In 1946 Ray and Irene De May purchased the hotel property and building. It took the De Mays nine months to remodel the entire property, starting with modernizing and redecorating the interior to make it livelier for patrons to enjoy live music and dancing on Fridays during the winter. The De Mays upgraded the kitchen to a 1946 state-of-the-art kitchen, completely fireproofing the kitchen separately from the rest of the hotel and dining area.

Raymond installed a new 49-foot bar, enabling more patrons to sit at the bar. He could better display the different kinds of whiskey, vodka, wine, sherry, port, brandy, rum, gin, tequila, hock, vermouth, absinthe, rye, beer, ale, champagne, cognac, and saké. These were laid out in a way that Raymond felt best encouraged customers to buy lots of drinks.

Most bars and restaurants that serve a wide assortment of alcohol-based products would have a selection of what the industry calls top-shelf items. These are your higher-end priced beverages or have better ingredients, compared to your mid-tier and low-tier drinks. They did serve some of the local brews from the Genesee Brewery and others that survived prohibition.

This rough, not-to-scale hand-drawn sketch by Bill Sauers, circa 2016, shows the layout of the first floor of the DeMay Hotel. As for a ladies’ room, it probably had none for Women before the De May’s purchased the property and upgraded the plumbing. They added a ladies’ room just at the end of the bar before heading to the Ballroom / Banquet space. The men’s room was your old school trench on the edge of one wall and ran the distance of the wall with partitions for privacy, they also had some Water Closets (aka toilets) if a gentleman needed to use one. On the door was a silhouette of what appeared to be that of Clark Gable at a publicity photoshoot at MGM in 1938.

Based on the text of an ad in the Greece Press on January 2, 1947, the was a men’s bar. The first line on the right is “Always a Lively crowd at DeMay’s,” in the middle of the ad, it says “Western New York’s Largest Dance Floor”, followed by “Our Cocktail Lounge and Bar” and then finally it says “Where Good Fellows Get Together.” seemly to indicate it was a Men’s only bar and cocktail lounge. The woman or spouse accompanied a gentleman to the hotel but on Fridays and Saturdays from 9 pm to 1:30 am would be served drinks in the dining area or dancing in the ballroom area.

In 1948 Raymond A De May and the Hotel were charged with being a public nuisance. Raymond De May was arrested on September 10; the warrant was for maintaining a public nuisance and creating an environment that negatively affected the neighbors that lived around the Hotel De May. He was arraigned before Justice W. Arthur Rickman. Raymond pleaded not guilty to the charges and the case was adjourned to September 13, and then adjourned a few more times until the case was settled out of court.

Here is a link to the current wording of the town of Greece, NY Nuisance Law on the Town of Greece’s ecode360

In the following years after the charges were settled out of court Ray, Irene, and their hotel would be at the heart of the North Greece Community.

Hotel De May was almost destroyed by a fire that started in the hotel’s coal bin, on December 18th, 1953, it took North Greece, Greece Ridge, and Barnard Fire departments to put out the blaze. There was damage to a kitchen and rooms overhead the southwest wing of the hotel. Luckily no one was injured in the fire. Even though there were 2 1950s Seagrave pumpers and a 1950s Mack Fire Truck from North Greece Fire Station. The manpower of the North Greece Fire Department was not enough to put it out. That is why Assistant Fire Chief Raymond asked the chief to call for mutual aid from Greece Ridge and Barnard to assist with the fire discovered during dinner time around 5:30 pm at the hotel. It appears that the Fireproof kitchen was not completely fireproof as Ray and Irene thought it was. The total damage and repairs cost the hotel suffered was $ 4,500. The $ 4,500 they had to rebuild the southwest wing and repair the kitchen and bring it up to the Town of Greece’s building and fire codes of 1954.

These are the most common Events that the Hotel De May hosted:

In October it was the annual steak dinner to mark the hotel’s opening; the annual dinner was a six-course steak dinner that ran from 1 pm to 9 pm and cost $ 6 per person according to this ad to the right in the Greece Press printed in the September 19, 1968 paper.

Every March they would celebrate Ray’s birthday and they served corned beef and cabbage for free. The bash started at 7 pm and they had an orchestra for dancing from 9 pm to midnight. As seen in this ad in the Greece Press paper on March 13, 1969.

