Ain't They Grand!

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Unsparing Style
Grove Park Inn Asheville, N.C.
Since Elaine Sammons and her late husband Charles bought the now 88-year-old Grove in 1955, they've spent almost $200 million restoring its elegance as they have brought it up to date. Perhaps the most spectacular project so far is a just-opened $40 million, 40,000-sq.-ft. spa. Its theme is consistent with the style that distinguishes the entire property and moved Architectural Digest to judge Grove Park "one of the most important and most well-preserved vestiges of the Arts and Crafts movement." Built from huge boulders so that only unfinished rock face is exposed on the outside, the 510-room hotel is also filled with Roycrofters furniture and hammered copper lighting fixtures.

Not everything in the inn's past is worthy of restoration. The original guests, who often stayed for months, had to book long in advance, present letters of reference, leave young children behind, make no noise and run no water in the room after 10:30 p.m. Those who laughed too loudly in public rooms were presented with a printed card requesting that they modify their behavior. Today's guests can bathe whenever they want and laugh to their heart's content. They can book at the last minute, stay for just a day or two and find many programs designed just for children. The hotel, rated four-star by Mobil, still delivers on the best of its original owner's dream--that it "should present a home-like and wholesome simplicity...inviting the traveler to rest a while, shut in from the busy world outside."

Some Like It Exotic
Hotel Del Coronado Coronado, Calif.
A movie critic who first saw the Del Coronado in Some Like It Hot described it as "an uproariously improbable set." Built with state-of-the-art technology, including elevators, fire-fighting equipment and water pressure in the bathrooms, the Del was expected by the two Midwesterners who built it in 1888 "to be the talk of the Western world." Indeed, the Queen Anne-style hotel is judged one of America's most beautiful and family-friendly hotels. Some guests arrived in private railcars, and many checked in for a whole season and sent their children to a hotel-run school.

Located on 26 acres of the Coronado peninsula in San Diego Bay, the hotel has been the setting for more than 30 movies and television shows. It was home away from home to 10 Presidents and countless celebrities. But when its last private owner died in the early '90s, it began to slip into obscurity.

Then, in 1997, Destination Hotel & Resorts acquired it and began a 20-year restoration and enhancement project. So far, the cost has been more than $55 million for improvements that include retrofitting the 389-room main building to more than meet California earthquake standards. Rooms have been reconfigured and refurbished; restaurants, terraces and an oceanfront lawn have been added. Pending discussions with civic and environmental groups, the corporation hopes to build more guests rooms, a vast conference center and a spa-and-fitness facility; add more green space; place most parking underground; and restore a classic garden.

No Stone Unturned
The Breakers Palm Beach, Fla.
When the Breakers was rebuilt in 1926, the cost was $6 million--a substantial amount for that time, but nothing compared with the cost of its latest nine-year restoration: $135 million. That money bought a revitalization as well as a renovation: guest rooms were done over twice; a 20,000-sq.-ft. oceanfront spa and fitness center was built; so was a new ballroom, and lobbies and loggia were restored. New restaurants and bars were added, as were adjoining tennis and golf clubs. When the Ocean Course, the oldest 18-hole course in Florida, was recently redesigned by course architect Brian Silva, its transformation was duly noted in golf and travel magazines.

Among the patrician grande dames, the Breakers is regarded as royalty. Its facade is patterned after Rome's Villa Medici. The interior is a riot of tapestries, Renaissance paintings, marble and lush gardens. Until recently, guests who returned year after year to enjoy the grandeur were mostly older. "This was not a resort that was historically family friendly," admits Paul Leone, president of Flagler System, the private, family-run company that has always owned the Breakers. "Back in the '20s, for example, the scene was very formal--the men in black tie." In the mid-'90s, management reached out to younger guests, visitors who expected spas and activities for all family members. "We had to listen to our customers," says Leone, "to turn over every stone." So the Breakers did that, even in the golf course, where local shells and stones were used to create convenient new cart paths with a vintage look.