Lynchburg - More on the Craddock-Terry

Bear with me.  I have a couple of posts still to come about the visit to Lynchburg over the weekend.  This morning, a few more interior shots of the main hotel building...this afternoon, a little post about the adjoining building, which houses some restaurants and meeting spaces, as well as additional hotel rooms. 

Tomorrow, I will post some photos of the downtown area, and Wednesday, photos of a new renovation/repurposing of an industrial building that is underway near the hotel.  We'll get back to my beloved Page County topics shortly!

This concept of reuse, repurposing, renovating historic buildings is very exciting.  The students we were traveling with called the Craddock-Terry hotel a "dream project" - the "project of a lifetime" - and it is hard to underestimate how rewarding it might be to get involved in something like this.  And for the developer, who is related to the Craddocks, the family who the shoe company was named for (I found this link but haven't explored it yet:  http://www.vahistorical.org/publications/historycorner_craddock.htm.), the project had to be even more exciting.

(Full disclosure, the involvement of the name Craddock made this visit special for me, too - it's my mother's and aunt's maiden name.)

So touring the building, checking out the wonderful timber framing and considering the fact that they could still be structurally sound nearly 100 years later was fascinating.  They've put together a wonderful boutique lodging experience, all shoe-themed, given the heritage of the main building as an old shoe factory.

Here are interior views of some of the large beams in the lobby area - the factory was closed for 20 years or more before the renovation project began, and the steel plating here is either a reinforcement or a patch that had to be made due to termite damage.  In the reinforcements, there is not joint visible in the members, while the patches involved salvaging excess beams (the loads on the frame are much less with a hotel than with a factory use) and replacing severly damaged areas with them.

Also, two views of interior hallways, one below grade, showing the stone foundation walls, and the second, a higher floor, where the timber columns are visible.  I did not take any photos inside the rooms, but they were very nice, large, and nothing like the cookie-cutter experience you have in the larger chains.  I'll leave you to the website to explore those, if you like.

Next post will include a photo of the King Tobacco Warehouse that was restored next door, and some photos of art work on the interior hallways.