Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I am tra c V Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. Recently,
Speaker 1: I got to spend one entire night at a lovely
Speaker 1: historic hotel. Yeah, and you know where that was. I do,
Speaker 1: because you brought me back a postcard and I didn't.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about that postcard to day. It's
Speaker 1: called the Grove Parking and it's celebrated it's hundredth birthday
Speaker 1: on July twelve of this year, which is and like
Speaker 1: any grand hotel, uh, it has quite a history. And
Speaker 1: this is kind of an across the board weird one
Speaker 1: in terms of all the things that it pulls in
Speaker 1: because there's real medicine, there's there's patent medicine, they're famous
Speaker 1: writers and inventors several wards, even a ghost story. And
Speaker 1: I cannot count the number of other podcast episodes in
Speaker 1: our archive that in some way high end the history
Speaker 1: of the Grove park In. Yeah. And I was actually
Speaker 1: surprised at how many people know about it. I know,
Speaker 1: this may just be ignorant on my part, Like I
Speaker 1: know about it because it's in the South and uh,
Speaker 1: you know friends, it's close enough distance that I have friends,
Speaker 1: and like, that's a fancy getaway they've done. But when
Speaker 1: I posted a picture of the postcard that you sent
Speaker 1: me because it made me laugh and was hilarious, like
Speaker 1: friends from all over, like, oh is that from the
Speaker 1: Grove Park in I love that place, and like how
Speaker 1: do you even know about? Yeah? But if many many
Speaker 1: more people did, then I would have anticipated yeah. And
Speaker 1: and full disclosure, I did work there briefly for some
Speaker 1: time ago. It is also situated in my favorite place
Speaker 1: in the world, which is Ashville, North Carolina. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk today about its history, all of the weird
Speaker 1: engineering marvels that went into building it, and how strangely
Speaker 1: like today the growth working is this luxury resort and
Speaker 1: spa with a golf course and this big sports complex
Speaker 1: and all kinds of fancy amenities. They're just amenities, it
Speaker 1: really is. When I heard that people plan it as
Speaker 1: they're like fancy getaway, Like people will do it for
Speaker 1: like an anniversary or should there's even a honeymoon or
Speaker 1: just you know, one of those we need to treat
Speaker 1: ourselves to luxury, right, And they I had a gift
Speaker 1: card from when my brother and sister in law got
Speaker 1: married that helped us pay the one night that we've
Speaker 1: spent there. Um. It was definitely fancy, and but all
Speaker 1: of that fanciness started in a weird It started in
Speaker 1: a kind of a weird way because we would not
Speaker 1: have the Grove park In if there were not too
Speaker 1: serious diseases in the world, which are malaria and tuberculosis.
Speaker 1: That is not for any humanitarian reason, but we're going
Speaker 1: to get into that. Why we have malaria and tuberculosis
Speaker 1: to thank for the existence of the Grove park in
Speaker 1: this luxury area. So the Grove park In is named
Speaker 1: after E. W. Grove, who is the man whose money
Speaker 1: helped build the Grove park In and whose name it carries.
Speaker 1: Uh And he was born on December twenty three of
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty and he was born in a town roughly
Speaker 1: sixty miles outside the city of Memphis, and he grew
Speaker 1: up on a farm. He moved to Arkansas for a
Speaker 1: while and then eventually he moved back to Tennessee, UH
Speaker 1: and took on an apprenticeship at a pharmacy in the
Speaker 1: town of Paris, Tennessee, which he eventually bought and he
Speaker 1: ended up running it himself right, and he wanted to
Speaker 1: distinguish himself from all the other pharmacists in the world,
Speaker 1: and in the late eighteen hundreds he started on a
Speaker 1: plan that he thought might do that, which was to
Speaker 1: make a tasteless version of quinine. And that's the medicine
Speaker 1: that was used to treat malaria and is notoriously horrible
Speaker 1: tasting it. I've never had to take quinine for any
Speaker 1: reason either, but I have heard that one of those
Speaker 1: things older relatives like to tell you about how horrible
Speaker 1: it is if they've ever had to have it. Uh So,
Speaker 1: just a brief on malaria. It's a parasitic illness and
Speaker 1: it can range from very mild infection to causing fatality.
Speaker 1: And on the mile end of the spectrum, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you would experience cycles of feeling cold, hot, sweaty, kind
Speaker 1: of like a fluey situation. Yeah, that's sort of the
Speaker 1: classic malaria presentation. But if it's not treated, it can
Speaker 1: cause respiratory complications, low blood pressure, clotting problems, hypoglycemia, and
Speaker 1: all kinds of other effects. And as we said, it
Speaker 1: can be fatal. And at this point in history, malaria
Speaker 1: was a very real and huge problem in the American South.
Speaker 1: Because the land was swampier, there were consequently more mosquitoes, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, we still deal with that during the summers.
Speaker 1: We do. We're just not dangerous. Actually, I have a
Speaker 1: fear of getting malaria, even though it's no longer endemic
Speaker 1: in the South, because most of the time when people
Speaker 1: get malaria, and like the people still contract malaria in
Speaker 1: the United States every year and they don't recognize it.
Speaker 1: They don't recognize it. But it's also usually what happens
Speaker 1: is someone has traveled to a place where malaria is prevalent,
Speaker 1: they've gotten malaria there, brought it back with them, and
Speaker 1: then that's been transmitted to somebody else by mosquitoes. So
Speaker 1: the reason that I have a fear of getting malaria
Speaker 1: is because we live in a city where there's a
Speaker 1: major international airport hub and latins. So that that's why
Speaker 1: I have that fear. So back then, when there was
Speaker 1: a lot of malaria action happening in the American South,
Speaker 1: if you got malaria, you pretty much had to take
Speaker 1: quinine forever to manage it. There was no other effective
Speaker 1: treatment for malaria. And what quinine did was it inhibited
Speaker 1: the parasites that caused malaria, and they would bring a
Speaker 1: person's fever down, but it didn't actually eradicate the disease.
