reviews: By Patricia Doxsey, Daily Freeman, July 30, 2006

business: Madalin Hotel

The Madalin is Back!

To step into the Madalin Hotel in Tivoli is to step back in time. Stepping into the turn-of-the-century building, with its ornately carved 19-foot bar, intimate, softly lit dining room, and guest rooms decorated in antique furnishings, visitors are at once transported back to a time when the village was a bustling, rough-and-tumble working-class riverfront community, and merchants and visitors would make their way to hotel for a cool drink and a warm bed.

Restoring the building, built in 1909, has been a two-year project for Joe Cicileo and Domenic Scarpulla, who along with Joe's brother Anthony, purchased the building two years ago from the Bayly family. In its heyday in the early 1900s the Hotel Morey, as it was formerly known, is said to have served such famous patrons as Eleanor Roosevelt, who lived for a time in the village.

But over the years, as the economy in the village declined, so did the hotel. Eventually, the Bayly family closed down the hotel portion of the business, maintaining only the bar as a popular watering hole for many village and other Northern Dutchess regulars.

When owner Dick Bayly died and the family put the building on the market, Cicileo and Scarpulla, who specialize in building restoration jumped at the chance to buy it.

Since then, the two have worked tirelessly to restore the building to its former grandeur.

"It was a major restoration," said Cicileo, who declined to say how much the two spent on the project. "We tried to keep everything that was originally here, here. We restored all the woodwork, the floors, the molding. We kept the original windows and the doors."

The pair did have to modernize the outdated kitchen and put bathrooms in each of the hotels 11 guest rooms. Each of the rooms also contain a flat-screen television and a telephone, the only hints of modernization in the otherwise turn-of-the-century styled rooms.

The two also took care to avoid the appearance of so many hotels with rooms that are identically decorated.

"Every room is different," said Cicileo, showing off one room, which featured a sleigh bed, where Mikhail Baryshnikov recently stayed, and other which contained a four-post bed.

The hotel boasts six king-sized rooms and five queen-sized rooms spread out over the second and third floor of the hotel.

The first floor features the bar, which can seat 12, Cicileo said, and a dining room that can hold 40. Still, another 50 can take comfort on the sweeping porch that wraps around two sides of the building.

Since opening over Memorial Day weekend, the hotel has been filled to capacity every weekend and reservations are in constant demand, keeping the business' 14 employees busy.

The restaurant, which is open every night for dinner except Tuesday, boasts a reasonably priced selection of contemporary American fare and the dining area is always packed with dinner patrons.

And, although the bar doesn't stay open as late as some of the other local night spots, Cicileo said the Madalin Hotel has a lively night life.

"This place is a very fun place," he said. "It really draws a lot of people and it really draws people together."   original review

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