Jefferson Hotel (Richmond, Virginia)

The Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia

The Jefferson Hotel is opened in 1895, Grand Hotel of the five- star category in Richmond, Virginia in the United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 4, 1969.

History

The hotel was designed by the architectural firm Carrère and Hastings for the tobacco producer Lewis Ginter and built from 1892 to 1895. 1901 a fire destroyed the entire interior, so the hotel had to be completely renovated and was only reopened in 1907. Since its establishment, the hotel is a well known landmark in Richmond.

Architecture

The hotel was built in the massive construction of tawny bricks and natural stones. Typical of the architects Carrère and Hastings, it combines a variety of architectural styles, with the exterior of the building is dominated by the Italian and Spanish Renaissance architecture. After the devastating fire in the early 20th century, the wings were newly built at the southern end, to align them in place of their original, running from west to east construction from north to south and so to let more sunlight and air into the rooms.

Value of this hotel

The Jefferson Hotel is an outstanding example of the eclectic architecture of the late 19th century in the United States and fulfilled the request of his client Lewis Ginter after the classiest hotel in the United States. At the time of opening, the hotel also had a number of technical innovations, including his own telephone lines, electric light in each room and a central steam heating. In each of the 342 guest rooms beyond hot and cold running water was available. Particularly worth mentioning are also the collection of paintings from the late 19th century as well as the created by Edward V. Valentine life-size marble statue of Thomas Jefferson, which can still be seen today at the hotel. Among the most prominent guests of the hotel included, among others, 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" the actor David Niven describes a journey from New York to Florida in the 1930s, during which he stayed at the Jefferson Hotel. As he entered at the front desk, he could hardly believe his eyes as he only 6 ft (1.8 m) away swim saw an adult alligator from him in a small pond. The lizards have become a world-renowned attraction of the hotel; the last alligator died in 1948. Nowadays Alligator Bronze statues decorate the rooms of the hotel and the affiliated restaurants.

In the film Gone with the Wind is still one of the hotel's main staircase stairs very similar. The scene was not filmed at the hotel, but the author of the film underlying the book Margaret Mitchell lived at the hotel while she wrote the novel, and took the stairs of the hotel as a model of its own description.

The film My Dinner with Andre in 1981, however, was shot entirely in the Jefferson Hotel.