Speaker 1: So if you stopped taking quinine and there were still
Speaker 1: malaria parasites in your body, that they could multiply and
Speaker 1: the symptoms would come back. And of course taking quinine
Speaker 1: forever uh was terrible because, as we mentioned, it was
Speaker 1: made from the extremely bitter bark of the Andean Uh
Speaker 1: sacona tree and tasted horrible. People would mix it with limitar,
Speaker 1: lime or alcohol or almost anything else to try to
Speaker 1: make it more palatable because it was really awful to
Speaker 1: choke down, right, And that's where tonic water comes from,
Speaker 1: and the gin and tonic neither of which are effective
Speaker 1: as a treatment or prevention of malaria in any way,
Speaker 1: but that that is why we have quinine and tonic water.
Speaker 1: So Grove wanted to come up with a better solution
Speaker 1: than having this bitter tasting thing that you had to
Speaker 1: take for a long time, and his first attempt was
Speaker 1: this prescription Druggs named fever LN, and that was quinine
Speaker 1: crystals that were suspended in a liquid, and this was
Speaker 1: relatively tasteless. It was harder to taste the quinine when
Speaker 1: it was suspended in this liquid, but you had to
Speaker 1: have a prescription to get it, so it was not
Speaker 1: something he could just go in mass market. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then next came so exciting Groves Tasteless Chill Tonic, which
Speaker 1: built on that original formula by adding sugar, lemon flavor
Speaker 1: and other ingredients. And it wasn't exactly tasteless, but it
Speaker 1: did taste better than straight quinine, and it could sold
Speaker 1: could be sold over the counter, and it was, and
Speaker 1: it did very well, and did extremely well. According to
Speaker 1: a particularly delightful advertisement, which is also the postcard I
Speaker 1: brought back for Holly um the in the picture of
Speaker 1: a pig with a baby face and it's like human
Speaker 1: baby's heads, human baby's cartoony baby pig, but I shown
Speaker 1: baby face on a pig, and it says that the
Speaker 1: tonic quote makes children an adults as fattest pigs. So,
Speaker 1: according to this advertisement, it sold one and a half
Speaker 1: million bottles in a year. It even claimed to out
Speaker 1: sell Coca Cola, although we do not really have hard
Speaker 1: sales statistics from that era to go on with that claim.
Speaker 1: I love that postcard so much it's it's cooky and weird.
Speaker 1: It's just you can't look at it without giggle. I
Speaker 1: can't look at it without giggling. And it's like instant
Speaker 1: mood lift. So groves Little Pharmacy was not nearly big
Speaker 1: enough to support this rapidly climbing popularity of the chill tonic,
Speaker 1: so he founded the Paris Medicine Company in eight seven,
Speaker 1: and that come and he incorporated in eighteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: and eventually the increasing demand for this product drove him
Speaker 1: to move the entire business to St. Louis in so
Speaker 1: he would have better access to manufacturing facilities. So, thanks
Speaker 1: to improvements in mosquito control and flood control, malaria gradually
Speaker 1: started to wane. And this led to two things. And
Speaker 1: number one, since people didn't need chill tonic the treat
Speaker 1: or prevent malaria anymore, it sort of became marketed as
Speaker 1: this cure all and the Paris Medicine Company started diversifying
Speaker 1: its company's products that had already started doing this, but
Speaker 1: it really kicked that into a higher gear to put
Speaker 1: out more kinds of products than just ChIL tonic, some
Speaker 1: of which were similarly medically dubious like chill tonic had
Speaker 1: an actual purpose, but then it became marketed as the
Speaker 1: sort of it will revigorize your blood or something non legitimate.
Speaker 1: Same thing with these other products. They weren't quite up
Speaker 1: to today's medical standards, will honest, the need for chill
Speaker 1: Sonic dropped off. The new flagship product for the company
Speaker 1: became Groves Laxative bromo Coinine, which was a tablet that
Speaker 1: was billed as the original one day cold cure. It
Speaker 1: contained acetanilide, which is an actual drug that the body
Speaker 1: will convert into a seat of menafin, so it did
Speaker 1: have pharmacologically active ingredients, although acetanilide also has dangerous side effects,
Speaker 1: and the claim that the drug would cure colds by
Speaker 1: quote opening the bowels and actively killing cold germs was
Speaker 1: really pretty bogus. It was not founded in truth. And
Speaker 1: you can't see these products and they're packaging and advertisements
Speaker 1: because they are on display at the Grove Park in
Speaker 1: even today, the part their historical display. I had kind
Speaker 1: of forgotten that whole aspect of it until we wandered
Speaker 1: around this corner and found the display case of like
Speaker 1: wacky clearly not legitimate medical products. Yeah, so this pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: venture is how Grove met Fred Loring Seeley, who would
Speaker 1: later be instrumental in building the growth park in Seely
Speaker 1: worked for pharmaceutical company Parke Davis, and that's the company
Speaker 1: that Grove had turned to when he was trying to
Speaker 1: perfect his cold tablets. Seely also became groves son in
Speaker 1: law when he married Evelyn Grove, who was E. W.
Speaker 1: Grove's daughter, and Grove's pharmaceuticals made him an extremely wealthy man,
Speaker 1: but his life had its share of hardships. It was
Speaker 1: not all easy going. His first wife died in eight four,
Speaker 1: and three of the four children they had had together
Speaker 1: died in infancy, and his daughter, Evelyn was the only
Speaker 1: one that survived. He did remarry and he had two
Speaker 1: more children, one of whom died of diphtheria when she
Speaker 1: was very very young. He also worked really hard to
Speaker 1: make this fortune. He worked himself into exhaustion and he
Speaker 1: developed chronic ron caius and that prompted his doctor's to
Speaker 1: tell him to spend some of each year recovering his
Speaker 1: health in Asheville, North Carolina, and at one point they
Speaker 1: told him that he just needed to stay in Asheville
Speaker 1: until further notice, and so at this point Seely took
Speaker 1: over running a lot of pharmaceutical business, and Grove while
Speaker 1: he was recovering, started buying lots of property in Asheville.
