Asheville's Grove Park Inn

E. W. Grove envisioned the building of a resort in the restful atmosphere of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  He pictured "a big home...with all the old-fashioned qualities of genuineness with no Sham,"  Perhaps that last qualifier was his reaction to the Biltmore, the over-the-top lavish home of his Asheville contemporaries, the Vanderbilts.

This image is from one of the resort's postcards.

Searching for a cure to chronic bronchitis, Grove, a pharmaceutical magnate from Tennessee, arrived in Asheville, North Carolina in 1896, just a year after the Vanderbilts completed their grandiose home.

When we first visited Asheville several years ago, Tim and I toured the Biltmore.  This time we were drawn to the top of Sunset Mountain where Grove's dream became a reality once the legendary Inn opened its doors in 1913.  Grove's concept of the resort was influenced by his visit to the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone National Park.  Grove's son-in-law, Fred Seely who also became the inn's first manager, oversaw its construction.  With instructions that every visible stone should reveal its most time-worn face, Italian stonemasons and hundreds of local laborers used boulders taken from the mountain to build the inn.

Passing through its portals, you enter into the Great Hall where it's hard to say what first impresses you:  the view of the Blue Ridge Mountains from the west-facing windows or--

the two massive fireplaces at each end of the Great Hall.

The last are famous for the original 1913 Otis elevators cleverly hidden within their chimneys, put there to conceal the noise of the machinery.  One of these elevators is still in use.  I enjoyed reading quotations from notable authors and philosophers like Ralph Waldo Emerson engraved on the lobby's stone walls.

Over the past 100 plus years, ten U. S. Presidents and countless celebrities have made their way to the Inn.

Now with the $25 million renovation completed after Omni Hotels & Resorts purchased the property in 2013, even more guests may stay in the two wings of rooms added to the original structure.

Guests can enjoy such amenties as the championship tennis complex, the 18-hole golf course and the subterranean spa built below the ground to keep the hotel's views of the mountains unobstructed.

Author F. Scott Fitzgerald might take the prize for the most extended stay.  Fitzgerald's wife Zelda became ill and was admitted to Asheville's Highland Hospital.

Fitzgerald resided in Rooms 441 and 443 for a whole summer of 1936 to be close to her.

Now Tim and I can say we were guests at the Inn, too.