Otsego Hall was a house in Cooperstown

Cooperstown, New York

Cooperstown is a village in Otsego County, New York, USA. It is located in the Town of Otsego. The population was estimated to be 1,852 at the 2010 census.The Village of Cooperstown is the county seat of Otsego County, New York...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 which was the ancestral mansion of United States novelist James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales, featuring frontiersman Natty Bumppo...

. It was built by William Cooper

William Cooper (judge)

William Cooper was the founder of Cooperstown, New York and father of writer James Fenimore Cooper, who apparently used his father as the pattern for the Judge Marmaduke Temple character in his book The Pioneers....

, the novelist's father and founder of Cooperstown, where the mansion was located. Construction was started in 1796 and completed in 1799. For many years, it was the manor house

Manor house

A manor house is a country house that historically formed the administrative centre of a manor, the lowest unit of territorial organisation in the feudal system in Europe. The term is applied to country houses that belonged to the gentry and other grand stately homes...

 of William's possessions, and by far the most spacious and stately private residence in central New York.

In June, 1834, James resolved to reopen the ancestral mansion, after an absence of nearly sixteen years. The mansion had been long closed and was falling into decay. Repairs were at once begun, and the house was speedily put in order. At first, James spent his winters in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 and summered in Cooperstown, but eventually he made Otsego Hall his permanent abode. The mansion burned down a few years after his death, and the surrounding property was sold by the heirs. His daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper

Susan Fenimore Cooper

Susan Augusta Fenimore Cooper was an American writer and amateur naturalist. She was born in Scarsdale, New York, the daughter of the well known novelist James Fenimore Cooper. She was his second child, and the eldest to survive her youth...

, built her home in Cooperstown mainly with bricks and materials from the ruins of Otsego Hall