Speaker 1: As his health got better, he started developing real estate
Speaker 1: in Asheville and in Atlanta. And so the Grove park
Speaker 1: In is one of the many, many properties in Asheville
Speaker 1: and Atlanta that Seely or Grove or both of them
Speaker 1: had a hand in developing. And so that is the
Speaker 1: malaria element of how his fortune was made. And leading
Speaker 1: up to the Grove park In, we are now moving
Speaker 1: into the tuberculosis portion podcast. We talked about tuberculosis a
Speaker 1: lot on this podcast lately. It really has come up
Speaker 1: over and over, even when we select topics that we
Speaker 1: think are in no way related to tuberculosis. It was
Speaker 1: just pop up in the research somewhere. Um, but this
Speaker 1: one is really there's a lot of tuberculosis elements to
Speaker 1: talk about. Uh So, during this era, Ashville was struggling
Speaker 1: with whether it should be a tourist destination or more
Speaker 1: of a health destination for people recovering from illnesses, and
Speaker 1: either could have been lucrative for the city. And it
Speaker 1: was really easily suited to cover both of those bases.
Speaker 1: It's in a beautiful part of the Blue Ridge Mountains,
Speaker 1: and it has relatively mild winters thanks to being surrounded
Speaker 1: by all those mountains. It's kind of kind of bowl. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of closes it off from some of the
Speaker 1: harsher weather that could move in a lot of snow
Speaker 1: and stuff kind of goes around instead of hitting Ashville directly.
Speaker 1: So in particular, areas like Asheville were increasingly home to
Speaker 1: tuberculosis sanatoriums. So in those years before the discovery of streptomycin,
Speaker 1: the treatment for tuberculosis was really centered on rest and
Speaker 1: nutritious food and breathing some kind of air that people
Speaker 1: thought was wholesome in some way. And Mountain Air was
Speaker 1: on like the Good Air List of the good types
Speaker 1: of air that maybe would help you fight off tuberculosis.
Speaker 1: And so this part of North Carolina had already become
Speaker 1: home to tuberculosis sanatoriums, and recovery in one of these
Speaker 1: sanatoriums took a really long time. Sometimes people would stay
Speaker 1: there for months and months. My grandmother actually stayed at
Speaker 1: one in Black Mountain, North Carolina, which is a little
Speaker 1: bit east of Asheville when she was a child. But
Speaker 1: bringing in sanatoriums had the potential to also drive away
Speaker 1: residents who were fearful for their own health. Having a
Speaker 1: bunch of people with tuberculosis move in could be a
Speaker 1: little unsettling. Somebody that was hale and hardy did not
Speaker 1: really want to risk exposure, especially since the only treatment,
Speaker 1: which was like a lot of people died of tuberculosis,
Speaker 1: and the only treatment was like this month's long stay
Speaker 1: being you know, cared for and resting and eating wholesome food,
Speaker 1: like it could really take months and months up to
Speaker 1: a year sometimes. Yeah, And so this fear of the
Speaker 1: residents was part of why Grove bought four eight acres
Speaker 1: of land, including part of the western slope of Sunset Mountain,
Speaker 1: in nine and it was both an investment in land
Speaker 1: and a protection of the value of the other property
Speaker 1: that he already owned. He bought it in part so
Speaker 1: that no one would buy it and build a sanitorium there.
Speaker 1: He said so in a letter to Ceiley about two
Speaker 1: months after the sale was completed. No, we're not speculating
Speaker 1: on that motive. You straight up said, I don't want
Speaker 1: I don't want anybody to build a sanatorium here. Later on,
Speaker 1: he also had the habit of buying tuberculosis sanatoriums when
Speaker 1: they went up for sale and tearing them down, or
Speaker 1: when he had property of his own to sell, he
Speaker 1: would put this no sanatoriums clause in the sales documentation.
Speaker 1: He was really not in favor. Yeah, he was systematically
Speaker 1: trying to rid Asheville of the tuberculosis sanatoriums. Yeah, by
Speaker 1: using his his well out as a real estate purchaser
Speaker 1: and holder. So now let's get back to when E. W.
Speaker 1: Grove finally decided to put a hotel on this giant
Speaker 1: tract of land he had bought. Yeah, he wasn't uh
Speaker 1: really on top of that idea that he didn't jump
Speaker 1: on the thought of building an inn there right away,
Speaker 1: And in fact, the first time an investor came to
Speaker 1: him with that idea, he turned them down. But by
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven he had started to envision this beautiful hotel
Speaker 1: on the slope of the mountain that he had bought.
Speaker 1: And he and Seely had gone their separate ways for
Speaker 1: a little while after an apparent disagreement over how to
Speaker 1: run Paris Pharmaceuticals. This is a recurring theme in their
Speaker 1: relationship they had lots of disagreements on how to run things.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, Seely had gone to Atlanta to start
Speaker 1: a newspaper that was called The Atlanta Georgian. But by
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven Seeli Seely was back in Asheville, shopping around
Speaker 1: for an architect for the inn and working from photos
Speaker 1: of the similarly rustic Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone as
Speaker 1: an inspiration. A number of architects and designers submitted proposals
Speaker 1: for the hotel, but Grove was not really happy with
Speaker 1: any of them. Henry Ives Cob of New York did
Speaker 1: submit a plan that looked somewhat like what the Grove
Speaker 1: park in ultimately ended up looking like, uh, using rough
Speaker 1: gray boulders and a red roof, And in the end
Speaker 1: it was Seely himself and not an architect, Hughes mine
Speaker 1: what the hotel would look like. He came up with
Speaker 1: a sketch that Grove liked, and in turn Grove put
Speaker 1: him in charge of the project, working with Cobb, and
Speaker 1: gave him a salary and thirteen acres of land to
Speaker 1: build a home on, and they selected a site on
Speaker 1: the slope of the mountain, and it was one that
Speaker 1: had a great view, but it was off the ridge
Speaker 1: so it would be less affected by snow than other positions.
Speaker 1: And it was also near the actual country club, which
Speaker 1: already had its own golf course, so they were hoping
Speaker 1: the guests would be able to use that as well.
