The Greenbrier
View Slideshow
In december 1946, not long after the end of the Second World War, the renowned decorator Dorothy Draper glanced at the lobby of The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and pronounced it "a Brobdingnagian monster of a bowling alley." Prior to the war, the grand old hotel had attracted more than its fair share of the rich and famous—Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Harrimans, Fords, du Ponts and Kennedys; Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth and Bobby Jones; Mary Pickford, Noël Coward, Bing Crosby. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, the United States government had bought the place, used it as an internment camp, primarily for diplomats from Germany, Japan and other enemy nations, and then turned it into an Army hospital. In December 1946 the Chesapeake Ohio Railway, the prewar owner of The Greenbrier, was permitted to buy it back. Wasting no time, by the end of that month Robert R.
Young, the CO's president, engaged Dorothy Draper to refurbish the hotel, to which the war years had been unkind.
Draper told Young she would redo the lobby she so imperiously condemned and the rest of The Greenbrier in "great beauty" and took on what was then the largest redecoration project in the history of the American hotel industry.
One of the first things Draper did was to create separate areas in the cavernous lobby by enclosing spaces with walls and screens. Guests now pass from the hotel's north entrance through the Celebrity Corridor, the Cameo Ballroom, the trellis lobby, the green lobby, the main lobby and the clock lobby into the main dining room, which had been used as an officers' mess between 1942 and 1945. In the main lobby, she had her trademark black-and-white-marble floors laid on the diagonal: The original chic, oversize squares of pure black Belgian marble and veined white Georgian marble still gleam. Then she splashed bright colors on the walls and covered sofas and chairs with fabrics in the punched-up colors she loved. By 1963 Carleton Varney, who succeeded Dorothy Draper as the president of the firm that bears her name, had taken over the job of maintaining and subtly changing the décor (see Architectural Digest , January/February 1977).
Varney, who has described his style as "swashbuckling," sees his role at The Greenbrier, which Draper called the jewel in her crown, as that of a curator, but in recent years he has updated the public spaces as well as the guest rooms. The main dining room had a dozen chandeliers. He replaced seven that were "modest" with others that were "more palatial" and added green crystals to the other five. He also had mirrors put up on the room's columns. "That way you get more sparkle for your dollar," he says. The dining room was repainted (over the past 60 years it has gone from Dorothy Draper blue to Carleton Varney peach to Carleton Varney pineapple) and recarpeted—the Draper frondy pattern is now one of black-and-green rhodo-dendron buds. " Romance and Rhododendrons' was Mrs. D's theme for The Greenbrier," Varney says. "She loved big flowers, and the rhododendron is the West Virginia state flower." Finger bowls are still provided after breakfast and dinner in the main dining room, and at dinner a pianist and violinist play classical music and vintage show tunes.
Below the gold clock in the clock lobby, a glamorous spot with wide-stenciled, Jefferson-blue-and-white-striped walls, is a green-and-pink sofa with Scarlett-red pillows and a number of chairs upholstered in peacock blue recently introduced by Varney. As Robert S. Conte, the author of The History of The Greenbrier, says, "Resort life isn't normal life, so you can be more extravagant at the hotel, and the 16- to 22-foot-high ceilings make the over-the-top combinations seem harmonious." Conte, The Greenbrier's staff historian for the past 26 years, gives a tour of the main rooms of the hotel most mornings at 10 and points out such Draperesque touches as the wood-and-plaster swags surrounding the simple gold clock.
The trellis lobby is an exceptionally feminine room, with a carpet of deep pink roses on a green background, through which lavender trellis ribbons course. The chairs are upholstered predominantly in Draper's pink-and-white chinoiserie trellis and the firm's Jefferson-blue-and-white stripes. "The room sings with pinks, greens, and blues," wrote one critic who attended the gala reopening of The Greenbrier in April 1948.
Not long ago Varney removed a very long three-piece sofa from a wall of the green lobby and replaced it with a bar. It is a place to sit and have a drink in the evening and play chess or backgammon in the midst of other guests strolling through the pretty upper lobby. Varney custom-stenciled the walls in red and gold, designed a black-and-green moiré-pattern carpet for this more masculine area, now becoming known as the lobby bar, and added red silk shades to the chandelier.
The room that has stayed the same is the Victorian Writing Room, off the green lobby. The walls are deep green, the carpeting is red, and the chairs are upholstered in what Varney describes as "a humongous flowered print called Fudge Apron. I never knew why Mrs. D. called it that, but it's one of her signature patterns, and we keep reprinting it."
The Greenbrier can accommodate 1,600 guests in its six-story white Georgian main building and its various cottages. The most luxurious quarters are the Presidential Suite, a duplex with seven bedrooms upstairs and sufficient rooms downstairs for 200 people to have cocktails. At the reopening party in 1948, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor shared this suite with Robert R. and Anita O'Keeffe Young. For the entrance foyer, Varney custom-designed a double chaise longue and a pink, white and green area rug. "We do nothing off the rack for The Greenbrier," he says. The wallcovering alongside the spiral staircase leading to the bedrooms is Akakina. The living room is another exercise in therefore-be-bold, with a pink-and-green cymbidium-orchid-motif carpet, draperies and fabrics, and geranium-velvet-upholstered walls.
The State Suite, with four bedrooms, is in the newer West Virginia Wing. Its sitting room is another Technicolor surprise, with a reception room that features a carpet in a bright urn bouquet pattern, floral chintz chairs upholstered in yellow with red, blue and pink peonies, red-striped-silk walls and lavender draperies. The drapery cornices are an original Dorothy Draper design.
Last year Varney replaced an aqua-blue-and-white trellis wallpaper in the lower lobby, where guests register, with two sets of Zuber murals.
"Some designers have decorating projects with a beginning and an end," Varney says. "There's a day you take on a new client, work with him and create the dream—right down to the floral arrangements on the entry hall console table. And then there is The Greenbrier, which has been a decorating and design project for me and my staff for over 42 years, one that will never be finished."