(The following story by Tom Uhlenbrock appeared on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website on March 8.)
WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. — Twenty-six U.S. presidents have visited this mountainous area, which began as a frontier village built around the “healing” waters of a foul-smelling spring and grew into the grand Greenbrier resort.
But none of the names on the long list of celebrated guests — which included DuPonts, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts and Robert E. Lee with eight of his Confederate generals — left more lasting marks than Dorothy Draper, a flamboyant New York decorator, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, a staid general who became one of those 26 presidents.
The “Old White” hotel opened in 1858, and was replaced in 1913 by The Greenbrier, which was enlarged in 1930. The Georgian building lost much of its luster during World War II, when it was used as an Army hospital. Draper, the toast of the Big Apple, was hired in 1946 to restore the hotel’s glory.
Draper’s mantra was “color is magic” and she spread it lavishly throughout the resort, which retained many of her decorating touches in later refurbishings, including one that closed the hotel for three months last year. Enter the main lobby today and you are taken aback by Draper’s bold flourishes, including floral patterns on draperies, upholstery and carpeting in the colors of a summer garden.
“When people walk in, it’s like, ‘Wow,’ ” said Robert Conte, the resort’s historian. “It takes some acculturation, but people do get to like it.”
Eisenhower’s imprint was far more subtle. He had visited the resort three times as a general during WWII, and was responsible, as president, for creating one of the Cold War’s most fascinating artifacts.
GOVERNMENT PROJECT
The Greenbrier ostensibly embarked on a construction project that resulted in the opening of the West Virginia wing in 1962. But the work was financed by the government, and buried beneath the wing was a concrete bunker with two floors, both the size of a football field. In the event of an atomic attack, the entire Congress would be hustled from Washington and take up residence in the hidden bunker, where it would meet and live until the danger of nuclear fallout had ended.
“It had 1,100 beds in 18 dormitories — half for the members of Congress and half for the staff — and was kept in a constant state of readiness,” Conte said. “They weren’t going to just hunker in the bunker, they’d remain operational. Everything was ready. It was like a dinner party, and you’re waiting for the door to open and the first guest to arrive.”
The Greenbrier was chosen because the resort had rail access, and the necessary infrastructure to accommodate a large number of guests at a moment’s notice. Plus, it was 240 miles from Washington, the likely target of any attack, in a remote valley protected by the surrounding Allegheny Mountains.
“You have a covert facility waiting for the end of the world, and, above, The Greenbrier is rolling merrily along,” Conte said. “For 30 years, we were a resort with a secret mission.”
Although the locals long had rumored that something special lurked below The Greenbrier, the secret was kept until 1992, when a Washington Post reporter investigated and prepared a feature. The Greenbrier staff was called to a meeting days before the article was published and told of the bunker, which was opened to the public three years later.
Today, The Greenbrier is a National Historic Landmark that remains a bastion of Southern hospitality, with hot finger bowls after meals in its elegant main dining room and attendants in crisp white aprons serving afternoon tea before a crackling fire in the lobby. And for $30, you can pass through a 25-ton steel door and see the decontamination rooms and remaining bunk beds that might have served your senators and representatives in the event of Armageddon.
Linda Walls, who manages tours of the bunker, said the two floors 40 feet underground now bring in revenue from admission fees, use as a data storage center and from the culinary arts school created in its original kitchen and cafeteria.
But the hotel now is charged real estate taxes that were not paid on the bunker when it was a Cold War secret.
“This didn’t exist, so there were no taxes,” she said. “Now, it’s classified as a basement.”
CONDÉ NAST AND SAM SNEED
Native Americans knew of the sulphur spring, and the first documented white visitors to this West Virginia valley arrived in 1778. Local lore says Amanda Anderson, helpless with rheumatism, was hauled in on a litter between two horses. She was immersed in the waters, and jumped out, screaming “I’m cured, I’m cured.” A legend was born.
Tents were followed by rustic shelters, with the first permanent buildings erected in the early 1800s. Many of the original attached cottages still stand in rows on the hillside overlooking the springhouse. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Co. extended its line to White Sulphur Springs in 1869, and the summer resort became the favorite of the South’s social and political elite.
The railroad purchased the resort in 1910, and commissioned New York architect Frederick Junius Sterner to create The Greenbrier, which featured tall columns, an indoor pool, a golf course and 250 rooms. Later additions expanded that number to 500 rooms in the main hotel, and 220 more in 96 cottages and estate houses.
“This building is three or four times as big as it was when it opened in 1913,” said Conte, the resort historian. “The West Virginia wing over the bunker has 85 guest rooms and also is home to a diagnostic clinic. The springhouse was built in 1835 and, 170 years later, is still the symbol of The Greenbrier, with water pumped to the spa today.”
Joseph and Rose Kennedy honeymooned at The Greenbrier in 1914. Magazine publisher Condé Nast was a regular visitor for nearly 25 years. Golfer Sam Snead began his career on the resort’s course in 1936 and was golf pro emeritus at the time of his death in 2002.
The Army owned the hotel for four years during WWII — a vintage photo shows soldiers eating under the glittering chandeliers of the main dining room — but sold it back to the railroad in 1945. The Greenbrier remains a wholly owned subsidiary of the railroad, now known as CSX Corp.
“Today, people picture a big white building with columns — that’s the last 90 years or so,” Conte said. “We started as a village in the wilderness, 2,000 feet up in the mountains, around the spring waters. People say it’s a bad location. But for 100 years, starting in 1870, everybody came by train. We were on that ribbon of steel for four-fifths of America’s population.”
DRAPER’S MASTERPIECE
The white buildings of The Greenbrier sprawl over 6,500 acres, resembling a small town with a capacity for 1,400 guests and a full staff of 1,700. The grounds are graced with gardens and groves of ancient trees. In spring, rhododendrons bloom, matching the flowers painted on the china that Dorothy Draper designed for the dining rooms.
The resort has three championship golf courses, a tennis and fitness center, horseback riding, a bowling alley, a movie theater, a corridor of upscale shops, a colony of folk artists working in a row of cottages, gorgeous pools inside and out and a spa where visitors can sample the same sulphur waters that cured Amanda Anderson. Hiking trails lead into the hills and white-water rafting is available on the New River.
For the first time since WWII, The Greenbrier was closed for three months early last year for the start of a $50 million ongoing renovation. The resort has a Triple A Five-Diamond rating, but in February learned the updating had failed to restore the Mobil Travel Guide’s fifth star it lost in 2000 after nearly four decades.
“We’re still working on it,” resort spokeswoman Lynn Swann said of regaining five-star status.
The renovation work included gutting and rebuilding 63 guest rooms. The interior decorating was done by Carleton Varney, who joined Draper’s firm in the 1960s, and eventually bought the company and kept the business relationship with The Greenbrier.
“Carleton is not a clone of Dorothy Draper, but he inherited Draper’s masterpiece here, so he’s been sort of reverential,” Conte, the historian, said of Varney’s influence. “There’s a broadly defined Dorothy Draper look that he works within, but not slavishly.”
The renovated rooms have modern amenities like wireless Internet and flat-screen TVs, with dark wood furniture in the bedroom and black granite floors and gray marble vanity tops in the bathroom. While Draper’s signature floral prints are on the draperies, the wall coverings and carpeting were in pale gray and blue patterns that were subdued by Draper standards.
Or, as Swann put it: “The walls don’t wake you up in the morning.”