Speaker 1: Like that they could work on a partnership deal. So
Speaker 1: we already mentioned that Feely and Grove often did not
Speaker 1: work well together. Seely and Cobb did not work well
Speaker 1: together either, and ultimately Cobb was dismissed from the project,
Speaker 1: and this left Seely free to work directly with JW. Mckibbon,
Speaker 1: who was an architectural engineer and construction supervisor John Oscar Mills,
Speaker 1: who Grove had worked with previously on some developments in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: and they wrote ground on July nine, with the plan
Speaker 1: of opening the following July first, which almost happened. That's
Speaker 1: a tight build schedule. It's an extremely especially considering the
Speaker 1: scope of what they were doing and the technology available
Speaker 1: at the time, and building on the slope of a mountain,
Speaker 1: Building on the slope of a mountain where weather happens,
Speaker 1: even though it is relatively mild. Yeah, it's not a
Speaker 1: lot of time to try to build a whole hotel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: considering when it was built. Uh, that hotel and its
Speaker 1: construction was really an engineering feat. The only typical thing
Speaker 1: about it was the excavation. Uh. They used a steam shovel,
Speaker 1: although they were only able to use one. One steam
Speaker 1: shovel did the whole. The exterior was built with local
Speaker 1: granite stones from surrounding mountains and some of them weighed
Speaker 1: many many tons individually and these were hauled to the
Speaker 1: site primarily using mules and wagons. A lot of these
Speaker 1: wagons actually came from Asheville's T. S. Morrison and Company,
Speaker 1: which ran from to two thousand and six. It was
Speaker 1: very sad when it closed down very recent It had
Speaker 1: gone from being the kind of place where you know,
Speaker 1: the local farmers and and people would buy all their
Speaker 1: general supplies to the sort of touristy kind of place
Speaker 1: that uh cells nostalgia the form of like wind up
Speaker 1: ten toys and stuff. And then it just wasn't sustaining.
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah, there were changes to downtown. It didn't
Speaker 1: it didn't survive anymore, and they I think the owners
Speaker 1: were ready to retire, but back to this construction project,
Speaker 1: so they had to get these rocks up to the site,
Speaker 1: and to do it, about fourteen wagons would be connected
Speaker 1: together to form a train, and a packard truck then
Speaker 1: towed them up the mountain. And this sounds really primitive,
Speaker 1: but it was actually pretty effective. It could move forty
Speaker 1: tons of rock with each load, and it was an
Speaker 1: impressive enough engineering feat that it was actually featured in
Speaker 1: national publications at the time. So they were able to
Speaker 1: leverage power, the power of the truck and use the
Speaker 1: load bearing of the wagons in a way that made
Speaker 1: doable unique and really uh in the end enabled the
Speaker 1: construction of the facility. Yeah, Italian stonemason's cut and shaped
Speaker 1: the st owns to fit together, but they left they
Speaker 1: left all of the visible faces of the stones natural.
Speaker 1: So when you look at the h the walls that
Speaker 1: are made of these stones, they have a very rough
Speaker 1: hewn look. They look like boulders just stacked up together
Speaker 1: to make a hotel. But in fact, on the backside
Speaker 1: their cut to fit. Yeah, that's cool. On the inside,
Speaker 1: they fit together. The hair doesn't come in. About four
Speaker 1: dred men did the work of fitting those stones together
Speaker 1: and doing all the interior work. Some of the workers
Speaker 1: were local, but Mills also brought some of them with
Speaker 1: him from Atlanta, and those sort of displaced workers that
Speaker 1: were there from Atlanta were housed in a circus tent.
Speaker 1: Just kind of another weird and wonderful factoid about GPS
Speaker 1: the roofs. There were five different roofs that it took
Speaker 1: to cover the whole in and they were made to
Speaker 1: be fireproof. At this point in history, hotel fires were
Speaker 1: a huge problem in terms of both monetary cost and
Speaker 1: the cost of human life. Uh often fires and hotels
Speaker 1: were huge and had a lot of fatalities. Plus, thanks
Speaker 1: to its location up on the side of this mountain,
Speaker 1: in the lack of today's firefighting equipment, if the Grove
Speaker 1: park In had caught fire early in its history, it
Speaker 1: probably would have been a total loss. There wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been much they could do about it. So their whole
Speaker 1: goal was to make it so that it would be
Speaker 1: as fire resistant as possible. So they made these five
Speaker 1: roofs to cover all the parts of the hotel with
Speaker 1: a solid layer of concrete that was poured over forms
Speaker 1: and supports, and the poor went on continually twenty four
Speaker 1: hours a day until they were done, so there wouldn't
Speaker 1: be any steams for water to leak through. It's kind
Speaker 1: of ingenious, but also seems like the hard way, Like
Speaker 1: there's part of it and I know you know only
Speaker 1: nominal amounts about construction, but there's part of me it's like,
Speaker 1: couldn't they have figured out an easier way? But I
Speaker 1: don't know. Once all that concrete cured, though, the whole
Speaker 1: thing was sealed, and then they put a layer of
Speaker 1: timbers and roofing felt uh, and then the distinctive red
Speaker 1: tile roof topped it all off, and that meant there
Speaker 1: was there while this was this layer of wood. It
Speaker 1: was like green timbers that wouldn't burn as well, and
Speaker 1: there was this huge layer of concrete between them and
Speaker 1: other would like a firewall. So another unique bit of
Speaker 1: the way the hotel was constructed is that the elevators
Speaker 1: and the historic part of the end are built inside
Speaker 1: the fireplaces. Purportedly, this was to shield guests from the noise.
Speaker 1: So if they're not in the fire part of the fireplaces,
Speaker 1: they're kind of behind that part in the huge stone
Speaker 1: walls of the fireplaces. So when you want to take
Speaker 1: the elevator, you go and stand in this little alcove
Speaker 1: that is adjacent to the fireplace. The strange historic elevator
Speaker 1: comes and takes you up to your room. That's very fascinating.
Speaker 1: I haven't been, so I'm trying to picture it. It's
Speaker 1: hard to picture, and it's hard enough to picture even
Speaker 1: if you were staying there, Like do I walk through
Speaker 1: the fire Yeah, we would be waiting for the elevator
Speaker 1: and people would come and be like for the fire
Speaker 1: elevator that is inside the fireplace. The fireplaces are enormous
Speaker 1: and beautiful. You could walk right in, you could, yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Much of the furnishings and the fixtures there came from
Speaker 1: Roycroft Community, which is an arts and crafts community in
Speaker 1: New York. And the arts and crafts movement started in
Speaker 1: England and the Victorian era in part as a response
Speaker 1: to the Industrial Revolution. Uh. And it drew heavily from
Speaker 1: the writings of John Ruskin and William Morris, and it
Speaker 1: combined workmanship and handcrafting with this thread of anti industrial sentiment.