While operating the hotel, Ray got involved in the North Greece Fire Department and served five years as an assistant fire chief. Since he owned the hotel across the street, he let the firefighters park their cars in the hotel lot and also let them park the trucks in the lot sometimes as well. Ray was a life-long member of the New York State Fire Chiefs Association.

Ray was photographed conducting a bike safety program for kids in the North Greece Area in which members of the North Greece Fire Department took part. He fastened reflectors to spurs of kids’ bicycles to help make the bikes visible to drivers at night. The attached article shows Ray installing the reflectors on David McCarroll’s bike at North Greece Fire Department Station 1. The Bike safety program also took place at 5 other points in the town besides North Greece Fire department at 3552 Latta Road; one was probably at the town hall or at Greece Ridge at the Ridge, another one was held at Barnard Fire Department, and then 3 other locations where most of the population of Greece was located during the 1950s.

Ray was also a member of the Greece Volunteer Ambulance Corps. (GVAC), which has since been disbanded in the last few years due to the four fire companies changing providers to Monroe Ambulance and the rising cost of Emergency services which the volunteer corp could not afford anymore.

Each year Raymond would sponsor a very competitive men’s softball and baseball teams, as well as a junior league for boys aged 7-12 that lived in the North Greece area. At the end of the season, the De Mays would host an annual picnic for the members of the junior softball league and the little league baseball players. They also let the North Greece Playground youngsters join in as well as their parents and friends. The De Mays wound up serving 500 plus people each year with free hot dogs (more than likely the hot dogs were Zweigles brand hot dogs) and soft drinks could have been either Coke or Pepsi or a local soft drink vendor.

In the neighborhood around Hotel De May, Irene was known as Mother De May, that because she would take in boarders who had nowhere else to go, those who worked as migrant workers at the nearby farms, and in 1991 she opened the hotel for those who needed a place to stay warm while they did not have electricity, heating oil, wood or other heating sources to keep warm during the 1991 Ice Storm. More on the 1991 Ice Storm to come later in a future snapshot on Extreme Weather that affected the Town of Greece.

Irene De May kept the tavern and Hotel running until her death in 2000.

The hotel sat empty for many years; those who cherished this historic building hoped it would be restored to a functional community asset. However, developers were more interested in tearing it down and replacing it with a (Crosby’s) gas station and convenience store.

Gina DiBella led a grassroots movement to convince the town to preserve it and make it into a functional hotel, restaurant, and party house again or take on another form of business even if it was not used as a restaurant, hotel, or party house. The group had a slogan printed on shirts that read “Come What DeMAY this Hotel Stays!”

But the grassroots movement could not sway the town board and supervisor that the De May Hotel could return to life and in Early 2017 the Town approved the demolition in favor of a Crosby’s Gas station with a Dunkin’ Donuts attached. The demolition of Hotel DeMay occurred on November 17, 2017. Still, to date, nothing has been built on the site. As of this post, the current value has dropped from nearly $ 250,000 to $ 50,000. Below is the current information on the lot according to Monroe County Records for the parcel; the last table is from propertyshark.com which says it was sold to another property broker or developer, but no records are available to verify this information only the property details, lot size, and current tax and land value have been verified using the Monroe County Tax assessment page.

At Least one part of the Hotel DeMay lives on it is the 49-foot bar that Raymond DeMay installed at the hotel, which survived demolition, and has a new home at the My Apartment bar on West Outer Drive off of Mount Read Blvd. Other “parts” of the Hotel DeMay also live on at The Stutson House. Several hotel room doors were used to make the bar at that location. You can still see the room numbers on the bar panels (doors).

The Landmark Society of Western New York named the Hotel DeMay to it’s Five to Revive list in October of 2017 here is what they wrote:

“The Five to Revive is a list that calls attention to five properties in Western New York that are in need of investment. They are considered significant historic aspects of our shared built environment whose redevelopment can become catalytic projects for the neighborhoods and communities that surround them.”

“The irreplaceable historic resources listed in Five to Revive become priority projects for Landmark Society staff and programs. The Landmark Society works collaboratively with owners, municipal officials, and developers to facilitate investment and foster rehabilitation so that these structures can again play an active role in their communities. Five to Revive selection criteria include: architectural/design integrity, historical significance, degree of endangerment, potential catalytic impact, and likelihood that inclusion on list will help facilitate a positive outcome.”

Unfortunately, we never had a chance to work with The Landmark Society, owners, municipal officials, or developers and The DeMay became the first and (to-date) only building named to the Five to Revive to be demolished.