THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 TAG: 9701150053
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DIANE TENNANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 141 lines
A HOTEL FOR THE AUTO AGE,'' the old clippings say.
Hard to imagine, somehow, idling at the stoplight at St. Paul's and Brambleton in Norfolk.
That Y-shaped building in the traffic triangle, a five-star hotel? Gourmet dining? A bunny club? A time capsule?
That building, now a Howard Johnson Hotel, flanked by a bus terminal and public housing? Hard to imagine.
Hard to see past the mottled color - steel blue? dark gray? - to the good ol' days in the early 1960s when Elizabeth Taylor slept here, when girls dressed in spangles and little else took drink orders, when all the East Coast took notice of the new gold standard in hospitality: the Golden Triangle Motor Hotel.
The light turns green and cars move on past, just as time has. She's seen her better days, but she had a glorious past.
Joseph Sakowski remembers. He was chief engineer at the hotel when he retired eight years ago. He started 24 years prior to that, when she was the Golden Triangle, and stayed on through four name changes with Holiday Inn. Sakowski recalls the early days.
``At that time, when that was built, there was no hotel in the area that could compare with it,'' Sakowski said. ``It was absolutely Number One by itself.''
The Golden Triangle rose on the site of Norfolk Redevelopment Project No. 1. In the late 1950s, the city razed what are described in old newspaper clippings as slum dwellings. It turned down seven proposals to build small on the prime piece of property, and accepted a dazzling idea to build a $3 million hotel and convention center.
Two motel wings and a central hotel tower, 361 rooms. An Olympic-size swimming pool. A gourmet dining room that changed decor and menu seven nights a week. And the real selling point: parking. A parking space for every guest's car.
``At one time, the dog was man's best friend,'' said the hotel architect in 1960. ``In the West, it was his horse. Now man loves his car so much he can't be separated from it for 10 minutes while he shops.''
All Norfolk was abuzz, Sakowski recalled. ``I think they were very excited about it. It became the hotel of Norfolk. It was a very beautiful, exclusive-type hotel.
``Even the carpeting. I'm trying to think whether it was in the halls or the tower, there was even carpeting that was designed in the form of golden triangles. It was like custom-made, you know.''
The hotel had two gardeners to handle landscaping, much of which was lost when St. Paul's Boulevard was widened years ago.
``During the Azalea Festival, the lobby was nothing but azaleas. Beautiful,'' Sakowski said. ``Needless to say, the Azalea Queen always stayed there.''
Few remember it now, but in 1961 a time capsule was buried on the site. The wing tank of an airplane was filled with popular records, news clippings, material from the Navy and Chamber of Commerce and official documents from the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority. It was marked for opening on May 17, 2000, and buried next to the swimming pool.
It symbolized, the authority said, the death of old Norfolk and the rebirth of a new city. If the hotel is razed to make way for 1990s redevelopment - a hockey arena - the time capsule apparently will fall back into the hands of the authority which, until queried on Monday, had forgotten that it was there.
Thomas Rusnock thinks it's a shame the old girl might have to go. He was general manager of the hotel twice, first under the original owner and again after the hotel changed hands in bankruptcy court in the late 1970s.
Rusnock, who points out that his name in any proper newspaper should rightly have three initials after it that stand for ``certified hotel administrator,'' remembers when running a convention hotel took a staff of 300.
``It was a bustling place, very busy,'' he recalled. Car shows and auto-related conventions were among the customers. `It's one of the few hotels that had a facility in order to move a car or a truck from the ground floor up to the second-floor ballroom,'' he said.
The Golden Triangle had a kitchen, and then it had a separate kosher kitchen, unusual for that time, Rusnock said. ``It was one of the few around on the central East Coast. You had to keep two sets of dishes. They had to be washed a certain way. And prior to every function that was going to be a kosher function, the rabbi had to come in and look over everything.''
The Nations Room dining room had its own reputation. Under maitre d' Tommy Seay, Esquire magazine named it one of the top 20 restaurants in the United States for haute cuisine and elegance in dining.
Pillars in the dining room had pull-down murals depicting seven different countries. Each afternoon, maintenance workers would change the sconces on each pillar to reflect the country of choice. Waiters changed uniform to match.
Many of Hampton Roads' top restaurateurs trained in the Nations Room under Seay and his successors.
Then there was the Golden Key Club. Operating in space leased from the hotel, the club at one point had 6,500 members, who kept their personal liquor bottles in lockers. Golden Girls - forbidden to reveal their last names or phone numbers - took drink orders and danced.
``The girls were dressed in. . . interesting outfits, I'll call it,'' Rusnock said. ``Outfits that were beneficial to the girls for tips. They're not there for their health. A gal like that, working a good cocktail lounge, can make $150, $200 a night, all legitimate.''
The hotel at one time also housed offices, including dentists, real estate, florists and a radio station. Underneath the building is a large exhibition hall, Rusnock said.
``I really liked that hotel. It was one of the finest that I was involved in,'' he said. He thought for a moment, then added, ``The Golden Triangle was the first union hotel in the state. They got a large loan from the Teamsters Union and it was all contingent on them unionizing the hotel.''
Newspapers at the time debunked rumors that Jimmy Hoffa was running the Golden Triangle. Almost makes one wonder what really is buried in that time capsule.
The golden days lost some of their luster as the hotel changed hands and aged. It pinned its hopes - and its name - on the new Scope in the 1970s, as Norfolk embarked on a new round of urban renewal. But many of the plans - for a Norfolk Gardens mall and water theme park, for a revitalized downtown - never came through.
The hotel was saved from financial problems once when Old Dominion University contracted to house about 250 students there. Steve Cyrus was the head resident assistant.
``We had both floors of both wings, out by the pool,'' he said. ``I think they wanted to keep the riffraff out of the tower. Two double beds in each room, each room had its own bath. Basically, no curfews. In the spring and fall, the pool was open. It was fun. I had a blast.''
Cyrus, who later worked at the hotel, recalls prowling the sub-rooms and stumbling upon one filled with the mounted heads of trophy animals.
In a way, they symbolized the hotel: still around but best remembered as full of life.
``It's got a glorious past,'' Cyrus said.
Sakowski, too, thinks of the glory days. He's not too sorry to hear of the hotel's possible demise, for the Golden Triangle is already gone.
``It's had its good days,'' Sakowski said. ``I guess we all have to go eventually.'' ILLUSTRATION: File photos
ABOVE: The Howard Johnson Hotel in downtown Norfolk, formerly known
as the Golden Triangle, once was a five-star hotel with gourmet
dining and a ``bunny club.''
LEFT: The rooftop of the Golden Triangle Motor Hotel in 1961 when it
opened.
The Golden Triangle in the mid-'60s boasted two motel wings and a
central hotel tower, with 361 rooms.
KEYWORDS: DOWNTOWN NORFOLK PLANNING