Speaker 1: There wasn't one set type of design to it, but
Speaker 1: there was a lot of emphasis on simplicity, on skill,
Speaker 1: and on quality. Uh. And as a testament to how
Speaker 1: those ideals have held up, there are many of the
Speaker 1: original Roycroft pieces and other arts and Craft's antiques still
Speaker 1: in use at the Grove Park in so they have
Speaker 1: lasted more than a hundred years. UH. And in the
Speaker 1: US UH, the arts and crafts movement is also called
Speaker 1: them mission style, So if you hear someone referred to
Speaker 1: mission style stuff. Second, as a side note to our
Speaker 1: podcast archives, the Chicago Arts and Craft Society started at
Speaker 1: Hull House, so if you listen to Jane Adams episode,
Speaker 1: it's all tied together. So the Great Hall, which is
Speaker 1: basically the lobby of the hotel, had a rough hewn
Speaker 1: local granite interior that matched the exterior of the building,
Speaker 1: with huge support pillars in the center and then immense
Speaker 1: fireplaces on either end. And there are quotes from famous
Speaker 1: authors and philosophers inscribed in various stones around the hall.
Speaker 1: And as Tracy hinted at earlier, they did not quite
Speaker 1: make their July first deadline for opening. The opening banquet
Speaker 1: was actually held on July twelfth, nine with about four
Speaker 1: hundred guests, including then Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan,
Speaker 1: who included in his address the quote, today we stand
Speaker 1: in this wonderful hotel not built for a few but
Speaker 1: for the multitudes that will come and go. I congratulate
Speaker 1: these men they have built for the ages. I think
Speaker 1: it's a lovely sentiment. And on that note, how about
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Speaker 1: having a personal trainer for your brain. Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: really focus on whatever you are you feel you're lacking in,
Speaker 1: whether it's memory recall or um. Yeah, are being able
Speaker 1: to solve problems quickly and creatively. You you can kind
Speaker 1: of focus on anyone or multiples of those. It's based
Speaker 1: on the idea of neuroplasticity, which is this idea that
Speaker 1: your brain continues to build skills in shape itself even
Speaker 1: as you get older, and it gives you customized workouts
Speaker 1: online and so they are like exercises, but they are
Speaker 1: also fun like games, which is why there are adorable
Speaker 1: penguins that are trying to get to a little fish
Speaker 1: at the end of a maze. And it doesn't take
Speaker 1: very long. It's just a couple of minutes a day,
Speaker 1: and you will notice improvement in, uh, the way your
Speaker 1: brain handles these tasks. Yes, you can track. There's a
Speaker 1: Brain Performance Index where you can track your score and
Speaker 1: see how well you're doing and how your skills are
Speaker 1: building up in various aspects of how you think and
Speaker 1: solve problems. I've been using it We've mentioned and before
Speaker 1: and my useless meeting time and it is between two meetings.
Speaker 1: It's about ten minutes long. It does not usually take
Speaker 1: any longer than that. Uh, and wow, do I feel
Speaker 1: less deficient in brain power when I look at my
Speaker 1: skills now versus last time a few weeks ago that
Speaker 1: we talked about It minor edge up slowly, I've made
Speaker 1: great strides in my memory. Go to lumosity dot com today,
Speaker 1: click the start training button to create your own program
Speaker 1: and then start playing your first game. That's lumosity dot
Speaker 1: com and tell them you heard it on how stuff works.
Speaker 1: And now we will get back to what happened at
Speaker 1: the end once it opened. So things went pretty well
Speaker 1: for the Growth park Ends first year. It looked like
Speaker 1: the hotel was going to be a huge success, but
Speaker 1: then reality intervened and on Joe Archduke Ferninand of Austria
Speaker 1: was assassinated and World War One soon followed. In the end,
Speaker 1: the war years were really financially precarious for the Grove
Speaker 1: park In. That is not surprising in any way. It
Speaker 1: did manage to stay open, although it was not always
Speaker 1: profitable during that time. But after World War One ended,
Speaker 1: the Grove park In became a popular destination for the
Speaker 1: well off, and many of its guests were there for
Speaker 1: lengthy days of rejuvenation and relaxation, so that Mountain Air
Speaker 1: was considered healthy for many reasons, not just to cure
Speaker 1: a specific disease, but it was generally, you know, considered
Speaker 1: a healthful place to spend some time. Yeah. Ashville still
Speaker 1: has that reputation. Yeah, And after ongoing disputes with Grove Seeley,
Speaker 1: uh leased the hotel from him and took over its
Speaker 1: management and established it as a place where businessmen, businessmen
Speaker 1: and perhaps their wives but preferably not their children could
Speaker 1: come to rest and recuperate from the strain of their lives.
Speaker 1: They kept it meticulously, meticulously clean. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of effort put into keeping the place absolutely spotless, and
Speaker 1: they also served what they considered to be wholesome food.
Speaker 1: But it was also clearly not for sick people. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of focus in those earlier years about
Speaker 1: how this was about a place to come and you know,
Speaker 1: refresh yourself if you've been having some chronic insomnia or
Speaker 1: you're stressed out all the time. But it was not
Speaker 1: intended for sick people, which they That was clearly stated
Speaker 1: often and it did not want that association. Um At
Speaker 1: the same time, though for the first few years of
Speaker 1: its operation, people would check into their room and find
Speaker 1: a bottle of Groves tasteless chill tonic and a shot
Speaker 1: glass on the bedside table of each room. Um. So, well,
Speaker 1: it was not for sick people or little people are children.
Speaker 1: They wanted to keep it a quiet place for adults
Speaker 1: to just relax, to relax. They were they were making
Speaker 1: it a spa calling it that. Yet yeah, that one
Speaker 1: of the people who was a visitor here. Another another
Speaker 1: podcast connection is John Harvey Kellogg. Um, it did have
Speaker 1: some of the same elements as the Battle Creek Uh
Speaker 1: facility that John Harvey Kellogg was running, but with not
Speaker 1: nearly as heavy an emphasis on all of the various
Speaker 1: pseudo medical treatments that John Harvey Kellogg had going on there.
