It has been generations since Coastside travelers ate, slept, drank and danced at the old Bell Hotel in what used to be mid- town San Gregorio. But the Bell is still there, a living museum of what early San Mateo County trekkers found when they went there to hunt and fish or get a night's respite from their arduous stagecoach journeys.
Built as the San Gregorio House in 1865, the hotel was expanded in 1875 on its four- acre lot at San Gregorio and Stage roads. It has been owned since 1888 by the heirs of Frank Bell, running it as a hotel until the 1920s.
The family still owns the property, occupied by Frank Bell Jr., until he died 13 years ago. His wife, Mildred, lived there until she died last August.
Mrs. Bell had come to San Gregorio about 1921 to teach in the one-room Seaside School, which still stands south of the hotel, and had lived in the old hotel for some six decades. She married Bell in the 1950s and retired from teaching.
The hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, along with its former saloon and gas station, now the Stage Stop Cafe, its dance hall, granary, liveryman's cottage, car-riage shed, smokehouse, power house, laundry, outhouse, shed and barn.
The staff once grew its own produce in a large open space area behind the hotel. Listing agent Bob McCahon, son of a former Coastside green- house owner and San Mateo County planning commissioner, said the Bell is the sole survivor of a string of such hostels that once occupied every Coastside valley. ``It was quite upscale and once in competition with the Pescadero Hotel,'' said McCahon, of Coast Associates in Half Moon Bay. Though dilapidated, some of the 10 rooms still contain the beds and heavy wooden dressers that the guests once used. Caretaker Tom Armstrong lives in one of the original rooms and operates the cafe on weekends and at lunchtime. It fea- tures a collection of photos of old San Gregorio and a saloon-like ambiance. Few of the other buildings are useful because of their age. The dried-out boards of the dance floor will give way with one's full weight in places. The Bell didn't burn, like so many of its wooden contem- poraries, possibly because its kitchen was in a separate struc- ture behind the main building. McCahon pointed out that the kitchen was joined to the build- ing early this century. Walking through the musty building is a trip back in time. The J. Feinrich piano in the par- lor, from Leipzig, Germany, has candle holders over each side of the keyboard. An early Victrola still works, playing 12-inch records through its horn. A supply of extra needles lays in a cubbyhole next to the turntable. Quartz doorknobs and turn of the century door locks are on most of the four-panel doors, themselves the originals. All the furniture is carved, some very ornately. Four fireplaces once heated the hotel, but only one chimney was restored after the 1906 earthquake. And everywhere is the musty smell of age as paint fades and wallpaper peels to expose the timbers of sturdy local redwood. Drinking and gambling went on for years in the cafe that was built soon after the hotel but, with the coming of Prohibition, it was converted to a gas station. Gasoline at first arrived in 50- gallon drums and was poured into customers' tanks from a watering can and through a chamois cloth to filter it. The price was 10 cents a gallon. The station got a pump later but apparently never had more than one. The last one still stands, unused for years and with a ``No Gas'' sign on its face. McCahon said the national historic designation means that the building facades must be left in place and the auxiliary struc- tures kept. But the hotel's Coastside heritage ``could easily be the theme of a bed-and-breakfast,'' he said. The interior and much of the building could be changed dras- tically, the interior even gutted, if need be, but the exterior needs to remain much the same as the original, he pointed out. The Bell is listed at $899,000, down from the original asking price of $1 million. The Bell Hotel is on the market for $899,000, down from a $1 million original asking price.