Gérardmer experienced a tourist craze early on. From the 17th century, the Dukes of Lorraine and the canonesses of Remiremont came to the village to find calm. But it was in the 19th century that the shores of the lake really began to develop with hotels and villas. They were properties of wealthy industrialists and notable from Belgium, Nancy, or Paris. The lake quay was, for example, built in 1862. A growth quite the opposite of the medieval reputation of the area considered inhospitable by the chroniclers.