09/25/2026
A bit of history about the Roseboro Hotel in Sharon Springs:
The Roseboro’s story begins with three separate tourist houses built in three different decades. One of them, the Howland House, was built by Edwin Howland around 1850 and was among Sharon Springs’ earliest boarding houses. Howland also taught private school there, and a back room housed the village’s first post office. Around 1902, Joe and Anna Klinkart Esmay purchased the building. It later housed a millinery shop and a bar. (The bar’s counter is now in the Sharon Historical Society’s Ice Cream Shop.)
The Rosenberg House was built circa 1870 as a private residence. The Rosenbergs later converted it into a boarding house. In 1888, the Rosenbergs built the Rosenberg Hotel directly next to their house.
Harry Wasserman purchased the Rosenberg House and Hotel in 1900. Eight years later, he bought the Howland House. He expanded the properties and eventually connected all three buildings through additions. The resulting 45,000-square-foot hotel had 135 rooms—but only 27 bathrooms! The buildings were architecturally unified in the Renaissance Revival style, and the property was renamed the Roseboro Hotel in the 1920s.
Harry Wasserman continued to improve and modernize the Roseboro in the 1930s. He added a fire protection system, the first of its kind in the area—an Otis elevator, and a large laundry building that also contained 24 guest rooms. He built tennis courts across the street and showed movies outdoors in the evenings.
After Wasserman died in the 1940s, his family continued operating the hotel. Nate, Joe, Louie, and Pauline Wasserman took over the hotel operations. As Sharon Springs’ spa business declined, however, the hotel became financially unfeasible. The Wasserman family closed it in 1968, and it remained vacant for nearly 30 years.
In 1996, the Wasserman heirs sold the severely neglected hotel and surrounding properties to Dawne Belloise and Dennis Giacomo. The couple began stabilizing the Roseboro that same year. The building had originally been constructed on wh***ey barrels filled with concrete. Over time, the barrels sank nearly three feet into the ground under the building’s weight. Jacking up and stabilizing the structure took almost two years.
The Roseboro had been built as a summer resort. The hotel was built on wh***ey barrels filled with concrete, which sank over time into the ground. The buildings had no insulation, only single-pane windows, and water pipes located on the outside of the building so they could be drained easily.
Ron Ketelsen, who came from Silicon Valley, California, purchased the building in September 2014. He spent more than $1 million stabilizing the remaining structure and began restoring other parts of the hotel.
In September 2026, the Roseboro Hotel was sold to Billy Barbic and Sonia Varin.