Speaker 1: So the relationship between Celely and Grove we have mentioned
Speaker 1: was always um a little adversarial and head buddy. But
Speaker 1: it fell apart completely after more than twenty years when
Speaker 1: Grove basically wrote Seeley out of his will and he
Speaker 1: even tied up Evelyn's own inheritance that was his daughter
Speaker 1: who was married to Seeley, so that she couldn't leave
Speaker 1: any of her inheritance from Grove to Seeley if she
Speaker 1: died before her husband did. Groves Will also made it
Speaker 1: very clear that he wanted Seeley out of Grove Park.
Speaker 1: So after Seeley's lease on the hotel was up, he
Speaker 1: was just going to have to go. There would be
Speaker 1: no renewal. Yeah, As for what caused this rift, I
Speaker 1: don't think there was any one thing. They were both
Speaker 1: extremely particular and extremely exact and very determined. So if
Speaker 1: each of them set their mom mind to something different,
Speaker 1: they didn't agree on what they had, you know, set
Speaker 1: their minds on, they would really quickly start to just
Speaker 1: go head to head over it. Plus, each of them
Speaker 1: seemed to be kind of jealous of the other's relationship
Speaker 1: with Evelyn. It's such sad uh in n Seely's least ended.
Speaker 1: And in that same year E. W. Grove died, So
Speaker 1: Seeli ended his work at the Grove Park on the
Speaker 1: eve of the Great Depression, and he turned his attention
Speaker 1: to other businesses he'd started, including woodworking and textile manufacturing,
Speaker 1: including built more industries. So, even though groves Will had
Speaker 1: specified very clearly that his Asheville holdings were not to
Speaker 1: be sold in a whole or in part, soon after
Speaker 1: all this happened, his son, who was E. W. Grove Jr.
Speaker 1: And the hotels general manager, William Curran, decided eventually not
Speaker 1: long after this happened, to sell it. They did find
Speaker 1: a buyer, but the End fell on really hard times
Speaker 1: almost right away and wound up to fall saying on
Speaker 1: both of its mortgages during the Great Depression, and the
Speaker 1: history of the Grove varies a lot for the next
Speaker 1: couple of decades. For a few months during World War Two,
Speaker 1: the End was an internment facility UH and the first
Speaker 1: group of people interned there were diplomats from Hungary, Bulgaria
Speaker 1: and Italy, and as these diplomats were released, they were
Speaker 1: then replaced with German and Japanese internees. So during this
Speaker 1: time the only guests of the Crow Partner were people
Speaker 1: that were forced to be there. They were not they
Speaker 1: were prisoners. And when it when it was more of
Speaker 1: a diplomatic facility, the security was a lot more lax
Speaker 1: than once it was a German and Japanese internees. Those
Speaker 1: generally were not diplomats, they were regular people who were
Speaker 1: being interned because of where they were from or where
Speaker 1: their families were from. So then beginning in October of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two, the growth Park started to house injured
Speaker 1: seamen from the U. S. Navy. This went on until
Speaker 1: the spring of nine, and then in nineteen forty four
Speaker 1: it became one of distribution centers for United States soldiers
Speaker 1: returning from combat during World War Two. So returning soldiers
Speaker 1: would get a furlough to go visit their homes and families,
Speaker 1: and then they'd spend up to fourteen days and the
Speaker 1: distribution centers getting physical exams, filling out paperwork, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And also in nineteen forty four, for around
Speaker 1: a month, Philippine president in exile Manuel el Quizon also
Speaker 1: temporarily ran the government from the Grove Park in After
Speaker 1: World War Two, once it was functioning as an inn
Speaker 1: again rather than all of these other roles it had
Speaker 1: taken on during the war, the end really started to
Speaker 1: show its age. It gradually fell into disrepair and it
Speaker 1: went through a series of owners and managers until it
Speaker 1: was bought by an entrepreneur named Charles A. Salmon's in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five. Salmon's invested in renovations and modernization, and
Speaker 1: it was a project so big that the hotel closed
Speaker 1: for the winter to get it all done. The goal
Speaker 1: of this was to end quote modernize, so many of
Speaker 1: the original furnishings and fixtures were altered or replaced since
Speaker 1: at this point Arts and Crafts, dick Core and the
Speaker 1: whole look that it had been put in was really
Speaker 1: out of favor. So when the growth Park reopened, it
Speaker 1: was as a seasonal resort that had a very fifties
Speaker 1: look and feel, and there was even a newly built
Speaker 1: motor lodge on the property, and Salmon's continued to add
Speaker 1: on to the facility and remodel it over the years.
Speaker 1: He bought the golf course from the Country Club of
Speaker 1: Asheville that they had specifically placed it in close proximity
Speaker 1: to back when they chose the lot, so then uh
Speaker 1: without a golf course. The Country Club of Ashville then
Speaker 1: bought another golf course that had recently been put up
Speaker 1: for sale and that all went down in After the
Speaker 1: death of his first wife, Charles Salmon's later married a
Speaker 1: woman named Elaine who had a lot of experience in
Speaker 1: hotel management. She had some ideas about what to do
Speaker 1: with the Grove Park in and it was she who
Speaker 1: convinced her husband to really restore the hotel to its
Speaker 1: historic splendor and get rid of all the fifties era
Speaker 1: motor lodge trappings that had been modernized into it. She
Speaker 1: also thought the hotel was going to need space for
Speaker 1: meetings and conferences to be able to stay competitive, but
Speaker 1: they would really have to put all of those elements
Speaker 1: in in a way that matched the rest of the
Speaker 1: historic hotel. And this massive multimillion dollar effort all started
Speaker 1: in ninety eight and it essentially was ongoing throughout the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. It involved demolition of previous editions that had
Speaker 1: grown dated, a total renovation of the whole property, and
Speaker 1: construction of two new wings, the Salmons and the Vanderbilt Wings.
Speaker 1: Great pains were taken to modernize while still keeping the
Speaker 1: historic feel. So while the facilities were modern, the look
Speaker 1: of it was historic. Uh. And they even went right
Speaker 1: down to using period appropriate color palettes in the historic rooms.
