The Sweet Springs Sanitarium is located on 23 acres in Monroe County, West Virginia. The Sweet Springs area was settled by James Moss in 1760. William Lewis bought the village site in 1792. William Lewis apparently had turned over the Sweet Springs property to his son John before 1805. John leased the Sweet Springs property to Robert and George Turner for approximately eight years. According to some records, the Turners agreed to keep the courthouse and jail in good repair, not to permit timber to be cut, and not to allow any tenants on the land.

In 1839, a 110,000 square foot hotel was completed and opened as Sweet Springs Resort. The resort was also known as “Old Sweet.”

The grand hotel (the Jefferson Building) was built in 1839. The building was designed by William B. Phillips, who worked with Thomas Jefferson at the University of Virginia campus. Some locals believe that the building was designed by Jefferson. The original cabins were replaced with a huge two-story brick building that was 250 feet wide and forty feet deep. The upstairs contained thirty-six bedrooms that were approximately fourteen square feet. The dining room was on the first floor and was 160 feet long. There was a ladies drawing room and a ballroom that measured forty by forty-eight feet. The basement area was used for a kitchen, bar, storerooms, and offices. The basement also had two reception rooms. One was used to receive the ladies and the other was used to receive the gentlemen. The piazza was seventeen feet wide and extended the entire length of the building.

There were brick arches with three sets of stairs.

These stairs were the sides of three porticos that make up the front of the building.



When Oliver Beirne became the owner of the resort, his idea was to make a semi-circle of buildings with the bathhouse somewhere near the center. Five brick cottages were constructed in a semi-circle eastward from the Jefferson Building toward the Central Building. The property’s guest cottages became known as the “Five Sisters” and were developed by General John Echols, Senator Allen Taylor Caperton and Oliver Bierne in 1852.

There were plans to build another row of five cottages on the other side with a second great hotel completing the semi-circle but this never happened. Directly behind the Central building stood a brick building originally used as slave quarters but was later used as bachelor’s quarters.

The property includes an 1830’s brick bathhouse of warm mineral springs.

The building was about two hundred yards from the main hotel and had two high towers. There were curved stairways leading to upper rooms in the towers where the bath man and bath maid slept. It is documented that if you stood on the front porch of the hotel, you could see the ladies’ entrance on the right and the gentlemen’s entrance was on the left. A high brick wall divided the pool into two sections.

Famous visitors to Sweet Springs included George and Martha Washington, General Lafayette, Chief Justice John Marshall, Jerome Bonaparte, Patrick Henry, James and Dolley Madison, and Robert E. Lee. Presidents Pierce and Fillmore also visited the resort.

The resort was sold in 1852 after Lewis incurred large personal debt. The Beirne and Caperton families managed the resort until 1860. Sweet Springs Resort did not operate during the Civil War. It is documented that the resort was visited by Union forces under the command of General David Hunter in June of 1864. Union forces reportedly camped near Sweet Springs but there are no records of the property being damaged.

In 1903 the property was sold to the Old Sweet Springs Company led by Charles C. Lewis, Jr. If the debt was not paid, the land was to go back to Oliver Beirne. The resort was sold several times and went into receivership. In 1941, D.M. Taylor of Roanoke, sold the resort to the state of West Virginia to be used a tuberculosis sanitarium.

The state made extensive renovations to the property and after tuberculosis became more manageable, the location was converted into the Andrew Rowan Memorial Home for the elderly.





The state of West Virginia bought the property in 1941 and converted the hotel into a hospital for tuberculosis (TB) patients. From 1945 until 1991 it operated as a home for the elderly.





In 1974, two three-story dormitories were designed by Henry Elden & Associates and constructed by the Kuhn Construction Company. The Andrew Rowan Memorial Home closed in 1993 and the state gave the property to Monroe County. Monroe County planned to convert the property into an addiction treatment facility and borrowed $1.3 million from the Bank of White Sulphur Springs. The plan never became a reality and the county defaulted on the loan.

The location was sold at auction on December 2, 1995 to Dr. Vasu Arora of Grundy, Virginia. In 2002, Warren D. Smith, a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, stumbled upon Sweet Springs property and expressed concern for the historic site. The private owner refused to sell it until 2004. The location had an appraised value of $10 million but Smith paid “considerably less.” It is unclear as to why Dr. Arora did not do anything with the location and refused to sell. However, there are records indicating Dr. Arora as being convicted of writing illegal prescriptions in 2005. The article can be found here:

http://www.aapsonline.org/painman/actionsagainst.htm

The West Virginia Division of Culture and History designated Sweet Springs as one of West Virginia’s most valuable and endangered historic resources. Since the location had been left vacant and deteriorating, the Division was concerned with the collapsed spring house. After purchasing the location, Smith founded the Sweet Springs Management Company and began to bottle and sell Sweet Spring’s water under the Sweet Sommer label.

On September 29, 2007, Smith requested bids from general contractors to plan and implement the full stabilization of the collapsing bath house and to restore the existing resort buildings as a “showcase for historic preservation and economic development.” Later that year, the state of West Virginia leased 625 acres adjacent to the Sweet Springs property for 80-years to Smith. Smith announced plans to construct a golf course on an abandoned 19th century course, an amphitheater, skiing facilities, stables, a shooting range, gardens and orchards, a vineyard and other attractions on the leased property. Smith had also completed structural improvements on a wood-frame men’s house and the brick cottages. Unfortunately Mr. Smith was not able to complete his plans for restoring “Old Sweet” as he passed away on November 26, 2010 at his home in Fredericksburg.

R.I. P. Mr. Smith!

Here is a link to his obituary:

http://www.fredericksburg.com/obituaries/warren-d-smith/article_7721c7e6-1ef2-517a-abd6-a6ff15e4e2fe.html

On November 12, 2015, Sweet Springs Resort was auctioned to Ashby Berkley for $560,000. Ashby Berkley has plans to renovate Sweet Springs Resort and restore it to it’s former beauty. Ashby renovated Pence Springs in the 1980’s so it’s very likely that Mr. Berkley will do justice by Old Sweet.

By: Cindie Harper

Some sources for this article:

Cohen, Stan. Historic Springs of the Virginias. Charleston: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 1981.

Morton, Oren F. A History of Monroe County. Staunton, VA: McClure, 1916, Reprint, Regional Pub. Co., 1974.

McColloch, Jane S. Springs of West Virginia. Morgantown: West Virginia Geological & Economic Survey, 1986.

Johnson, Rody. A Lewis Family Legacy: Old Sweet Springs. Goldenseal, (Summer 2000).

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