W.D. Rider found himself out of the Hotel Riverside; development staked out for himself an objective that most of his neighbors considered ugly and impossible to accomplish. How could they know that they had not yet seen the peak of America's mineral water resort in 1895?
They could contract that day's sudden activity and growth with what they had experienced up to 1884. Mr. Rider had been making many trips out of town after he left the Hotel Riverside management in February or about 1895, and in June, he announced that he would build a million-dollar hotel and resort on the South Hill overlooking the town. It was to be called Hotel Rider, he said and would be the finest and largest resort hotel between New York and Chicago.
The natives gasped, but true to his word, on July 4th of that year, he invited the residents to the top of the South Hill. Where stood awaiting them Delroy Bircherd with a span of horses attached to a plow ready to turn the furrow the foundation staked out on a scale larger then anything they have ever seen. Cambridge Springs records tell the whole story of the Rider Hotel that day in black and white. However, the testimony of many residents who worked on the project and later watched it developed into exactly what W.D. Rider said it would.
But space here will not include it. It developed a polished society of its own. Rich and famous people were attracted to it. The sun of day and night life of numerous families with summer residents in the town were who brought private cars to the sidings to the Erie Railroad. In those days, rich families brought their horses, coachmen, and their entire household to Cambridge Springs to stay the summer through.
With a flare for promotion W.D. Rider had a large lithograph of the handsome hotel to be hung in the waiting rooms of every large railroad terminal in America and in many foreign countries. None of us know what the future might hold for the Hotel Rider and its promoters. The book was suddenly closed on September the 13th, 1905, when W.D. Rider died. Successful management could not seem to catch his genius in stride. Finally, the Hotel Rider property went into receivership, from which it emerged to become the site of the Alliance College with the effort of the Polish Alliance of America.
Each of the three thousand members gives 5 cents per month for young Polish Americans' sympathetic and economic vocational and academic training. A new institution that goes on from year to year into brighter futures was dedicated in 1912. With William Howard Taft, president of the U.S., delivering the dedication address.
With the decline of the Hotel Rider, the Spa, which some may have called flamboyant in its characteristics, succeeded from a peak of mineral water greatness. In succeeding years, the advent of the automobile changed the people's customs, and the medical profession changed its fashions. More stress has been placed on Cambridge Springs as a resort. Stretchers and wheelchairs, which were seen in great numbers at the turn of the century, are now absent from hotel lobbies and incoming trains.