The Omni Grove Park Inn

The boulders came down the mountain on wagons and in the beds of trucks, some of them weighing several tons, and were set in the walls with their weathered faces outward so that the building would look as if it had grown from the slope. Work began in July 1912; on 12 July 1913, eleven months and twenty-seven days later, The Omni Grove Park Inn, Asheville, opened with a dinner at which William Jennings Bryan, then Secretary of State, gave the address.

History

Edwin Wiley Grove had made his money in St. Louis with Grove's Tasteless Chill Tonic, a quinine preparation that sold in the millions. He came to Asheville for the mountain air on medical advice and decided the town needed a resort hotel of a different kind from the frame-built Victorian houses it had. He bought land on Sunset Mountain and, dissatisfied with the architects' proposals, handed the design to his son-in-law, Fred Loring Seely, a newspaperman with no training in building. Seely sketched the plan, hired the crews and lived on the site; four hundred men worked ten-hour days to finish it.

The hotel's guest list is part of American history. Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone stayed in 1918. F. Scott Fitzgerald spent the summers of 1935 and 1936 here while Zelda was treated at Highland Hospital in the town, drinking in room 441 and writing in 443. Ten presidents have stayed or dined, Barack Obama the most recent. The inn was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. After decades under the Sammons family, which added the Sammons and Vanderbilt wings in the 1980s, it passed to KSL Resorts and, in 2013, to Omni Hotels & Resorts, which added its name.

Architecture and design

The main building is an Arts and Crafts statement at a scale the movement rarely attempted. Its walls are uncut granite, its roof of red clay tile rolled over the eaves, and its Great Hall, 120 feet long, is closed at each end by a stone fireplace 36 feet wide, large enough for an adult to stand in the hearth and fitted with lifts for the logs. The original furniture was commissioned from the Roycrofters of East Aurora, New York, Elbert Hubbard's craft community, and much of it is still in use: the copper lighting, the oak chairs and the hammered-copper fittings. The hotel holds one of the largest collections of Arts and Crafts furniture in the country.

Rooms and suites

The 513 rooms are divided between the historic Main Inn, with its thick walls and original character, and the Sammons and Vanderbilt wings, which are larger and more conventional, with mountain or courtyard views. The Fitzgerald rooms can be booked.

Dining

Four restaurants serve the resort. Vue 1913 is the formal dining room, with a view over the mountains; the Sunset Terrace is set on the outdoor terrace over the valley; Edison is the craft-beer and burger room named for the inventor; and the Blue Ridge serves buffets and a well-attended Sunday brunch. The Great Hall Bar is where guests gather in the evening in front of the fireplaces.

Wellness

The spa opened in 2001 in a 43,000-square-foot cavern dug under the lawn, with mineral pools in a stone grotto, waterfalls, a lap pool and an outdoor whirlpool; it has become the single most cited reason to stay. The Donald Ross golf course, laid out in 1926 as the Asheville Country Club course and later bought by the inn, runs below the hotel. There are tennis courts, an indoor and an outdoor pool and a sports complex.

Weddings and events

With 26 function rooms and more than 50,000 square feet of meeting space, the inn is one of the largest conference venues in the southern Appalachians. Weddings are held on the Sunset Terrace, in the Great Hall and in the ballrooms, with the Blue Ridge Mountains as the backdrop. The annual National Gingerbread House Competition, held since 1992, fills the lobby each November and December.

Location

The inn sits on Macon Avenue, two miles north-east of downtown Asheville and about fifteen minutes from the gates of the Biltmore Estate on the other side of town. Asheville Regional Airport is about 20 miles south, half an hour by road. The Blue Ridge Parkway passes within a few minutes of the property, and the Biltmore House, the Vanderbilt mansion of 1895, is the region's other great monument. For a luxury hotel in Asheville, the Grove Park Inn is the original, older than the city's revival by a century.