Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 12, 1990 TAG: 9005120076
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JIM SCHLOSSER LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. LENGTH: Long
They daydream of when Ocean Boulevard was lined with small inns whose rates included meals served in cozy dining rooms next to living-room-like lobbies.
Innkeepers shook dinner bells to summon guests from bridge games, jigsaw puzzles and Mickey Spillane novels. That Myrtle Beach disappeared 30 years ago, replaced by sleek, lofty hotels.
Yet, one hotel remains a stickler for tradition. At the Chesterfield Inn, it's always like the summer of 1953. Guests play cards and piece together puzzles in the lobby. They enjoy the ocean view from wooden rockers on the veranda. They dine in the pine-paneled dining room whose fixtures have barely changed since 1946. They retire early to rooms with wooden tropical doors.
This outdated lifestyle occurs in the thick of the neon and noise of the amusement district, one block from the famed Pavilion. Chesterfield guests just tune out the cruising on the boulevard. "Some people don't even move their cars while they are here," says Clay Brittain, who owns the hotel with his cousin, Bob Chapman. Chapman's father, Steve, founded the Chesterfield in 1936. In 1946, he opened the present structure, a long brick building with a row of dormers along the side and big columns facing the ocean.
Steve Chapman named the 32-room inn after Chesterfield, S.C., his hometown.
When he sold the inn to his son and nephew in 1951, Steve Chapman gave up all rights except one: eating privileges in the dining room. Nearly 40 years later, he still holds forth at a round table near the dining room entrance. White-coated waiters hurry through the room reciting the evening's entrees. There are no menus - and no checks because breakfast and dinner are included in the rates.
"I first came to Myrtle Beach in 1910 in a covered wagon and camped where the merry-go-round is now," Chapman, 89, says. "There was a little pavilion here then. There were no rides or amusement parks and maybe five or six cottages." He returned in the 1930s, giving up being a lawyer for innkeeping, which had fascinated him since boyhood when he helped his mother run a small hotel. "We just liked to wait on people," Chapman says. "If you are nice enough, people will come back."
The inn may be one of the last lodging places in Myrtle Beach still offering meals with rooms. Another is the Sea Island, which the Brittains also own.
"We haven't changed because we kind of grew up with it that way," says Clay Brittain. "And an old inn lends itself to it. By serving meals to them twice a day, our guests become more like friends than customers. It becomes more than just handing a guest a key and sending them to a room."
Each night, the Brittains can be found in the dining room. One evening, Clay Brittain fixed salads in the kitchen, while his wife worked the tables, making small talk with guests and filling coffee cups and tea glasses. "And I predicted a nice day," she said, apologizing to a group of guests - golfers who had come all the way from the North, only to encounter a cold, wet, windy day.
The Brittains could certainly delegate these duties. Living at the beach has brought prosperity. In addition to the Chesterfield and the Sea Island, run by the Brittains' son, Matthew, the family owns the Sea Captain's House restaurant, run by another son, David. Clay Brittain is a founder and the largest stockholder of the 54-hole Myrtle Beach National Golf Club, which also owns the 27-hole Waterway club.
This weekend, Ed Carson, a semi-retired businessman from Greensboro, N.C., and his wife, Dorothy, are in Room 215. The couple makes about five trips a year to the Chesterfield, always staying in the same room and mingling with many of the same guests who show up on the same weeks for years.
"The food is wonderful at the Chesterfield," Dorothy says. "The place is homey."
Another Chesterfield fan, retired Greensboro lawyer Neil Daniels, who has back problems, awoke one morning in 1986 at the Chesterfield and could barely get out of bed.
"Clay Brittain just took charge," Daniels says. "He took care of me for the next three days and made all the arrangements to fly me back to Greensboro by air ambulance. The Brittains are just the finest people I've ever known." Daniels now stays at the Brittain's more modern and formal Sea Island at the quieter north end of Myrtle. Guests there are encouraged to dress up for dinner, while the Brittains prefer to keep the Chesterfield more informal. The Chesterfield's rates vary according to room location and season; during spring and summer, they're $85 to $122 a night.
Doing it the old way has a future, Clay Brittain believes. He's encouraged by the boom in bed-and-breakfast inns across the country. It tells him the novelty of modern look-alike motels and hotels is fading.
`We think people will reach out for the unusual places," he says.
by CNB