Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 8, 1993 TAG: 9309020351
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ray L. Garland
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
One of the privileges of coming of age in Roanoke was to have The Homestead in your back yard. Well, not exactly, but close enough to sensibly entertain the notion of hopping over for the night or only for a meal.
Coleridge wrote a famous line, ``In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree,'' but it took the Ingalls family to build it in the mountains of Virginia. Nostalgia is a cheap emotion and it would be easy at a time like this to make the place seem far grander and more perfect than it ever was. But their vision was always grand, and that isn't lessened by such imperfections as cropped up from time to time.
What the builders, staff and management seemed determined to achieve in that remote spot was to give arriving guests a sense of having truly arrived: ready to be taken out of themselves; to be almost as players upon a stage, making ordinary acts seem extraordinary.
Oh, I know, The Homestead was always a WASP thing, an upper-class, dress-for-dinner operation that seemed to many antediluvian in the Age of Roseanne and the Bundys. But that was only one side of its personality, and much less than it used to be, as we sadly lamented in our feeble efforts to keep up the old standards that had so impressed us when we only dreamed of being flush.
Why, it was only last Easter Sunday that a gentleman bearing no resemblance to Tom Cruise appeared at breakfast in a T-shirt and paunch. Not many years ago he would have been asked politely if he had not forgotten his coat. But no matter, the joint was jumping, full of young people with kids enjoying the hotel's fabulous amenities and bargain-basement prices.
You name it, they have it. Golf, tennis and swimming, of course, but also winter sports, skeet shooting, fly fishing and horseback riding. Aside from that wonderfully Victorian indoor pool, we didn't pay much attention to any of that. Croquet and lawn bowling were our games, played on nearly flawless turf as smooth as a billiard table, which they also had, and lessons in ballroom dancing if you wanted them.
But as nice as we thought all this was, it was secondary to the main event, which was The Homestead mystique that gripped you even before you left home. There's a place on U.S. 220 after you've passed The Cascades where you first see the tower framed by the hills. ``Curtain going up,'' you say silently to yourself. Then you lose sight of it as you take the roundabout entrance road that lifts you higher. But suddenly it reappears below, an immense pile spread before your eyes, looking exactly as you remembered it: the one fixed point in an otherwise changing world.
So much modern architecture seems designed to overwhelm, even intimidate. But The Homestead, while big, is always on a human scale: welcoming, soothing, sociable. I have been going up those steps and opening that door into the main lobby for almost 40 years now, but the sight that waits on the other side has never failed to give a thrill: the long march of stately columns painted the color of old ivory in a sea of willow-green carpet.
The two fireplaces, always active in cooler weather, are surrounded by comfortable sofas and chairs. Fresh flowers are everywhere. They have made a grand and enormous room seem positively cozy, and never more so than when guests gather for the traditional afternoon tea concert.
If large spaces are made more interesting by containing odd shapes, then the main dining room is a feast. But the magic is in the orchestra playing dance music above the chatter. I've seldom succeeded in persuading the waiters to space the courses to make it entirely feasible to both dine and dance; still, it's a lovely idea, and nice to see couples dancing together, especially fathers with their daughters and mothers with their young sons.
A special treat in warm weather is lunch at the Casino, down by the clay (yes, clay) courts, where a sumptious hot and cold buffet awaits, to be eaten inside or out under the trees while watching the tennis players work up a sweat.
If genius is found in details, there was genius in that place. Fresh creamery butter, for instance, which makes the stuff we eat most of the time seem very second-rate, and crisp little toasts to spread it on. One thing I always liked was the way they used to serve mixed drinks. If you ordered a Scotch and soda, they paid you the compliment of serving the whisky on the side in its own little glass and the soda in an unopened small bottle. It was their way of saying, ``Here, only the best will do.''
The Homestead was built a century ago to serve a world without air conditioning, motorcars, airplanes and television. People came for long stays and wanted quiet. But the remoteness that once worked in its favor worked against it in a market increasingly dominated by convention business and minivacations.
It can be fairly said that the owners did everything they could to keep the place up and adjust to changing times. Virginia owes the Ingalls family a debt of gratitude for maintaining The Homestead as one of the jewels of the commonwealth. Clearly, it had become a struggle that no one should blame them for giving up.
ClubResorts Inc. of Dallas may change it, but I'm glad to know that people with deep pockets and a wealth of experience will be trying to adapt it for service in a world far different than the one for which it was designed. We can at least hope that not too much of what made it great in the first place will be lost.
\ Ray L. Garland is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
by CNB