Across the street from the Pier 701 restaurant parking lot, you will see two sets of puddingstone pillars flanking a semicircle drive surrounded by residential houses. These pillars once served at gateposts for the Fort Comfort Inn.   The Fort Comfort Inn was everything holiday-bound New Yorkers, circa 1900, could wish for. The extensive, stunningly landscaped grounds, with towering shade trees, lush gardens and flowering shrubs, were interwoven with beautiful walking paths that beckoned to strolling couples.   There were tennis courts and, in a separate building, a “casino” with billiard tables, half a dozen bowling alleys and a music room for dancers and listeners.   Along the facade of the hotel, guests rocked in the shade of a broad, wraparound veranda, watching sailboats tacking this way and that, occasionally dwarfed by an Albany-bound steamer. An orchestra played every afternoon and evening. People arrived and departed in motor cars and buggies that traversed a sweeping circular drive. Larger groups piled out of horse-drawn omnibuses that brought them from the Piermont railroad station, a mile or so to the south.   The popularity and drawing power of the hotel steadily increased. Following the addition of an ice cream parlor and a candy store, a bathing pavilion was built in the style of a medieval castle, boasting 100 changing rooms and a large assortment of swimsuits for rent.   An anonymous copywriter of the time may have been letting his imagination get the better of him when he wrote in an ad for Fort Comfort, “A beach of clean sand, sloping gradually for a long distance into the river, makes bathing absolutely safe, there are no contaminating influences, the water being as pure as that of the ocean.”   After several fires and numerous attempts at rebuilding and expanding Fort Comfort, a final fire in 1931 brought an end to it all. Besides the stone pillars, you can still see amongst the homes a crenellated curved stone battlement that was also part of the Inn. This battlement and the pillars are the only surviving relics of this stately inn and resort.   Today, Pier 701 and the adjoining marina are on the site of the ice cream parlor and bathing pavilion.   Related Weblinks: [href=http://www.piermonthistorysociety.org/fort-comfort.html]More history of the Fort Comfort[/href] Inn