Speaker 1: So for the decor, Elaine Salmon's bought an extensive collection
Speaker 1: of arts and crafts antiques. Yeah, some of the stuff
Speaker 1: that they still had and had in storage brought out.
Speaker 1: Then she also bought new stuff that was really old stuff.
Speaker 1: When Charles Sammons died in his financial advisers really tried
Speaker 1: to convince his wife to sell the hotel. They had
Speaker 1: bought several hotels over the years, and they had gotten
Speaker 1: you know buyers for most of them, but they had
Speaker 1: held onto the growth park in She refused, and what
Speaker 1: she wanted to do was to make it a world
Speaker 1: class resort and spa, so she kept pouring more money
Speaker 1: into restoring and refurbishing the historic main inn in n
Speaker 1: the palm courts and the historic main inn was restored
Speaker 1: to how it had looked in thirteen and this even
Speaker 1: included meticulously removing layers and layers of old paint and
Speaker 1: then using photographs of the original area and comparing it
Speaker 1: to what they had on earth so that they could
Speaker 1: replicate the centil work that had been done in the
Speaker 1: original decor uh. The entire roof, including the concrete layer,
Speaker 1: was replaced in nine after leaking became a problem, and
Speaker 1: it was replaced with clay tile to look exactly like
Speaker 1: the original. Construction of a spa started in and it
Speaker 1: was built almost entirely underground so it wouldn't block the
Speaker 1: view from the hotel. The spot opened in two thousand
Speaker 1: one and in two thousand two, the golf course was
Speaker 1: restored to its original design, which had been done by
Speaker 1: golf course designer Donald Ross. Elaine Salmons died in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, and there wasn't really anyone in the Salmon's
Speaker 1: family who wanted to take up the hotel and its operations.
Speaker 1: She had clearly been very devoted to She was extremely
Speaker 1: to be hard to find anybody to fill her when
Speaker 1: I was working there. She was still living when I
Speaker 1: was working there, and when she would visit the hotel,
Speaker 1: we all had to be extra extra. We had to
Speaker 1: be on the ball all the time. We had to
Speaker 1: be exceptionally on the ball. MS Salmon's was on the property,
Speaker 1: of course. Uh So the property was purchased by KSL
Speaker 1: Resorts in and it is now the Omnigrove Park. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is very recent. So because this hotel has been
Speaker 1: around so long and has had just so much of
Speaker 1: a great history, there are many many prominent guests who
Speaker 1: have visited there at some point in another. There are
Speaker 1: so many presidents and diplomats, famous entertainers like Harry Houdini
Speaker 1: also the subject of a prior podcast, and many prominent
Speaker 1: industrialists from earlier eras of American history. William Howard Taft
Speaker 1: stayed for a time before his death in nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: he tried to recover from heart disease. Both Franklin d
Speaker 1: and Eleanor Roosevelt visited separately, and as part of a
Speaker 1: side note, Ceely and his wife Evelyn, who as we
Speaker 1: said was groves daughter, met Herbert Hoover and his wife
Speaker 1: lou in China, and all four of them narrowly escaped
Speaker 1: the Boxer rebellion adventures with Grove and Seely. Henry Ford,
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison and Harvey Firestone were all fond of the
Speaker 1: inn and they would actually hang out there together. They're
Speaker 1: even pictures on display of the three of them outside
Speaker 1: the inn after a camping trip that are still displayed
Speaker 1: in the hotel. And many of these, uh you know,
Speaker 1: sort of notable characters were people that Seeley had met
Speaker 1: during his newspaper days. And one of the most well
Speaker 1: known long term guests and also the topic of a
Speaker 1: past history podcast was f Scott Fitzgerald, and he stayed
Speaker 1: for months at a time in the mid thirties. At
Speaker 1: first this was for the sake of his own health,
Speaker 1: and then later it was to be near Zelda, who
Speaker 1: was hospitalized for mental illness at Highland Hospital in Nashville,
Speaker 1: and that's where she later tragically died in a fire.
Speaker 1: Uh More recently, President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama
Speaker 1: have visited, and the golf clubs and basketball that he
Speaker 1: played with while he was there are on display. We
Speaker 1: were just kind of funny. Yeah, we we were giggling
Speaker 1: over that because we kept finding the displays that were
Speaker 1: like and then when pere's the President Barack Obama was here,
Speaker 1: here are the golf clubs that he played with. Here's
Speaker 1: the basketball that he played with. There are many things
Speaker 1: that many famous people had at them or where there
Speaker 1: aren't around the hoell um so recent I think that's
Speaker 1: probably why it's funny. It was very funny to me.
Speaker 1: Um there there are walls of pictures of all kinds
Speaker 1: of notable figures, including many past presidents of many political affiliations.
Speaker 1: So it is not just that makes it funny, so
Speaker 1: funny too. It would be like if you left the
Speaker 1: studio and I took a piece of paper you had
Speaker 1: written a note on, and I was like, here, Tracy
Speaker 1: Wilson wrote a note, except I'm not president uh, and
Speaker 1: then uh to wrap up tell us the ghosts ghost story. So, yes,
Speaker 1: all good old inns have a ghost story, and the
Speaker 1: one at the Grove Park is the Pink Lady. The
Speaker 1: story goes that the Pink Lee is a woman who
Speaker 1: fell to her death from one of the upper floors
Speaker 1: of the Palm Court. So the Palm Court is sort
Speaker 1: of the central room area of the historic and it's
Speaker 1: built like an atrium, and so the rooms are around
Speaker 1: the side and there's a long drop down into the
Speaker 1: bottom if you're on one of the upper floors. So allegedly,
Speaker 1: sometime during the nineteen twenties, a woman fell from one
Speaker 1: of these upper floors and died, although we're not really
Speaker 1: sure who this might have been. Um Now she is
Speaker 1: said to haunt room five forty five, although in a
Speaker 1: very friendly way. Everyone describes her as a you know,
Speaker 1: a benevolent ghost who is playful and likes children, not
Speaker 1: a nice creepy way like the previous errors of the
Speaker 1: inn where they ask guests to not bring your children
Speaker 1: and bring your kids. He's okay with it now. It
Speaker 1: is fine to bring children to the Grove Park. There
Speaker 1: are no signs everywhere about how you had better not
Speaker 1: be a sick person if you were coming to stay there.
