The Omni Grove Park Inn

The Omni Grove Park Inn is a historic resort hotel on the western-facing slope of Sunset Mountain within the Blue Ridge Mountains, in Asheville, North Carolina. It is a AAA Four-Diamond Hotel and has been since 2001. It has been visited by many Presidents of the United States and many other notable personages. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the hotel is an example of the Arts and Crafts style. It also features a $44 million, 40,000-square-foot (3,700 m2), modern subterranean spa, which placed number 13 worldwide in Travel + Leisure's World's Best Hotel Spas in 2008. The Grove Park Inn is a member of the Historic Hotel of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Grove Park Inn also provides guests with an 18-hole golf course routed on the hill below the hotel. Donald Ross (who designed Pinehurst Resort) designed the original course.

Grove Park Inn
LocationAsheville, Buncombe County, North Carolina
Coordinates35°37′14″N 82°32′32″W
Built1913
ArchitectFred Loring Seely
Architectural styleArts and Crafts
NRHP reference No.73001295
Added to NRHPApril 3, 1973

History

The hotel was outfitted with furnishings from the Roycrofters of East Aurora, New York, and built of rough granite stones. The lobby is noted for its large granite fireplaces and porch with its scenic overlook. It was advertised as having "walls five feet thick of granite boulders".[1]

Sketch of the exterior of the Grove Park Inn by Fred Seely, 1912

During World War II, the Inn was used first as an internment center for Axis diplomats. The diplomats and their staff were allowed guarded trips to town, where they would purchase goods from the local merchants. This was a boon to the strapped local economy. The inn was then used by the Navy as a rest and rehabilitation center for returning sailors. In 1944–45, the hotel was an Army Redistribution Station where soldiers rested and relaxed before being assigned to other duties. The Philippine government functioned in exile from the Presidential Cottage on the grounds during the war.

The Grove Park Inn became part of Sammons Enterprises in 1955. The resort has been expanded over the years under the direction of the owners Mr. and Mrs. Sammons and continues to be a popular tourist attraction. Mrs. Sammons would bring her dog in under cover in a baby carriage. Mrs. Sammons died in 2008. KSL Resorts acquired the Grove Park Inn in 2012 for $120 million. They sold it to Omni Hotels in 2013, and it was renamed the Omni Grove Park Inn.[2]

According to a 2013 article in the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Supreme Court planned to relocate to the Grove Park Inn in the event of a nuclear attack.[3]

Grove Park and Biltmore Relationship

In 1917, just four years after the completion of the construction of the Grove Park Inn, Fred Seely purchased Biltmore Estate Industries from Edith Vanderbilt, wife of George Washington Vanderbilt II, the owner of the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. This new venture came in addition to his responsibilities as the manager of the Grove Park Inn. E.W. Grove, his father-in-law and owner of the Grove Park Inn, had refused to sell the hotel to Seely, though he had eagerly allowed him to construct the building. He instead leased the hotel to Seely to manage and Seely managed the hotel until 1927, the year of Grove's death and the year Seely lost his legal bid to own the hotel. Grove left his hotel to his wife and son and daughter. Though Seely was married to his daughter, Grove made no concessions to Seely and the inn passed into the hands of what one advertisement described as "more liberal management." An interesting annotation by Seely scribbled next to the advertisement found in his files takes issue with that characterization.

Presidential visits

Ten (future) Presidents have stayed at the hotel:

Literary references

In Lee Smith's Guests on Earth: A Novel (which is about Zelda Fitzgerald and published in 2013), the central character often makes references to the Omni Grove Inn as the novel takes place in Asheville, North Carolina.

In Cormac McCarthy's 1979 novel Suttree (set in Knoxville), the title character and his girlfriend spend four days at the inn, staying in what McCarthy described as "a cool room high in the old rough pile of rocks."[5]

Even as We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

See also

References
  1. "Grove Park Inn". The Independent. July 6, 1914. Retrieved August 1, 2012.
  2. http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/06/12/2959057/texas-based-omni-hotels-acquires.html
  3. Bravin, Jess (May 3, 2013). "A Place to Chill in Cold War". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved May 8, 2013.
  4. "President Obama Heads to Asheville, North Carolina for All-American Vacation". ABC News. Retrieved April 17, 2022.
  5. Cormac McCarthy, Suttree (Vintage, 1992), p. 407.

Sources
  • The Grove Park Inn Story, 1984
  • Johnson, Bruce E. Built for the Ages: A History of the Grove Park Inn, Grove Park Inn and Country Club: Asheville, NC, 1991
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