The Hill Top House Hotel is located in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. It occupies a spectacular location, with panoramic views of the Potomac and Shenandoah valleys. [1] The original hotel was built in 1888 and operated until shortly before his death by Thomas S. Lovett, an African-American graduate of Harpers Ferry's Storer College, at the time the only college in the state of West Virginia that accepted students of all skin colors. His policy at his hotel was to do the same, to accept guests of all skin colors. The hotel, the college, John Brown's Fort, and the Island Park Resort and Amusement Park combined to make Harpers Ferry a center of African-American tourism and a frequent excursion from Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
With two structures lost to fire, but insured and rebuilt, the hotel operated until 2007, when it had deteriorated beyond reasonable repair. The rebuilding and reopening of the hotel, on a more luxurious scale, became a local issue. As of June 2023, its reopening in 2025 is predicted.
The hotel was opened in 1890 by owner Thomas S. Lovett, an African-American entrepreneur who had graduated from Storer College, at the time the only college in West Virginia that would accept students of any skin color.
As one of the few larger hotels in the U.S. owned by African Americans, located in a place of historic significance, where the end of slavery began, and a short train ride from Washington, D.C., the hotel experienced phenomenal success serving a White clientele. [2]
The original frame structure, described as "the one real new building" put up in Harpers Ferry since the Civil War, [3] was destroyed by fire in 1912,
It was replaced by a larger partly stone building. This hotel, described in the report as "well known", was destroyed by electrical fire in June 1919. [4]
Many pieces of the 1912 structure were used in the rebuilding. In 2006 it was still an active favorite of travellers. [5] However, the condition of the hotel had deteriorated, to the point that it was forced to close in 2007.
The hotel has been a part of the Harpers Ferry landscape and contributed to the area's allure and history. Luminaries who visited the Hill Top House Hotel include former Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge and Bill Clinton, as well as Vice President Al Gore, Mark Twain, Carl Sandburg, Alexander Graham Bell, Pearl S. Buck, W.E.B. Dubois, and many others. [6]
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: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) The condition of the hotel made its redevelopment using the existing buildings impossible, and they were taken down, saving and reusing the stones and tile from the original building. Rather than just a hotel, the project has become a conference center. It occupies the same footprint as the original hotel. The cost of the project has grown to $150,000,000. A cooking school is planned, with dining overseen by James Beard. As of 2023, it is projected to open in 2025. [7]
According to Karen Schaufeld, “We’ll be putting it back up in approximately the same footprint of the original hotel and the dance pavilion that were there in 1914." As much as could be saved was preserved from the hotel site, which Karen Schaufeld said will be used in the new structure. [7]
The reconstruction of the hotel became a divisive local issue and came to the attention of the West Virginia Legislature. [8] Some locals oppose the hotel, conference center, and cooking school as overdevelopment for such a small village as is Harpers Ferry. [9]
Brooklyn is a borough of New York City. Located on the westernmost edge of Long Island, it is coextensive with Kings County in the U.S. state of New York. With 2,736,074 residents as of the 2020 United States census, Kings County is the most populous of the five boroughs of New York City and the most populous county in the State of New York. The population density of Brooklyn was 37,339.9 inhabitants per square mile (14,417.0/km2) in 2022, making it the second-most-densely-populated county in the United States, behind Manhattan, and it had the ninth-highest population of any county nationwide. Were Brooklyn still an independent city, it would be the fourth most populous in the U.S. after the rest of New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
Harpers Ferry is a historic town in Jefferson County, West Virginia, United States, in the lower Shenandoah Valley. The population was 285 at the 2020 census. Situated at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, where the U.S. states of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia meet, it is the easternmost town in West Virginia.
The Niagara Movement (NM) was a civil rights organization founded in 1905 by a group of activists—many of whom were among the vanguard of African-American lawyers in the United States—led by W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter. The Niagara Movement was organized to oppose racial segregation and disenfranchisement. Its members felt "unmanly" the policy of accommodation and conciliation, without voting rights, promoted by Booker T. Washington. It was named for the "mighty current" of change the group wanted to effect and took Niagara Falls as its symbol. The group did not meet in Niagara Falls, New York, but planned its first conference for nearby Buffalo. The Niagara Movement was the immediate predecessor of the NAACP.
