In the post yesterday, I mentioned some historic aspects of the Craddock-Terry hotel that make for an excellent story, and that's a big part of what makes it a success when it comes to being a well-liked boutique hotel. I'll start today's post with another view of the main building, which was renovated after sitting empty for more than 20 years - this is the building that was the Craddock-Terry shoe factory.
The hotel complex includes a second building, which housed a tobacco warehouse owned by the King company. This building was renovated to include hotel rooms, meeting spaces (on Saturday, there was a wedding, then our group used the spaces for seminar sessions on Sunday), a fine dining restaurant, and a pizza/brew pub. It is connected to the main building by a plaza and the accessible bridge walkway shown in the picture above.
The brew pub was hopping the whole time we were visiting, and the restaurant had a full seating on Saturday night. The hotel was fully booked also, in part because of the wedding and also because of the 10+ rooms our group had taken. So it's safe to say this was a successful project.We learned about the value of the good story, and the community partnerships - these were two themes of the visit, in fact. One point of interest is the red shoe motif in the signage that decorates the exterior of the hotel. It turns out that the red shoe has a story of its own within the larger history of the Craddock-Terry company.
Sometime in the mid '70's, the fashion advertisements for one of the shoe brands started featuring red shoes on the models. These three prints, that decorate the hallways of the tobacco warehouse building, were made from the old ads. The originals, it turns out, were found in one of the investor's attics. That persons mother had been a graphic artist involved in developing the original illustrations, and the artwork was stored with some other old keepsakes. The hotel renovation became a cause to bring them back to light, and here they have made there way to being a feature of the place.
One final note on the story that weaves its way throughout this hotel experience. Each room's door features a piece of artwork modeled on one of the shoes that might have been manufactured at the old factory. I've featured room 403 - to my knowledge, none of the people traveling with us stayed here. But the odd-numbered rooms are the king rooms, that much I do know. There are still some expansion plans to note - a new building with more hotel rooms is planned for the area the first photograph was taken from. It will connect to the main building with an accessible bridge as well. A rocky bluff - one of Lynchburg's motifs - runs through the block, in fact the main building sits atop it. They want to put in a water feature here to complete the complex.
I still have some additional posts to make about Lynchburg, and those will be coming along for the next couple of days.
1 comment:
I remember well, when I worked in
Belks, the only shoes you could buy for children, were "Buster Brown" tie up oxford that was brown. There was a brand redgoose also. Those were the only brands I remember selling when I worked there in the 50's.
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