Manufacturer: Scammell China
User: Thayer Hotel – West Point, New York
Date of service plate: circa 1926
Notes: The six-story, 225-room Thayer Hotel opened May 27, 1926, in West Point, New York. It is located at 674 Thayer Road on the US Military Academy, better known as West Point. It was built as a replacement for the original 1829 West Point Hotel, and was named for Sylvanus Thayer, class of 1808. Thayer is known as the "Father of West Point" because he transformed the new military academy from a marginal school into a school whose supremacy in science and engineering was unchallenged. In 1943, the West Point Hotel Corporation sold the Thayer to The United States Government. In 2022, the Thayer had 151 guest rooms and was the only full-service hotel on any military base in the entire world.
Scammell produced a Lamberton China service plate for the Thayer that contains a coin gold shield crest in the center of the well. The full cobalt blue border is decorated with an overall vine and flower design in coin gold. The blue border is flanked at the rim and verge with coin gold lines. The vine and flower design on the border is suggestive of the gold vine and leaf design that was used on the octagonal columns in the Thayer dining room. The only known example of this service plate does not contain the name of the distributor on the back stamp.
Sources:
Americanheritage.com – Sylvanus Thayer information
Businesswire.com – May 26, 2016, article about hotel history and current use
For additional info:
Thayer Hotel by Scammell China
Thayer Hotel 3 by Shenango China
Contributor:
Author and photos: Larry Paul