Cambridge Springs

The Rider Hotel

     Today Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, which lies in the northwestern corner of the state, has a population of around 2,600 which is about 1,000 more than it had in 1904. 
     If you were to checkout the Meadville (Pennsylvania) Tribune for highlights of the early history of Cambridge Springs you would find that in 1902 Mr. Cab Beach offered a free lot to Mr. C.P. McDannell if he would build a house on it, but Mr. McDannell already had a house and turned down the offer. Shortly after that, ex-Mayor Andy Fulton of Pittsburgh paid $1,500 (about $44,000 in today's dollars) for same lot and built his Cambridge Springs mansion. 
     Mr. B.F. Bartlett purchased the new Cambridge Hotel for about $50,000...that's the equivalent of over 1.4 million in today's dollars. Bartlett went on to get elected to city council and develop Cambridge Springs' municipal water, sewers and streets. 
     Paying the equivalent of $1.4 million for a hotel in such a small town seems odd, but back in the early 1900s Cambridge Springs was a flourishing resort town due to a couple geographic oddities. 
     At first glance nothing seems remarkable about the town, but it is located on the Erie Railroad line, halfway between New York and Chicago, which made it an ideal stopover location for railroad travelers. It was also known for its mineral springs which were visited by numerous people seeking to improve their health.
     The hotel had been built in 1895 by William D. Rider Jr. and he hoped it would be the greatest hotel between Chicago and New York City. The mammoth hotel was not completed until 1897. When finished, the hotel featured over five hundred rooms in a seven-story structure spanning five acres. It included a theater for five hundred, a ballroom, a solarium, two gymnasiums, bowling alleys and an indoor pool. The hotel grounds were equally impressive, featuring a nine-hole golf course and a man-made lake. The hotel was destroyed by fire in the winter of 1931. 
     Meadville Tribune also mentions a highlight of 1904: A young priest named John Mark Gannon organized the local Catholics into St. Anthony's Parish, which grew into the beautiful St. Anthony's Church and Rectory. The young priest became bishop of the Erie Diocese in 1915. There is no mention of a chess tournament! 
     Chess Bazaar sells a replica of the chess set that was made for the tournament. It was the first major international chess tournament in America in the 20th century and it was held on April 25, 1904, at one of the greatest hotels of all time The Hotel Rider in Cambridge Springs. 
 

Original Cambridge Springs set

   According to Andy Soltis, at the end of the tournament, the organizers tried to recoup some of their expenses by selling chess boards and sets for $15 ($423.19 today!). Mikhail Chigorin was stunned at the high prices because the sets were cheap, not worth more than $2.50 (about $70 today) and the boards were poorly made and were only worth 10 to 15 cents ($3-4 today). They were all sold anyway. 

Replica set from Chess Bazaar

     I was there in 1988 and no offense if you live in Cambridge Springs, but it seemed like it's in the middle of nowhere...not any place you'd hold a major chess tournament. I was there to watch a round of the 1988 U.S. Championship which was one of the closest U.S. championships ever...only two and half points separated first from last and no one was undefeated. 

The road into Cambridge Springs

     This tournament was held in an aging inn with peeling paint named the Riverside Inn. It was built in the late-1880s at the height of the mineral springs craze and operated as a resort for vacationers visiting the nearby springs. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. You can't get a room there anymore because it was destroyed by fire in the early morning of May 2, 2017. 
     The surprising winner in 1988 was 26-year-old Michael Wilder who had been living in Paris as a professional player but had decided to return to school and study law when his late invitation to Cambridge Springs arrived. GM Tony Miles was playing because he had had some sort of a dispute with the British Chess Federation and had changed federations. His last place finish was disappointing.
     Highlights of this event for me was having a brief chat with veteran master Ivan Romanenko who passed away in Greenville, Pennsylvania in November 1994 at age 77. The other highlight was being the only spectator at the postmortem analysis of the Wilder vs. Miles game (drawn). Miles was a character and and a legend and Wilder seemed a little overawed by him. 
     One interesting observation was that the younger players, after their games were finished, hit the hotel bar. All-in-all, this was probably the least enjoyable of the three championships I witnessed. 
     The chess tournament of 1904 was an outgrowth of Rider's publicity efforts for his hotel. It was originally intended that the chess tournament be a yearly affair, but Rider died in 1905 and the prospect of future tournaments died with him. 
     The tournament back in 1904 was probably a whole lot more interesting than the U.S. Championship of 1988. It was the first major international tournament in America in the twentieth century and featured the participation of World Champion Emanuel Lasker, who had not played a tournament since 1900 and would not play again until 1909. 
     After the tournament Lasker moved to the United States and started publishing Lasker's Chess Magazine, which ran from 1904 to 1907. The tournament also resulted in Hermann Helms starting the American Chess Bulletin. 
     The surprising first place finish of Frank Marshall marked his rise to prominence in American chess and marked the end of Harry Nelson Pillsbury's chess career. He would not play another tournament before his death in 1906 at the age of 33. There would not be another tournament of the same stature in America until the New York 1924 chess tournament. 
     Janowsky, Marshall and Teichmann got off to a strong start: after six rounds Janowsky led with 5.5 points, followed by Marshall and Teichmann with 5.0. After the 6th round Teichmann became ill and only scored an additional 1.5 points in the remaining nine rounds. 
     Marshall and Janowsky continued their pace and after nine rounds they both had 8.0 points. Lasker was a distant third with 6.5 points. In the tenth round Janowsky started to falter and lost two games in a row. 
     Going into the last round Marshall was in first place with 12 points, but he was only one point ahead of Janowsky, who was only one point ahead of Lasker. Marshall won without any trouble when Fox blundered away a whole Rook. Janowsky and Lasker were playing each other for second place. Janowsky, with a one-point lead, only needed a draw with the white pieces to clinch the second prize. Lasker fended off Janowsky's attack and eventually won. 

1) Frank Marshall 13.0
2-3) David Janowsky and Emanuel Lasker 11.0 
4) Georg Marco 9.0 
5) Jackson Showalter 8.5 
6-7) Carl Schlechter and Mikhail Chigorin 7.5 
8-9) Jacques Mieses and Harry Pillsbury 7.0 
10-11) Albert Fox and Richard Teichmann 6.5 
12-13) Thomas Lawrence and William Napier 5.5 
14-15) John Barry and Albert Hodges 5.0 
16) Eugene Delmar 4.5