Lets start off by saying my history with this place is pretty good. I know alot about it and it was a regular spot as a kid. The hotel was a highlight of the area, had the best views and food in town, and was hard to find it with vacancy on the weekends. We have been hundreds of times exploring or even just hanging out. We've seen it all. Run out by groundskeepers, police, crack heads ripping boards off doors, wild teenagers vandalizing, people smoking pot, taggers, you name it. We have also watched the place deteriorate by day. Walls sagging lower and lower, floors becoming more angles, walls fully collapsing on the the front porch, immense vandalism. I first started exploring the hotel in the fall of 2015 after not being there since around 2 years prior. It started out as just an exploration but led to an obsession. I wanted to eat, sleep, and breath the history of this once grand place from my childhood. I would go every weekend. I would put countless hours into editing videos on the place and researching its history. At one point I would tell the history and story of the old hotel to strolling tourists coming to see the view that General Washington said was worth a trip across the Atlantic.
My obsession grew to an extent where I became angry with the owners for letting a once Harpers Ferry staple that had so much history behind its walls to crumble to ruin beyond repair. We began attempting to clean up what was called the annex in the summer of 2016 in an attempt to at least save one part of the place's history. The annex was pretty much a house with motel rooms built off the back and a conference center in the basement. We still continue to care about the property and the greedy owners want to watch it to fall so they can claim they're check on it. Hopefully one day it will be rebuilt as it once was and those same troves of people will flock back for some home made fried chicken or a hefty Sunday Brunch at the Hilltop House. Now onto the history.
The hotel was built in 1888 by an African American man named Thomas S. Lovett. Thomas dreamed of building a grand hotel overlooking John Browns act. The hotel burns to the ground in 1912 and its replacment does the same in 1917 only to be rebuilt again. In 2008 Swan Ventures buys the hotel and claims there is severe structural damage. The hotel is closed going into 2009 and every piece of historic Harpers Ferry furniture is sold. All the historical files, light fixtures, front desk, doors, keys, and other things are left to rot. Plans are made to demolish the historic and beloved hotel to build a remade version looking more like the one built in 1912 and being much bigger, in fact way to big for what the town wanted. The town council stops plans. The hotel continues to decay more and more each day until it eventually collapses.
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