SAND LAKE, N.Y. (AP) – The ghosts – Tommy, Jimmy, Glenn, Teddy and Legs – were conjured up on a cold, rainy day near the crackling fire at the Crooked Lake House.

“I wouldn’t call it haunted,” said owner Marc Hammond. “When I’m here, there’s always a sense of all the stuff and people that have been here.”

Only about 20 miles from downtown Albany, Crooked Lake is tucked into the foot of the Berkshires. It was popular throughout the years with politicians and vacationers for being remote, yet close to the state’s capital.

Stories about who trekked through the Crooked Lake House abound. Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey and Glenn Miller broadcast live from the ballroom, Teddy Roosevelt vacationed here and Legs Diamond, the famous bootlegger, is believed to have frequented the bar.

The big house’s bar is made of mahogany. There are six fireplaces, a 3,000-square-foot kitchen, 1,500 feet of lake frontage, six guest rooms (with room in the attic for more), antiques and the big band-era ballroom. And in the basement, there’s another bar – once believed to be a speakeasy.

All this, and the ghosts, for $1.8 million. The Crooked Lake House is on the market.

Once condemned, resurrecting the storied property was a dream of Dalmar Tifft, who grew up in the area and was taken by the architecture. After going off to New York City to become a successful designer, he came home about a decade ago and bought the property with Hammond, his partner.

“Dalmar became the Don Quixote of the Crooked Lake House,” Hammond said. “It was really Dalmar’s dream.”

Tifft and Hammond spent years renovating, especially the ballroom, where big band leaders broadcast live. The room was slipping off the rear of the structure, threatening to end up in the lake.

The pair began a banquet and catering business. They revived the lounge and its giant red slate and quartz fireplace, where a cat perched on the mantle recently during a tour. They also strapped the 1930s Big Band room back onto the building.

Tifft and Hammond opened up the Crooked Lake House to the public as a banquet facility. However, Tifft died of brain cancer in 1998. He was 53.

While Hammond, who is living at the inn now, said he enjoyed the project, it was more of Tifft’s dream, and it is too much to care for now.

His hope is that someone with restaurant experience will buy the property and continue the tradition.

“I would love to see someone do something to make it available for the community,” he said.

Hammond said it’s easy to walk in and envision what the place was like years ago. “You can imagine Glenn Miller on the stage, people in ’40s costumes and gangsters downstairs.”

The lounge, once described as Rensselaer County’s living room, is in the oldest part of the Crooked Lake House, which originally served as a stage coach stop, a post-Revolutionary War tavern en route to the Berkshires.

“There’s a lot of political history,” Hammond said. He has a copy of the register that Teddy Roosevelt signed when he took six rooms on April 29, 1899, for his boisterous family, while governor of New York.

Hammond found himself listening to many stories about what the Crooked Lake House meant to residents. John F. Kennedy is said to have stumped here.

Hammond said he once heard that Liberace offered to buy the previous owner’s piano and paid him $5,000, but never returned to collect the piano.

“One lady told me she and her husband had dinner … He proposed to her while Glenn Miller was playing on stage,” Hammond said.

Hammond, an interior decorator based in Hudson, put the massive building on the market almost a year ago, and recently signed with a local real estate agent.

The sprawling building is a composite of additions, built over the years, that reaches toward the small lake.

A fire destroyed the structure in 1840. It was rebuilt in 1860 by James McKay Mosher, who later sold it. In 1932, Al Coon and his family took it over.

Many of the objects left behind after Coon died were auctioned off, including stuffed animals – some victims of Teddy Roosevelt’s hunting expeditions – that once decorated the inn.

Still, things were left behind, like dishes from the 1940s and French Art Deco chairs.

The Crooked Lake House renovations uncovered some of the house’s past. Hammond said they planned to replace the famous bar that drew so many politicos and locals with a marble surface, but then stripped a few of the layers of shellac revealing the original mahogany.

Besides hosting famous – and infamous – guests, the Crooked Lake House is adored in the community.

“It’s been a part of Sand Lake history since the moment the first tavern/stage coach stop was built there,” said town historian Judy Rowe. “The joys of the town – weddings, proms, political dinners; it has so much history.”

Rowe noted the house has its own waltz, the “Crooked Lake Waltz,” written in 1885. She remembers dancing all night at the inn when she was a teenager, as well as holding her daughter’s Sweet 16 birthday party there.

“If someone bought the place, who had a feel for history, it could come back again,” Rowe said. “It holds a key to so many generations, starting from the Revolution to the present.”

AP-ES-04-26-03 1326EDT