With the dawn of the 20^th Century, the geography of the Hamlet changed once again. In 1903, after their original burial ground was condemned by the New York City Water Supply (which had been doing reservoir work in the area), the Catholic congregation at St. Joseph’s Church in Croton falls purchased the land adjacent to Ivandell Cemetery and established St. Joseph’s Cemetery, which still exists today along Route 202 in the northeastern portion of the Hamlet. Between 1904 and 1905, New York City finalized the construction of the reservoirs in the vicinity of the Hamlet, and this development had unseen consequences for the economic prosperity of the area. The creation of the reservoirs created an appealing attraction, and the Somers Hamlet, like other rural areas of Northern Westchester, became a popular destination amongst affluent and middle-class tourists from New York City for summer and weekend getaways. Farmers in the region began renting out spare rooms on their properties for these tourists, and in line with this trend, the Elephant Hotel regained some of its old prominence. The advent of the automobile had revitalized the turnpike roads that ran through the Hamlet, and the hotel became a stopping place for travelers along the road who were looking to take afternoon tea, among other things. The Bailey Family, looking to capitalize on this newfound business, did all they could to sell the antiquity of the hotel, renaming bedrooms after famous guests such as the writer Washington Irving and opening an official dining establishment called the Elephant Inn (which served lunch, afternoon tea, and dinner) on May 30, 1923. Thus, by the 1910s, the Hamlet had regained its status as the commercial and social center of the Town of Somers.

Like many other communities around the world, World War I impacted Somers and the Hamlet, in particular. Twenty men from Somers would serve in the conflict, and one of them, Thomas Brown, a motor driver in a U.S. Army colored division, was killed. In 1919, the townspeople of Somers raised money to erect a monument to these men in the Hamlet in the form of a massive bolder adorned with a bronze plaque listing the names of those who had served in the “great war for democracy.” This boulder was situated directly adjacent to the statue of Old Bet that Hachaliah Bailey had erected in front of the Elephant Hotel in 1827. The elephant statue was later replaced with a more modern statue in 1938 because of its poor condition. With the installation of the WWI monument, the First World War’s effects on the town largely passed into history.

The next major development in the history of the Hamlet happened shortly afterwards. In 1923, legendary, yet controversial filmmaker D.W. Griffith chose Somers as the filming location for his epic picture America. The film was centered around the events of the American Revolution, and Griffith believed that the Somers Hamlet looked enough like a rural village in colonial New England to serve as the set for this massive production. The film included frequent shots of farmhouses and other buildings of the Hamlet and featured a scene in which an actor portraying Paul Revere rode down the old turnpikes calling people to arms. Entrenchments and military camps were constructed on open land around the Elephant Hotel, and the hotel itself served as a military headquarters in the film. It also served as lodging for the film’s stars, including Lionel Barrymore and Griffith himself. The U.S. War Department even provided 1,000 trained soldiers to serve as extras for battle scenes, and the film proved to be a relatively successful picture. Today, many still shots of the production have been preserved, and the movie can be seen online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1L1VM6B9wg).

At the same time that Griffith was filming America, another extremely consequential event was also occurring in the Hamlet: the establishment of the first African American-owned Harley Davidson dealership in the United States. William B. Johnson, the dealership’s founder, had been a professional motorcycle racer prior to the early 1920s, and he continued to race long after he had opened his business. Johnson successfully operated his dealership from the 1920s until 1977. In addition to the dealership, he also operated a small motorcycle repair shop. This shop maintained steady business throughout the 1920s and 1930s as motorcycle racing briefly became a major pastime in the Hamlet. A racecourse was carved into the hill behind Ivandell Cemetery (where Heritage Hills is today), and this course was referred to as both Prospect Hill and Brown’s Mountain. Even after the dealership closed in 1977, Johnson continued to operate his repair shop until his death at the age of 95 in 1985. Today, TJ’s Auto Repair, located at 280 Route 202, Somers NY, stands where the dealership was located (the original building from the 1920s burned).

In 1927, the Elephant Hotel passed out of the ownership of the Bailey family when it was purchased by the Town of Somers for use as its municipal office. Previously, the Town had conducted its business at Tompkins Hall in Lincolndale, with town records being dispersed across many informal repositories. The Bailey Family was paid $20,000 for the building, and the decision to move the town’s headquarters there was supported by a town referendum vote on a margin of two to one. In 1928, the building received a face lift when the bold white letters inscribed on its façade were repainted on the orders of the town government. Throughout the 1930s, the hotel, and the Hamlet as a whole, would remain relatively unchanged despite the worldwide Great Depression that arrived with the Stock Market Crash of 1929. With the Elephant Hotel as its new seat of business, the town government enacted several minor measures, including the replacement of the town’s justices of the peace with a Town Board in 1933 and the establishment of Somers’s first zoning laws in 1934. In 1941, though, that same town government was rocked by a major embezzlement scandal. The town’s Democratic Supervisor of 35 years, George Turner, was indicted on corruption charges, convicted, and imprisoned, while several town councilmen were forced to resign. The incident broke the Democratic Party’s longstanding political control over the town, which had existed for most of the early 20^th Century, and a Republican Fusion ticket swept to victory in the coming election. Even the Hamlet, it seemed, was not immune to political corruption.

The history of the Somers Hamlet, like the rest of the United States, changed forever with the country’s entry into World War II after the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Numerous young men from Somers served in the conflict, and several were killed in various theaters of operation. A plaque honoring the men who were killed can be found in the back of the town courtroom in the Elephant Hotel. The Hotel itself served as a staging area for the local Red Cross, which met there regularly to collect and marshal humanitarian aid. The central front room of the hotel’s third floor was also used as a civil defense control center. During the war, several changes were made to the structure of the hotel, most notably in 1944, when the large frame annex attached to the east side of the building was demolished and replaced with a two-story vault that was constructed on the west side. With the end of the war in 1945, life in the Hamlet largely returned to the state it was in prior to the conflict’s outbreak. In 1946, the last remnants of the old Union Church were razed to the ground, and several minor repairs were made to the Old Bet monument in 1949. In 1950, Somers’s population stood at 3,159 people, a significant increase from the 1,240 that had lived there in 1900.