Storer College was a historically black college in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, that operated from 1867 to 1955. A national icon for black Americans, in the town where the 'end of American slavery began', as Frederick Douglass famously put it, it was a unique institution whose focus changed several times. There is no one category of college into which it fits neatly. Sometimes white students studied alongside black students, which at the time was prohibited by law at state-supported schools in West Virginia and the other Southern states, and sometimes in the North.
Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, originally Harpers Ferry National Monument, is located at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers in and around Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The park includes the historic center of Harpers Ferry, notable as a key 19th-century industrial area and as the scene of John Brown's failed abolitionist uprising. It contains the most visited historic site in the state of West Virginia, John Brown's Fort.
John Brown's Fort was initially built in 1848 for use as a guard and fire engine house by the federal Harpers Ferry Armory, in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. An 1848 military report described the building as "An engine and guard-house 35 1/2 x 24 feet, one story brick, covered with slate, and having copper gutters and down spouts…"
Virginius Island is a formerly inhabited island of some 12 acres (4.9 ha), on the Shenandoah River in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The island was created by the Shenandoah Canal, constructed by the Patowmack Company between 1806 and 1807, which separates it from the town of Harpers Ferry. The canal was constructed to enable boats to bypass rapids on the river, and also channel water to drive machinery. In the nineteenth century Virginius Island contained Harpers Ferry's industry and working-class housing: a boarding house and row houses. Virginius Island is part of the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.
Ephraim Francis Baldwin was an American architect, best known for his work for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and for the Roman Catholic Church.
The Harpers Ferry Armory, more formally known as the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, was the second federal armory created by the United States government; the first was the Springfield Armory. It was located in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, which since 1863 has been part of West Virginia. It was both an arsenal, manufacturing firearms, and an armory, a storehouse for firearms. Along with the Springfield Armory, it was instrumental in the development of machining techniques to make interchangeable parts of precisely the same dimensions.
This is an incomplete list of historic properties and districts at United States colleges and universities that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). This includes National Historic Landmarks (NHLs) and other National Register of Historic Places listings. It includes listings at current and former educational institutions.
Shannondale Springs is a former American resort associated with mineral springs on the bank of the Shenandoah River upstream from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The water from the main spring was reputed to have mild laxative qualities, while other springs had a sulfurous odor. The resort began in 1820 with the construction of 10 to 12 wood cottages, and a two-story hotel was added the next year. The hotel and some of the cottages burned in 1858. After the Civil War several new brick cottages were built and a new hotel was built on the site of the old in 1890. This hotel burned in 1909 and was never rebuilt. The cottages and accessory structures lasted another thirty years before becoming uninhabitable.
Kate Drumgoold was an American woman born into slavery around 1858 near Petersburg, Virginia. Her life is captured in her 1898 autobiography, A Slave Girl's Story, Being an Autobiography of Kate Drumgoold. It offers a message of racial uplift, faith, and education. "It is a rare portrait of a former slave who moved between the highly urbanized environment of New York City and the rural South."
Fredrick D. Schaufeld is an entrepreneur, venture capital investor, sports team owner, philanthropist and patent holder.
The Morgan Morgan Monument, also known as Morgan Park, is a 1.05-acre (0.4 ha) roadside park in the unincorporated town of Bunker Hill in Berkeley County, West Virginia. It is located along Winchester Avenue and Mill Creek. The park features a granite monument that was erected in 1924 to memorialize Morgan Morgan (1688–1766), an American pioneer of Welsh descent, who was among the earliest European persons to settle permanently within the present-day boundaries of West Virginia.
Historic Hotels of America is a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation that was founded in 1989 with 32 charter members; the program accepts nominations and identifies hotels in the United States that have maintained their authenticity, sense of place, and architectural integrity.
John Henry Hill was an American lawyer, educator, school administrator, and military officer. He was the second principal of the West Virginia Colored Institute from 1894 until 1898. West Virginia State considers him its second president.
James Munroe Canty was an American educator, school administrator, and businessperson. Canty was an acting principal of the West Virginia Colored Institute in 1898 and is considered by West Virginia State as an acting president. Canty also served as the superintendent of Mechanical Industries for West Virginia Colored Institute from 1893 through 1914.
Lockwood House is a historic building in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. One of the largest residences in Harpers Ferry, it is a massive stone and brick structure, located on the east side of Camp Hill at 360 Fillmore St., high above the town. It has a view of the town and the two rivers that meet there, the Shenandoah and the Potomac.
On Sunday night, October 16, 1859, the abolitionist John Brown led a band of 22 in a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.