Speaker 1: Um that the whole Now, it's definitely you know, a
Speaker 1: nice place for people and families to come and take
Speaker 1: a visit, uh with lots of gracious people. I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to sound like an ad for them, but I
Speaker 1: felt that to be true while I worked there, and
Speaker 1: I felt that to be true recently when I got
Speaker 1: to stay there. I wonder if many many people request five, Well,
Speaker 1: they don't really announce this is the haunted room. You
Speaker 1: can find that on the internet though that a lot
Speaker 1: of the rooms in the historic main Inn have little
Speaker 1: labels on them of like the famous historical person that
Speaker 1: stayed in that room, especially if the person stayed there
Speaker 1: for a really long time. Uh So, the room that
Speaker 1: we got to stay in was just down the hall
Speaker 1: from the suite of the suite of rooms that f
Speaker 1: Scott Fitzgerald stayed in, which was kind of I found
Speaker 1: that to be kind of cool. We pretty much the
Speaker 1: whole time we were there, when we were not eating food,
Speaker 1: we were wandering around the hotel looking at all of
Speaker 1: these historical things. Because even though I worked there for
Speaker 1: two years, I didn't get to you know, walk around
Speaker 1: and look at historical from the case of the employees,
Speaker 1: are really cool places. Never get to appreciate those places.
Speaker 1: I was underground. So um, if you were interested in
Speaker 1: all of this, uh, there is a book by Bruce
Speaker 1: Johnson called Built for the Ages, A History of the
Speaker 1: Grove Park in that includes just pages and pages of
Speaker 1: historical photograph the whole thing being built. Um, all kinds
Speaker 1: of interesting facts about the history of the hotel that
Speaker 1: we did not go into here. It's it's basically from
Speaker 1: start to finish, the whole thing lovely, lovely black and
Speaker 1: white pictures of people in there, you know, twenties attire,
Speaker 1: hanging out with the Grove Park. So, yes, that is
Speaker 1: the Grove Park. If I were an extremely rich person,
Speaker 1: you would go there frequently. I would, But I am not,
Speaker 1: and so go there. I go there on the generosity
Speaker 1: of other people. I did get to stay there when
Speaker 1: I was working there one time because I I won
Speaker 1: a stay at the holiday party. That's a big deal. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I have some listener mail. Correctly you share it,
Speaker 1: I will. This is from Gregory. Gregory says Holly and Tracy. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of your podcast. You both make
Speaker 1: my commute to and from work much more bearable. Thank you, Greg,
Speaker 1: actually says Greg at the bottom, so I actually call
Speaker 1: him Greg. I also listened to your show all Right
Speaker 1: Around with my four year old son Thor. We were
Speaker 1: recently listening to your episode about the Flannon Aisle lighthouse disappearance,
Speaker 1: and he has been talking about it ever since. We
Speaker 1: talked about it all of the time, and he keeps
Speaker 1: coming up with his own theories about what happened to
Speaker 1: the three workers. Here are a few that he asked
Speaker 1: me to submit for your consideration. The workers met some
Speaker 1: mermaids and went to live with them. I think that
Speaker 1: sounds fun a und of that breathing problem. It sounds
Speaker 1: like a great way to go. We'll just get the
Speaker 1: sea witch to take care of that for us, an
Speaker 1: exchange for something that makes us crucially individual with I
Speaker 1: was singing in the Futurama solution which is non delightful.
Speaker 1: That seemed to work. O we could we could have
Speaker 1: gilly weed from Herry Potter. Yeah, there are options, so
Speaker 1: back it's growing sla. The next choice was less delightful.
Speaker 1: A sea monster at them. Well yeah, and then the
Speaker 1: next one is a mummy took them. Huh. Seafery mummies
Speaker 1: not so well known, but I'm not willing to rule
Speaker 1: it out. Well, if if they had proper, you know,
Speaker 1: desiccant on board, they could probably deal with that. And
Speaker 1: then my personal favorite, someone dressed up as a mummy
Speaker 1: or a werewolf or a sea monster and kidnapped them
Speaker 1: and then he hasn't got the seas. Thor is also
Speaker 1: a fan of Scooby Doo. Thanks for making a great
Speaker 1: show and for giving my son and I have something
Speaker 1: to talk about. Greg. This is seriously one of the
Speaker 1: most delightful. Thank you Thor for having these wonderful ideas
Speaker 1: about the plan and I'll lighthouse and thank you Greg
Speaker 1: for sharing them with us. That's how history semesteries are solved,
Speaker 1: first brain storming possibilities and then seeing how they could
Speaker 1: have played out well. And I love the idea of
Speaker 1: of of parents and kids talking about whatever they've been
Speaker 1: listening to her watching. I remember when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: my mom and I would go to the movies. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite things was apt in the movie talking
Speaker 1: to my mom about a movie. M Yeah, we would
Speaker 1: do that on the way home. It was just me
Speaker 1: and my mom. For some reason, my brother I guess
Speaker 1: would be camping with my dad or something. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't remember my brother being president during this talk, right,
Speaker 1: did have one? I do have one? My brother is
Speaker 1: in the present tense. I should thank him again for
Speaker 1: contributing to your stay and helping make it a feasible
Speaker 1: for us to spend a night there. So, okay, if
Speaker 1: you would like to write to us, there are so
Speaker 1: many ways you can do so. We are at History
Speaker 1: Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Facebook at
Speaker 1: facebook dot com slash history class stuff, and on Twitter
Speaker 1: at missed in History. Our tumbler is at missed in
Speaker 1: History dot tumbler dot com. And after we're done here,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go pen a bunch of group park and
Speaker 1: stuff on pinteres. If you would like to learn a
Speaker 1: little more of the kookier side of what we talked
Speaker 1: about today, go to our website and put the word
Speaker 1: Ashville in the search bar. You will find an article
Speaker 1: called how the five day weekend works, which, if you
Speaker 1: know anything about Asheville, it is not surprising at all
Speaker 1: that that idea originated. There. You can learn a whole
Speaker 1: lot more about that and many many other subjects at
Speaker 1: our website, which is how stuff works dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it
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