Jefferson Hotel (Virginia)
| Jefferson Hotel | |||
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| National Register of Historic Places | |||
 The Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia |
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| location | 104 W. Main St., Richmond , Virginia , United States | ||
| Coordinates | 37 ° 32 '40 " N , 77 ° 26' 45" W | ||
| Built | 1895 | ||
| architect | Carrère and Hastings , J. Kevan Peebles | ||
| NRHP number | [1] 69000351 | ||
| The NRHP added | 4th June 1969 | ||
The Jefferson Hotel is an account opened in 1895 Grand Hotel of the five-star category in Richmond in the state of Virginia of the United States . It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 4, 1969 .
history
The hotel was designed by the architects Carrère and Hastings for the tobacco producer Lewis Ginter and built between 1892 and 1895. In 1901 a fire destroyed the entire interior, so that the hotel had to be completely renovated and could not be reopened until 1907. The hotel has been a well-known landmark in Richmond since its inception.
architecture
The hotel was built in massive construction from yellow-brown bricks and natural stones. Typical of the architects Carrère and Hastings , it combines a variety of architectural styles, with the exterior of the building being dominated by Italian and Spanish Renaissance architecture . After the devastating fire at the beginning of the 20th century, the wings of the building were rebuilt at the southern end to align them from north to south instead of their original west-to-east construction, thus allowing more sunlight and air into the rooms.
Importance of the hotel
The Jefferson Hotel is an outstanding example of the eclectic architecture of the late 19th century in the United States and fulfilled the wish of its client Lewis Ginter for the most posh hotel in the USA. At the time of opening, the hotel also had a large number of technical innovations, including its own telephone connections , electric light in every room and central steam heating . Each of the 342 guest rooms also had hot and cold running water. The collection of paintings from the late 19th century and the life-size marble statue of Thomas Jefferson by Edward V. Valentine , which can still be seen in the hotel, are also particularly noteworthy . The most notable guests of the hotel included William McKinley , Theodore Roosevelt , Woodrow Wilson , Calvin Coolidge , Franklin D. Roosevelt , Charles Lindbergh , The Rolling Stones , Dolly Parton , Henry James and Elvis Presley .
reception
In his autobiography "The moon's a balloon", actor David Niven describes a trip from New York to Florida in the 1930s, during which he stayed at the Jefferson Hotel . When he signed at the reception, he could not believe his eyes when he was only 6 ft (1.8 m ) away from him in a small pond a full-grown alligator looked swim. The lizards became a world-famous attraction of the hotel; the last alligator died in 1948. Today alligator bronze statues decorate the rooms of the hotel and the adjoining restaurant.
In the film Gone With the Wind, there is a staircase very similar to the main staircase of the hotel. The scene was not shot in the hotel, however; the author of the book on which the film is based, Margaret Mitchell, lived in the hotel while she was writing the novel and used the hotel stairs as a model for her own description.
The 1981 film Mein Essen with André , on the other hand, was shot entirely at the Jefferson Hotel .
literature
- Samuel J. Moore: The Jefferson Hotel, a Southern landmark . Richmond, VA 1940, OCLC 4763452 .
- W. Asbury Christian: Richmond, her past and present (= Library of American civilization, LAC 10861 ). Manufactured by LH Jenkins, Richmond, VA 1912, OCLC 11283558 .
- Richard Hubbard Howland: Echoes of a gilded epoch . America's great hotel of her gayest age ... In: Arts in Virginia . Vol. 5, No. 1 , 1964, OCLC 34666687 .
Individual evidence
- ^ National Register Information System . In: National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service . Retrieved July 9, 2010.
- ↑ a b c National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form. (PDF; 1.7 MB) (No longer available online.) December 1968, archived from the original on September 27, 2012 ; accessed on May 4, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ David Niven: The moon's a balloon . Putnam, New York 1971, OCLC 247674 .
