ARGYLE LAKE HISTORY

The famous Argyle Hotel in Babylon was one of many built in the late 1800’s to accommodate wealthy summer visitors from New York City. It was constructed in 1882 by August Belmont, the LIRR and resort entrepreneur on the former estate of Brooklyn railroad magnate Electus B. Litchfield. Financing was provided by a syndicate headed by Long Island Rail Road President, Austin Corbin. The grounds, which included a large millpond, Blythebourne Lake became renamed Argyle Lake, for one of the hotel’s largest investors and town aristocrat, the heir to the Dukedom of Argyll.

The renaming gave the Hotel & Park a more genteel English flavor yet the hotel proved a bad venture: it was near the end of the era of such projects, it was built much too large with 350 rooms, and so was rarely more than one-third filled. After about a decade of disuse, it was finally demolished in 1904, some of the structure being used to build homes west of the lake in the area now known as Argyle Park. In 1921, the land that is now Argyle Park was donated for passive recreation to the Village of Babylon,by J. Stanley Foster,Esq. This park is still popular, drawing substantial numbers of visitors from outside the community for fishing, strolling, the children’s playground and especially for weddings, since the waterfalls make an attractive setting for picture-taking.