Pleasure Gardens of the 19th Century
William Ferris Pell, first private owner of the Fort Ticonderoga peninsula, created an arboretum and extensive pleasure grounds around his country estate (c. 1826-1840), The Pavilion, within view of the Fort’s ruins. Family tradition states he received a degree in Botany from Columbia University in 1799. He worked in his family’s business at a New York City auction house and import firm specializing in fine marble and mahogany.
During this period New York City was a center for landscape gardeners and nurseries supported by numerous agricultural and horticultural societies. Pell was most likely influenced by developing trends in estate gardening. His gardens at Ticonderoga included many species of familiar and unusual trees that were later lauded in diaries and travel guides. Pell propagated thousands of black locust trees, examples of which remain on the front lawn of the Pavilion today.
Pell’s Pavilion served as a hotel from about 1840 – 1900. The beauty of the cultivated landscape alongside the ruins of the Fort made a compelling statement that captivated travelers arriving by steamboat to visit the site where early Americans struggled for liberty in the wilderness of upstate New York. Vegetable and cutting garden plots that provided fresh fare for hotel guests were maintained on the same ground that fed the troops a century before.
The improvement of overland travel by railroad and stagecoach ended the hotel era at Fort Ticonderoga. Tenant farmers continued the practice of agriculture through the turn of the century, and the formal landscape had given way to a working farm with little evidence of William Ferris Pell’s agricultural legacy.
