mary Rader recalls, “George cooked good food, but he was grouchy sometimes. When my husband (Jack Rader) went to get the mail at the post office next door, George invited him over for a nip. He never invited me for a nip.”
George was quite a bit older than Estelle, and he passed away many years before she did. Estelle lived next door to the Sylvan Inn in what was then the Glen Arbor post office and is now Leelanau Interiors. She was the Postmistress from 1942 – 62. Jenny Olson remembers Estelle as “nice, generous, and chatty, but she never went down to the lake. When I asked her once why she didn’t she replied, ‘Oh, we know it’s there!” Bill Olson recalls that Estelle’s barn next to the Inn held “a spotless, perfect car, a Chevy. The realtor George Forman would come over and take the car out of the barn and take Estelle for rides, as she wouldn’t drive it herself.” The Sylvan Inn had been closed for several years after George’s death when Bill stayed there in 1960. “There were sheets over the furniture and things packed in boxes,” Bill remembers. “I came up here to see Jenny, and Estelle said she’d fix up one of the rooms in the upstairs of the Inn so I’d have a place to sleep. I remember the thick, cedary-smelling sheets. The upstairs was still about the same when we bought the Inn in 1990.”
In her widow years Estelle always had Thanksgiving dinner at Rader’s. Bea Thatcher remembers having the Grady’s boat, a dory called “Estelle”, and donating it to the Traverse City Boat Society. Ken and Bea also have a large tool shed that was the box in which the Grady’s piano was shipped from Chicago.
The “Slither” Inn (so nick-named by the Euchre players who would close Art’s & then slither In to Euchre the remaining night away)
In 1962 a group of local investors including the Raders and the Pepplers bought the old Walker/Grady property. It remained closed-up pretty much until the 1970’s, when the Happy Hippy era managed to also visit Glen Arbor. There were two contrasting waves of hippies to rent the Sylvan Inn for a summer each, the “good” native, local hippies, and the “bad” exotic, Traverse City hippies. In 1972 locals Jim Dorsey, Linda Barrett, Kathy Baad, Larry Shalda, Dan Obershulte, Whitney Bourne, Cheryl Manning and Pat Watson rented the Inn as a benign “commune” while all of them worked at summer jobs around town. “We all had jobs and everything,” says Pat Watson. His wife Karen, with whom Pat now runs the Arbor Light, concurs. “Those were the permanent people,” Karen recalls. “There were also a few overnighters.” “We were a fairly tame group, actually,” says Pat. “Another group moved in from the TC area for the summer in ’73,” Karen recollects. “That’s when there were some complaints. But we had fun and kept it clean in ’72!” she insists.
John Peppler stayed in one of the original lumber mill shanties behind the Sylvan Inn for about a week around that time, but “when the hippies moved in, I moved out,” John says. “That wasn’t my thing.” Bill Olson recalls those times, “We went down to the beach at the end of Lake Isle Street to see the beach fires and the skinny dippers sprinting into the water!” “How we all worried,” echoes Helen Peppler, John’s mother. “When you say hippie, you don’t know what to expect.” Helen Peppler’s mother came by steamer to Glen Arbor at the age of 11 in 1906, so the family has witnessed many changes in the human landscape here for many generations. After the Raders sold the Totem Shop, Mary had an antique shop in the basement of the Sylvan Inn for a summer, but then the Pepplers and Raders opened a new chapter for the inn when they sold it to a family from St. Louis, the Belows.
The Belows, the Williamsons, and the Olsons
Mr. and Mrs. E. L. (Elaine) Below bought the Sylvan Inn in 1974. Bea Thatcher remembers musicians performing on the porch for the pedestrians who would stop their wanderings to sit in the yard and listen. “Right after the Belows bought it they hired David Stevens, who was newly married, to stay there and paint the building. George Bleckner’s son, Gary, was a musician, too, and they would sit on the porch and play bluegrass music. Sometimes quite a few people stopped to listen.” The Belows ran the inn as a seasonal arts, crafts, and antiques shop, and in the 1980s they started the construction of the newer rooming house behind the original inn. After Mrs. Below unexpectedly passed on, Joe and Sue Williamson purchased the inn. “They had just framed up the new building,” Joe said. Joe hired an architect to convert the frame into six new guest rooms.
Having expanded the Sylvan Inn’s elegant accommodations and redefined it as a contemporary bed & breakfast, the Williamsons sold to Bill and Jenny McCray Olson in 1990. Bill had already slept in the Inn in 1960. Jenny’s family had rented the former shanty behind the Inn for $35 a week in the late 1940’s, and they’d later stayed in the building that was moved in behind the Inn and is now Thatcher’s house for $75 per week. So they knew the neighborhood. The old shanty became the quarters of the night manager Sally King during the Williamson’s ownership, and she stayed on with the Olsons.
Ralph & Rose Gladfelter
The current owners, Ralph and Rose Gladfelter, took over the Sylvan Inn in June of 2000. For them, the inn was love at first sight. Its rich history and the wonderful preservation of the building spoke to them. They enjoy continuing the tradition that George and Estelle Grady started: Providing a place where guests could enjoy good food, interesting conversation and a good night’s sleep in a charming, historic setting.