From Thomas Edison To Mary Teresa Norton: The Notable Americans Who Once Stayed At Idylease, A 1903 New Jersey Highlands Health Resort
NEWFOUNDLAND, NJ – July 16, 2026 – Over the more than 120 years since Idylease opened its doors on New Year’s Day, 1903, the historic New Jersey Highlands health resort has hosted a remarkable cross-section of American public life. Inventors, congresswomen, military heroes, journalists, educators, and social reformers all made the climb up the hillside above Newfoundland to spend time in the building that came to define one of the rare surviving examples of resort-era architecture in northern New Jersey.
The list of notable Americans associated with Idylease begins with Thomas Edison. The inventor stayed at the property while working on mining experiments in nearby Franklin and Ogdensburg, drawn to the New Jersey Highlands for both the work and the rest. Edison’s relationship to Idylease deepened in 1928, when he returned to oversee the installation of electrical wiring and a power plant that allowed the building to generate its own electricity. Until that point, the building had been lit by gas, with lamps requiring hand-lighting each evening and extinguishing each morning. After Edison’s installation, switches replaced matches and wires ran through walls and ceilings.
Mary Teresa Norton, one of the first women to serve in the United States Congress, was a regular guest at Idylease in the late 1920s. Norton, who represented New Jersey in Congress for over two decades and was the first woman to chair a major congressional committee, would have arrived during the period of significant national political transformation in which she played a central role.
Horatio Collins King, a Civil War veteran and Medal of Honor recipient, also passed through Idylease. King’s military service and later writing on the Civil War made him a recognizable figure in early twentieth-century American public life.
Other names associated with the property include Joseph French Johnson, William B. Hanna, David Banks Sickels, Victor Harrison-Berlitz, and Grace Abbott, the social reformer who served as Chief of the U.S. Children’s Bureau. Their lives elsewhere were tied to industry, government, finance, journalism, education, language, and social reform. At Idylease, they entered the same routine as every other guest. They came to the mountain for a while, then moved on.
The reason figures of that stature traveled to Newfoundland to stay at Idylease was tied to how the property functioned. Idylease was conceived not as a conventional hotel but as a modern health resort, located thirty-eight geographic miles from New York City and organized around rest, fresh air, regular hours, wholesome food, exercise, hydrotherapy, massage, baths, and medical care. Many who came believed the mountain air itself was part of the cure.
The renewed website at www.idylease.org documents the history of the property and the people who shaped it. The site is maintained by Richard Zampella, who assumed stewardship of Idylease in 2016 after a career that included years at New York hospitality institutions including the Rainbow Room, Le Cirque, and The Plaza Hotel, followed by work as a documentary producer and editor whose work has aired on public television. More about Zampella’s broader work is available at www.richardzampella.com.
Zampella has long maintained that Idylease is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The property was designated West Milford’s first local historic landmark in 1988.
The renewed website presents the property not only as an architectural landmark but as a working historic place shaped by the people who passed through it. Idylease.org will continue to expand as additional archival material, photographs, restoration updates, videos, and historical research are organized and made available.
For more information about Idylease, visit www.idylease.org. For more about the work of Richard Zampella, visit www.richardzampella.com.
About Idylease
Idylease is a historic 1903 health resort located in the Newfoundland section of West Milford, in the New Jersey Highlands region of northwestern New Jersey. Built in 1902 and opened on New Year’s Day, 1903, Idylease was originally operated as a modern health resort offering rest, fresh air, hydrotherapy, massage, baths, and medical care. The property was designated West Milford’s first local historic landmark in 1988 and remains under the stewardship of Richard Zampella.
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Website: https://www.idylease.org
