People and places · Chatsworth
Prince Mario Ruspoli and the short life of the Chatsworth Club
Documented resort history · Building sites lost or access unverified
An Italian prince and the Beers heirs tried to turn a Pine Barrens railroad village into a fashionable retreat. The club's brief boom also depended on the builders, innkeepers, railroad employees and a nursemaid who made the guests' stay possible.
The resort was a family land project
Mario Ruspoli was an attaché at the Italian embassy in Washington when the Beers heirs began promoting their Chatsworth holdings as a resort. The National Register nomination for Buzby's General Store, pages 10–11, traces the land through Joseph D. Beers's descendants and describes the Marquise de Talleyrand-Périgord's idea for a hunting retreat. Ruspoli's marriage tied him to this family. The nomination says the Chatsworth Park Company was organized and Shamong Station renamed Chatsworth in 1896, borrowing the name of an English country estate. This was a real estate venture involving several relatives and investors, not a prince acting alone.
The same history places construction of a clubhouse across from Union Forge pond, later Chatsworth Lake, in 1895. It also describes a hotel, the prince's Queen Anne-style lakeside cottage called the Princess House, and the pond's conversion into an ornamental lake. A transcription of a November 20, 1909 New York Post report names Princess Ruspoli and the Marquise as principal shareholders in a later land sale. Its focus on their property interests helps correct a version of the story that gives all agency to Mario.
The people behind the guests
The Buzby nomination says many Chatsworth residents worked on construction and maintenance of the hotel and Princess House. Building crews lodged at the Shamong Hotel, later known as the White Horse Inn, which also housed overflow guests. The venture generated railroad activity and new sidings, with other residents employed on the line. These were local wages in a place where earlier industry and railroad downturns had left work uncertain. The record confirms the kinds of jobs and the brief economic lift, but it does not provide a payroll or a count of workers. Buzby's General Store nomination, pages 9–11.
One worker has a name. The nomination identifies Myrtle Buzby, wife of storekeeper Willis Jefferson Buzby, as a frequent caregiver for the Ruspolis' son when they traveled. John McPhee later reported the same family memory through a Buzby descendant, describing her as the child's nursemaid. The nomination says she subsequently served as Chatsworth's postmistress when the post office moved to Buzby's store in 1914. Her work linked a wealthy household to the town's everyday services long after the visitors left. National Register nomination, pages 10–11; McPhee, “The Pine Barrens—II” (1967).
A club with more than one beginning
The nomination distinguishes the 1890s resort buildings from the later organization called the Chatsworth Club. It says the hotel was restored around 1900, converted into a clubhouse, and the resort faded when Ruspoli and his colleagues stopped visiting after 1904. The 1909 newspaper report dates the formal club organization to 1904 and says it had already ended by about 1907. These dates describe related phases, rather than a single founding day. The nomination records a sheriff's sale in 1907 and says a later country club attempt failed. By the 1910s the principal resort building had burned; the Princess House was later lost too. The nomination speculates about a cause for the clubhouse fire but does not establish it, so no cause is asserted here. National Register nomination, pages 10–11; 1909 newspaper transcription.
McPhee's 1967 reporting found the grand buildings gone, while memories of the prince, his guests and his Chatsworth-born son remained in town. The durable story is therefore not an accessible castle in the woods. It is how outside money briefly changed local work, a lake shore and the village's name, then left the older community and its services to continue.
A visit grounded in what survives
The New Jersey Historic Trust identifies the White Horse Inn / Shamong Hotel as the surviving building associated with the resort and says it has hosted local tours and festivals. The Woodland Township Historical Society now describes a museum room inside the inn. A township record gives its address as 3980 Route 563, Chatsworth. Check the society's current event information before expecting interior access. The inn associated with the club is not the older White Horse Tavern site in the Tabernacle area covered in a separate entry.
Explore the Chatsworth locality on the map to see the wider setting. The vanished clubhouse and cottage were near Chatsworth Lake, but historical descriptions and community map discussions do not establish a public approach to their exact footprints. Neither building has a verified public ruin to visit; do not enter private shore parcels or treat the approximate lake pin as a route to them.
Sources and research limits
- Buzby's General Store National Register nomination (2004), pages 9–12 — Beers family, resort chronology, local work, Myrtle Buzby, later decline. It is a historical synthesis with endnotes, not a contemporary payroll.
- New Jersey Historic Trust, “White Horse Inn / Shamong Hotel” — Surviving associated building and preservation history.
- “Princess in Big Land Deal,” New York Post, November 20, 1909, page 9, transcription — Contemporary account of ownership, sale and formal club dates. The original newspaper page was not independently inspected.
- John McPhee, “The Pine Barrens—II,” The New Yorker, December 2, 1967 — Later reporting from Chatsworth and Buzby family memory.
- Woodland Township Historical Society — Present description of the museum room; no daily interior hours published on the page checked.
Sources give different dates for resort buildings and formal club organization. They support the sequence above but not a definitive day of founding or a cause for the fire. Villa and clubhouse locations are historical, not verified public visitor destinations.