Harpers Ferry Hotel To Be Replaced
By Margaret Foster | Online Only | May 19, 2009
The design of the new Hilltop House is based on sketches of the hotel that was built after a 1912 fire.
Credit: SWaN Investors
Although its guest list includes Mark Twain and Alexander Graham Bell, the 90-year-old Hilltop House Hotel in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., will have to be torn down and replaced. This month Leesburg-based developer SWaN Investors presented its new design, which will seek LEED certification, to the town council for approval.
"The Hilltop team initially hoped to renovate the hotel, but once we brought in the experts, we reluctantly came to the conclusion that the existing structure could not be made safe," said Mike Miller, SWaN project manager, in a May 13 statement.
Others who have toured the 90-year-old building all agree that it cannot be salvaged.
"The current building is so structurally unsound, it is pretty hopeless," Dennis Frye, chief historian at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, said in an e-mail. "The building is a wreck, based upon nearly 60 years of neglect and poor structural decisions."
SWaN Investors bought the Hilltop House for $10 million in 2007 and closed it for renovations in January 2008. Although the main building can't be saved, SWaN plans to restore six U.S. Armory structures on the nine-acre property as guesthouses.
To create a new Hilltop House, architects studied drawings of the building as it appeared prior to a fire in 1912. (The hotel was plagued by fires; a second blaze destroyed the structure in 1919.)
SWaN also bought an eight-acre island, Byrnes Island, located in the Potomac River just below the hotel. In the early 1900s, the B&O Railroad built a park, complete with a carousel, on Byrnes Island; it was later abandoned and washed away. Today development of the island would be difficult.
"It is in the floodplain, so [SWaN] would face significant and costly obstacles," Frye says. "The National Park Service has informed them that we prefer the island as it is, in its natural state."
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Submitted by b at: September 14, 2009
beautiful site
Submitted by Roberto at: June 17, 2009
This building can be rehabilitated. The fundamental problem is that the developer paid too much for the building in the first place.
Submitted by Margaret Foster at: June 3, 2009
I found no preservation groups who objected to this demolition. I spoke to two preservation groups, the Preservation Alliance of West Virginia and the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Mid-Atlantic Office, and both concede that the hotel is structurally unsound, as NPS historian Frye notes. Both groups are pleased that renowned restoration architect Mary Oehrlein is overseeing the reconstruction of the Hilltop House.
Submitted by Jerry A. McCoy at: June 3, 2009
This article is woefully lacking, presenting only the developer's side of the story and the opinion of a NPS "chief historian" (is Mr. Frye a restoration architect too?). Where are the opposing voices of local/state historic preservationists on this issue?
Submitted by TaxiManSteve at: May 20, 2009
Theyforgot to mention mold. Don't they realize, after Katrina, mold is the best excuse?