Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 29, 1994 TAG: 9405270085
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
You won't be privy to memories of the lime green and yellow wallpaper and musty old lobby chairs, where the hotel's remaining four residents - permanents, they're called - used to sit every afternoon, drink coffee and watch people come and go.
And you likely won't see the inside of room 406, where dozens of house plants linger on, reminders of the days when the hotel was an apartment building for retirees with a few transient rooms for $25 a night.
Back then, those dozens of house plants weren't just in resident Ruth Stevens' room. They were spread out among 40 or so apartments, each with its own kitchenette and bathroom, living room and bedroom.
``These plants are mostly from people who lived here and died - died or moved out,'' says Stevens, a retired Head Start teaching assistant. ``There was a disabled veteran who planted some lemon seeds, then died before they bloomed. And now look at my lemon trees.''
Indeed, the four remaining permanents are an anomaly among the usual crowd of business travelers, wedding parties and tourists who've been frequenting the Patrick Henry since its most recent incarnation - a return to its 1925 splendor.
And yet the residents remain, as permanent as the green shag carpet on Lenore Wood's floor.
``When we renovated the fourth floor, we made an offer to move them into brand new rooms - new carpet, wallpaper, furniture,'' Bill Carder, the hotel's general manager, says.
``Miss Wood called me up and said, `Mr. Carder, I have to talk to you.' I went up there, and she's got the walls fixed up and all her antiques and she said, `Please don't move me.' ''
Wood and the others were so stressed out about the change that Carder let them keep their vintage-1968 interiors. The remaining four suites will eventually get the new art-deco furnishings, which were moved to storage - but not until the residents leave.
Which will be a while, according to Wood. ``Everyone likes living here so much that nobody walks out,'' she says. ``They get carried out.''
Wood would not reveal her age, nor consent to being photographed - though she did pull out a photograph of herself that appeared in a 1939 Life magazine. The piece was an article about brownstone-apartment interiors. Then an interior decorator in New York City, she was photographed taking a bubble bath - in her kitchen. And yes, she looked divine.
Wood is retired from both decorating and numerology, the study of the meanings of numbers and their influence on life. She says she waited three years for the right number to become available - apartment 408, where she has lived for 10 years.
``First, room 407 became available, but that's an 11,'' she says, determined by adding the four and seven together. ``An 11 is good for creative work, but not good for living.
``Room 408, those are two very good numbers. Four is the four corners, a foundation number; there's something very solid about it. And eight is money. Put the two together and it reduces to a three'' by adding the one and two in the number 12.
``A three is fun. . . . So that's quite a package, don't you think?''
The hotel address, 617 Jefferson St., reduces to a five, meaning constant change, Wood says.
Which is fitting, if you look at its history. One of the first hotels with running water and bathrooms, the Hotel Patrick Henry opened in 1925 to accommodate train travelers, particularly traveling salesmen, for whom the top floor of the 10-story hotel was reserved as sample rooms. Its slogan was: ``A bed and a bath for a dollar and a half.''
Business dropped with the end of World War II, when highway motels became popular. The hotel continued to decline and was eventually converted to one- to three-bedroom apartments and renamed the Patrick Henry Hotel Apartments. That's when the plants and the green shag came into being.
``Before we took over, it was basically an old folks home with some transient rooms,'' Carder says, speaking for the New York-headquartered owner, Affirmative Equities Co. Before Affirmative bought it in 1990, the hotel still had 38 permanent residents.
With the Hotel Roanoke closed, the Patrick Henry filled in as the place to stay for people doing business in downtown Roanoke. By 1992, when Affirmative purchased the Radisson franchise to strengthen its marketing efforts, fewer than a dozen permanents remained.
``It has a history of people leaving here in the past 20 years,'' Carder says. With the four remaining permanents, ``We've made a conscious decision not to move them out. It would've been bad publicity, and besides, we have a heart. A move like that might've killed them.''
Livie Branch, 95, says she misses the days when there were many residents and more people to talk to. ``They said they'd let me stay till I die, and I'm almost passed going. But it does get lonesome,'' the former waitress says. ``I mostly stay in my room, walk the hall and talk to the maids.''
But she likes the security of having a bellman on call, and considers living in a hotel a step between a nursing home and a private residence.
So Branch and the others stay, paying a $350 rent - when the going monthly rate for long-term suites starts at $2,700.
``You don't come to a hotel till you reach your years,'' says the ageless Lenore Wood. ``Your tastes change, and you like to have people around you.''
Ruth Stevens likes the fact that the front-desk staff won't let her step outside in bad weather and always checks on her if they spot a new visitor going to her room. ``I've been in this apartment for 21 years - these people are my family.''
Wood lets Carder know when his numerical forecast is on the down swing, and pianist Tommy Bower lets the bellman know when the baby grand in the lobby needs tuning.
``Miss Wood bought me a subscription to The Daily Word,'' says bell captain Steve Hall, who transports the permanents to stores and doctor's appointments.
He waters Ruth Stevens' plants when she goes on her annual summer trip to Bath County, the guest of a family she met at the hotel in the early '70s.
And everyone interviewed had fond memories of resident James R. Thomas, who was Roanoke's oldest living streetcar conductor before he died in January. ``He used to tell everybody he was 92, but it turned out he was really 96,'' chuckles Carder, the general manager.
``He dressed up in a suit every day. He'd get his newspaper and cup of coffee and walk down the street,'' Carder adds. ``He died in his suit.''
Hall, the bellman, recalls the many afternoons Thomas spent sitting by the side doors on Bullitt Avenue, looking out at Mill Mountain incline. ``He said it reminded him of the old trolley cars. He told me lots of stories sitting there.''
The late Roanoke Electric Steele founder John Hancock, who had an office at the hotel for 22 years, always chatted with Thomas, whom he knew from his childhood days riding the streetcar. And Hancock was never too busy to ask Hall about his four kids.
Hancock also ate breakfast - an English muffin, toasted well - every day at the hotel restaurant, Traditions. ``Except for Thursdays, when he ate at the Marriott,'' Carder says.
``Five or six months ago, he asked me to look at the leather couch in his office where he took a nap at 2 every afternoon. Then he pulled me into the room next door while the maid was cleaning it and said, `Look, this room has a bed. Do you think I could have one? That couch is getting old.' ''
Hall also misses resident Rhea Graham, a wealthy woman who said all the bad news in the media was ``hogwash.'' ``She had pink and lavender trinkets all over her apartment. When she passed away two years ago, they had her at Oakey's wearing pink and lavender.''
The bell men say they can set their clocks by the permanents' comings and goings. They know when Tommy Bower comes down every morning to wait on his mail, which day Lenore Wood buys a newspaper - Thursdays, for the Tinnell's grocery ad - and what time Ruth Stevens catches the bus so she can do her daily walk at Tanglewood Mall.
``They don't like change, and you can't blame them,'' Hall says. ``A lot of the ones who've moved out or switched rooms, they passed on right after.
``Like Miss Wood, it's just too much of a change for her to see that old carpet go out and new carpet come in.''
by CNB