Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, December 19, 1994 TAG: 9412200021
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARSHALL FISHWICK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
How different if was on Christmas Day 112 years ago, when George L. Jacoby registered The Hotel's first guests. Building that splendid structure was an act of faith. The lonely village known as Big Lick, largely inhabited by deer seeking salt, had resolved to be a railroad boom town. Frederick J. Kimball, president of the Shenandoah Valley Railroad, wanted a spot where his north-south Shenandoah Valley trains could cross with the east-west line of the Atlantic, Mississippi and Ohio. He chose Big Lick, and created a boom town. Grateful citizens wanted to rename it Kimball. "Call it Roanoke," he said. They did.
They would need houses, shops and a grand hotel. Kimball selected the hotel site: a wheat field to the north of the city, above the railroad tracks. A Philadelphia architect (George Pearson) designed a fashionable Queen Anne building with 34 guest rooms, to be erected in "true, perfect, and thoroughly workmanlike manner ... '' So it was, and citizens never had a better Christmas present than the 1882 opening of the new landmark.
It overshadowed our city and our lives for more than a century. I was born not far from what we all called "The Hotel," which took on special meaning during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In a time of scarcity, it seemed opulent; in a time of drabness, it was beautiful. We built with pine, The Hotel with polished walnut. We had naked light bulbs - The Hotel had chandeliers. Now we had a hotel to rank with the Greenbrier and the Homestead. It was as close as we ever expected to get to the good life, and to Hollywood.
Hollywood and The Hotel came together in one brief, bright moment in 1939. The occasion, the much-publicized "Gone With the Wind" Ball, had to be staged in The Hotel's ballroom. The movie, which must have made a mint for the elegant American Theater on Jefferson Street, electrified the South, and revived our Lost Cause. Any self-respecting Southern town had to have a parade and a ball. Hotel Roanoke was ready, just having completed a million dollar-plus Tudor entrance. On with the ball!
I covered the event for the Jefferson High School newspaper - I think Barton Morris and Bev Fitzpatrick were involved. Suddenly our sooty railroad town was full of swaggering Rhett Butlers; erect, mustached, peacock-proud, and not giving a damn. Close by were a bevy of Scarlett O'Haras, with their hoop skirts, glittering jewelry, fluttering fans and stunning hairdos. There was, of course, a well-rehearsed band. (Was it the then-popular Roanoke Machine Shops Orchestra?) No matter. Our world met with Rhett's. The fantasy became our reality.
But in 1939 there was another reality looming in Europe, where Hitler had invaded Poland and launched World War II. In that war, railroads would carry 97 percent of all American troops. The NW station (just across from The Hotel) would be busy day and night.
I remember that well. I went to the station, suitcase in hand, to catch the train to Chicago and the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. My father gave me a pair of long red woolen underwear, bought at nearby Oak Hairs. He had been to sea, and he knew I would need them. I did.
In those days, a train trip from Roanoke to Chicago was overnight, with a change in Cincinnati, and lots of stops. I looked out at The Hotel on the hill as the steam train puffed and pulled out, toward my old haunts in Southeast Roanoke and Vinton, as we disappeared into the darkness.
In 1940, Chef Fred Brown had invented The Hotel's signature dish, peanut soup, and in 1943, the Pine Room was turned into an Officer's Club for Air Force trainees. Former Roanokers, spread around the world, could only imagine how well they fared as we ate armed services' chow, often from tin cans. In rough North Atlantic seas, we were sometimes too sick to eat anyway. We could still dream of The Hotel's peanut soup and spoon bread.
After V-J Day, better days did, indeed, come for us and The Hotel. In 1947, a $1.5 million south wing was added. No wonder Miss Virginia pageants moved to The Hotel in 1954. There had to be a handsome oil portrait of Kylene Barker - the Miss Virginia who became Miss America - hung at the head of Peacock Alley. We gazed upon it in rapt adoration.
This and many other fascinating details turn up in Donland Piedmont's new book, "Peanut Soup and Spoonbread: An Informal History of Hotel Roanoke." His admiration for the building and its history are unbounded - his 1954 wedding reception was held in the Pine Room. Of The Hotel's closing in 1989, Piedmont writes:
"The unthinkable has occurred, and the old place, carrying its gentle burden of tradition and fame and glories, would in a few days go out of business."
We had lost our Viscose plant, and would see our NW Railway headquarters move to Norfolk, but we never expected to lose The Hotel. Many of the furnishings were auctioned off, an event Roanoke's Robert Garland likened to "a band of gypsies swarming down on their preys like killer bees." Buyers came for every one of the 17 days of the sale, with as many as 2,000 standing in line. Things went fast and cheap. The portrait of Kylene Barker, the Miss Virginia who became Miss America, came down from Peacock Alley and sold for $225. The paths of glory lead but to the auction block.
Happily, the story doesn't end there. If like King Arthur (to quote Piedmont) Hotel Roanoke "fell asleep in its own Avalon, waiting for its time to come again," that time is surely coming. When plans to reopen faltered in 1992, a Renew Roanoke campaign was launched. In seven weeks, the 300 volunteers and 3,000 contributors met the quota and, with other financing contributors, produced $27.5 million. The Magic City still could work its magic.
Will The Hotel lights be on in a future Christmas? Shall we still enjoy the sentimental if unhistorical lobby murals of John Smith befriending Pocahontas, Patrick Henry captivating the Virginia assembly, and the plantation flourishing where the birds warbled sweet in the springtime? Perhaps even peanut soup? I hope so. Who knows? I might even get out my "Gone With the Wind" watch chain.
Marshall Fishwick is a professor of humanities and communications studies at Virginia Tech.
by CNB