Weekend rooms in Beacon begin at $693 per night

The Mirbeau Companies, which operates boutique spas in New York and Massachusetts, plans to open its latest facility, Mirbeau Inn & Spa Beacon, in April at the redeveloped Tioronda Estate on Route 9D.

Reservations are available at beacon.mirbeau.com beginning June 1, with rates ranging from $533 per night on weeknights to $693 on weekends. Earlier dates and additional rooms will become available as the opening approaches, said Ed Kellogg, a partner in the family-owned hospitality business. A shuttle will be available to pick up customers at the Beacon train station. The spa is also hiring.

The opening marks the end of the first phase of redevelopment at the historic property, once the home of Craig House, the country's first privately licensed psychiatric hospital. The estate, including its centerpiece, a 14,000-square-foot, neo-Gothic mansion built in 1859 for Civil War Gen. Joseph Howland and his wife, Eliza, has sat empty since the hospital closed in 1999.

"We're really happy that we were able to find this opportunity," Kellogg said. "We think it's going to be a success right from the beginning."

The company, which owns a day spa in Albany and three resorts (in Rhinebeck and Skaneateles, New York, and Plymouth, Massachusetts), purchased the 64-acre estate for $10 million in 2022. The Planning Board approved its application to redevelop the site in December 2022, and construction began in February 2024.

Tioronda was one of the grand estates of the Hudson Valley in the 19th century. After Howland died in 1885, his widow donated the property for the care of the mentally ill. Part of the estate was purchased 30 years later by two doctors who opened a hospital specializing in addiction treatment, calling it Craig House.

It became the treatment center of choice for the rich and famous. Zelda Fitzgerald and comedian Jackie Gleason spent time there. Frances Seymour, the wife of Henry Fonda and mother of Peter and Jane Fonda, committed suicide at Craig House in 1942. Rosemary Kennedy, the older sister of President John F. Kennedy, spent years there, and Marilyn Monroe was rumored to have been a patient.

In 2003, a hedge fund manager and philanthropist, Robert Wilson, purchased the property but never developed it. In 2017, his estate sold it to an investment group led by developer Bernard Kohn.

Mirbeau "was looking for where else in the Hudson Valley we could meet our room demand," Kellogg said, when the Tioronda property became available.

The Beacon location will be the company's "biggest of everything. Biggest acreage, biggest opportunity," he said. The restored mansion will have seven guest rooms, including Gen. Howland's.

The building closest to Route 9D, a 1978 hospital wing, has been demolished, replaced by a chateau that will house the spa and 63 rooms. It will offer massage, facials, hand and foot therapy and other body treatments, as well as yoga, personal training and private classes. An open-air canopy will connect the chateau and mansion.

The bones of the Howland mansion "were in great shape, much better than we expected," Kellogg said. "It was built like a fortress."

The brick exterior, now scrubbed clean, reveals the structure's evolution. Darker brick gives away the addition that Richard Morris Hunt, Howland's brother-in-law, designed in 1873. A third shade of brick indicates another addition, believed to have been completed in the 1970s.

Mirbeau suspects smaller additions were made to the west wing of the mansion in the 1920s or '30s, Kellogg said, although there's no documentation. The clue is a slope in the floor that suggests new construction.

Photos by Ross Corsair

The original floors, mostly maple and oak, have been refinished. The entrance to the mansion has been rebuilt to be accessible to people with disabilities; the new doors are identical to the originals, he said.

The guest rooms have electric fireplaces and a view of Cornwall to the west a...