Elephant Hotel
historic hotel in Somers, New York, United States
The Elephant Hotel is a historic former hotel which today serves as the town hall in Somers, in Westchester County, New York, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) on August 7, 1974 as Somers Town House and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2005 as Elephant Hotel. It is also a contributing property in the NRHP-listed Somers Hamlet Historic District. It is located at 335 US 202, across from the northern end of NY 100.
History
Hachaliah Bailey (known as the creator of Bailey Circus) built the Elephant Hotel in Somers, NY, after buying an African elephant, which he named "Old Bet". Bailey intended to use the elephant for farm work, but the number of people it attracted caused Bailey to tour her throughout the northeast. Old Bet was killed on tour in 1816, when she was shot by a local farmer. Bailey's tours were the first of their type in the nation, and inspired numerous others to tour with exotic animals, and during the 1830s the old style circus and Bailey's attractions merged to form the modern circus. Due to this, Somers is known as the "Cradle of the American Circus".
Bailey had purchased this land in 1805, and began construction of the hotel in 1821, as a memorial to the animals he displayed.
The public source identifies “Elephant Hotel” as historic hotel in Somers, New York, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Elephant, Hotel and historic.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5359324. Authority coordinates are 41.328, -73.686. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1974, 2005, 1816 and 1805.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elephant Hotel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.