Driving down Shore Avenue in Groton towards Eastern Point Beach, we skirted the edge of the Thames River when a friend, who grew up in East Lyme, asked about “that hall” that once stood here on the bank of the Thames.

I stopped the car where we could see the 16th hole green and the 17th hole tee box of Shennecossett Golf Course, directly abutting Shore Avenue, the very site of the former, and spectacular, Griswold Hotel.

Memories of that palatial, rare experiment in local opulence are sadly fading with each passing generation, but many today can still recall “The Griswold.”

Wealthy philanthropist Morton Plant enjoyed hosting parties at his Branford House on Avery Point. When his gatherings outgrew his home, he tore down the existing Fort Griswold Inn on Shore Avenue in 1905, calling it “offensively dilapidated.” He opened the new Griswold Hotel on the site in 1906. It would become a world unto itself.

Ostentatious to behold, the Griswold garnered national acclaim. With velveted walls and mirrored corridors, it was as lavish as any luxury hotel in the country. As business boomed, Plant expanded the hotel to 400 rooms.

In 1916, the Griswold hosted the American-Mexican Joint Commission’s peace conference, which brought officials from both countries together to work out problems at the U.S.-Mexico border stemming from the Mexican Revolution.

America’s moneyed elite flocked to Groton during the Roaring Twenties, a time of decadent excess for the affluent.

Presidents, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and their peers came to visit what the Griswold’s brochure called the “Yachting Playground of America.” The Thames River harbor did indeed host many floating mansions of the rich and famous.

Long after the flappers and jazz bands were gone, Jackie Kennedy was hosted at the Griswold when she came to Groton to christen the submarine USS Lafayette in 1962.

Many of America’s grand hotels faded with a changing market as Americans turned from rail travel to the new flexibility of automobiles. Some of the larger wooden structures turned into dangerous fire hazards too expensive to modernize, including the Griswold.

When it closed in 1967, the property was sold to Charles Pfizer and Company, who demolished the building two years later. A 1997 land swap with the Town of Groton allowed for a beautiful redesign of the golf course’s finishing holes.

The imposing Griswold was a one-time era of Groton glitz, a past remnant of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age. While the hotel is long gone, the memories of those who breathed the rarified, upper crust air of the Griswold are still very much alive today, over 50 years later.

I have to visit the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald to imagine the kind of wealth and high society that surrounded the Griswold in the 1920s, but I do remember the gargantuan physicality of the building.

I recall the sweeping circular driveway, over which we would bicycle at high speed when I was 12 years old, annoying the stuffy concierge at the front door who would angrily shoo us off.

The Griswold’s pool, conveniently located near the front drive, proved tempting for local kids on warm summer nights. Some folks talk about sneaking a forbidden dip as a teenage rite of passage, while others, Groton historian Jim Streeter among them, remember swimming freely in the large pool, undisturbed by hotel staff. Different rules for different decades, perhaps.

My good friend, heck, everybody’s good friend, well-known Groton social luminary Jan Miller remembers the yachts and celebrities visiting the Griswold. He would sometimes stop at the swanky hotel bar for a drink, but not before donning a suit and tie. In recalling the obvious social divide between the working class locals and the well-heeled clientele frequenting the Griswold, Jan said, “My suit probably cost about $85 at the time, and there I was, sitting next to men in $500 suits at the bar.”

Another facet of Groton cultural history that goes hand in hand with the Griswold Hotel is Black Maggie’s, a local hotspot after dark. It was tucked literally in the shadow of the Griswold on North Prospect Street, which now runs along Shennecossett’s 17th fairway.

According to Streeter, it was officially named the Prospect Villa, but, as the story goes, Maggie the bartender kept a blackjack under the bar to ensure good behavior. Fond nicknames often have a way of taking hold in local culture.

Streeter stopped in the joint from time to time, and clearly remembers the bar, the live bands, the dance floor.

Miller says Black Maggie’s was “the hottest spot in town at the time.” No matter where the night took them, “all the locals would wind up their night there.”

He recalls one memorable late night when the music was typically loud and the conversation boisterous. Two women from the uppity Griswold Hotel heard the revelry and decided to investigate.

They flowed through the door dressed to the nines, draped in expensive mink. All commotion in the bar came to an abrupt standstill at the sight of these unexpected intruders from another galaxy.

The ladies ordered a drink quite unfamiliar to the blue collar bartender, but he managed to oblige them with a little improvisation.

Drinks poured, the band started up again, the party noisily resumed, and the minks came off as the socialites joined the crowd on the dance floor. Miller’s sure they swore each other to secrecy to conceal their indecent hobnobbing with Groton’s lowly hoi polloi as they made their way back to their posh accommodations, their real world.

The Griswold Hotel was unique to southeastern Connecticut. So many middle class Groton locals experienced the fringe of Morton Plant’s upper class party palace. Many, like me, had but a fleeting relationship with the magnificent hotel, just enough to generate a remembrance.

But still, with a nod to Morton Plant, as Bob Hope sang in 1938, no doubt heard in the Griswold bar and ballroom at the time, we all say “Thanks for the memory.”

John Steward lives in Waterford. He can be reached at tossinglines@gmail.com.