Historic West Virginia

Yogi Berra once said to trust your instincts, keep trying, and, most importantly, act. For years, I have been traveling to the southeast corner of West Virginia, exploring its many one-lane roads and scenic byways and taking in all the Mountain State had to offer.  The desire for wanderlust was just too great.

Places like the old Lynnside were evocative of that feeling. Nestled back on a farm with Moss Mountain looming in the background, the residence had not been used in many decades.

In 1760, John Lewis made the first survey in what is now Monroe County. One of his sons, William Lewis, founded the Sweet Springs Resort in 1774 and constructed Lynnside, his residence, circa 1780.

Lynnside was rebuilt in the Greek Revival architectural style in 1845 by William Lynn Lewis, grandson of William Lewis. The house was heavily vandalized during the Civil War by Union soldiers who camped on the grounds of the property, mainly because of its close association with Confederate General John B. Floyd. In 1933, Lynnside was struck by lightning, causing a small fire to break out at the house. By the time firefighters arrived at Lynnside, the place had effectively been gutted.

The house owner at the time, Coralie Lewis, had the roof and windows replaced and the interior wall partitions and floors replaced but ran out of funds before the project could be fully completed. The house has remained unoccupied since the fire.

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Around the bend, along the Virginia state line, lay the closed Sweet Springs Resort. Sweet Springs was a springs resort, sanatorium, hospital, and nursing home. In use from 1833 until 1993, the complex was host to Martin Van Buren, Pierce, and Fillmore, among many others, and was the subject of the documentary “Return to Old Sweet.”

The resort was founded in the early 1800s. Its reported healing waters attracted city dwellers from Washington, D.C., and other nearby towns, who would travel to the remote area via train and buggy. Doctors claimed the waters cured everything from arthritis to depression.

In 1839, a 90,000-square-foot building designed by William B. Phillips was constructed. Local lore claims the building was designed by Jefferson, although no notes from Jefferson’s meticulous records mentioned Sweet Springs.

Over the years, five brick guest cottages, a ballroom, a brick bathhouse, and several slave cottages were constructed. The guest cottages, which became known as the “Five Sisters,” were developed by General John Echols, Senator Allen Taylor Caperton, and Oliver Bierne in 1852. The cabins were planned to be built semi-circularly, but only half were ever completed.

Sweet Springs did not operate during the Civil War and struggled to regain popularity afterward. It closed for several years, beginning in 1928, and went into receivership in 1930. The then-685-acre resort was sold to the state in 1941 as a tuberculosis sanitarium. After tuberculosis became more manageable and cases dropped, the complex was converted into the Andrew Rowan Memorial Home for the elderly.

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

In 2005, the West Virginia Division of Culture and History designated Sweet Springs one of its most valuable and endangered historic resources. The spring house, which was vacant and deteriorating, was in a state of collapse.

Warren D. Smith, the owner of Fredericksburg’s Chrismarr Realty and a member of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, stumbled upon the Sweet Springs site in 2002, but the private owner of the dormant resort refused to sell until 2004. Smith founded the Sweet Springs Management Company and began to bottle and sell Sweet Spring’s water under the Sweet Sommer label. The water was noted for its fresh, smooth taste and its natural carbonation. Its waters were ranked among the top 10 at the International Water Tasting Festival.

Smith requested bids in 2007 to stabilize the bathhouse and to develop a phased reconstruction of the structure. The state also leased 625 adjacent acres to Smith, who planned on constructing a golf course on the site, along with skiing facilities, stables, a shooting range, gardens and orchards, a vineyard, and other resort amenities.

The latter plans never came to light as Smith died in 2010.

Despite years of working with Smith and his team on documenting Sweet Springs, I could not visit the interior until 2015. On November 12, 2015, Sweet Springs Resort was auctioned to Ashby Berkley for $560,000, so the next chapter of Sweet Springs begins.

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Elsewhere in the state lies the remains of another abandoned estate. The Morris Memorial Hospital for Crippled Children is a historical hospital complex that was built in phases from 1936 to 1941 by the Works Progress Administration for children stricken with polio.

The “U”-shaped building, crafted with a cut limestone exterior, consists of a two-story central section with a domed and louvered cupola a two-story porch, and 1½-story “Y”-shaped wings. Initially, the sides featured narrow metal casement doors leading from an exterior concrete terrace to a patient’s room. Both wings were initially set aside as open wards but were later enclosed.

The hospital included five wards: two for females, two for males, and one that served as an isolation ward. Additionally, there were 32 private rooms.

The east wing features two gable wings that house the therapy room with weights and a whirlpool, as well as a large room with two brine pools and a pool fed by an on-site 1,000-foot well. An x-ray department, operating rooms, and a laboratory rounded out the wing. A “T”-shaped wing from the east wing featured a two-room school and a 2,000-volume library. Attached to the school is a corridor that connected to the boiler house, which consists of two boilers that provide steam heat. A 60-foot brick smokestack led the exhaust out.

Morris Memorial Hospital was mainly self-sufficient. In addition to the hospital, the property featured a large dairy barn that housed up to 30 milk cows, 85 acres for pasture, and a 25-acre orchard and garden.

Early treatments for polio involved water therapy via brine pools and whirlpools, exercises, immobilization, and the use of moist, hot cloths on the affected appendages. Polio cases peaked in 1952, with nearly 60,000 reported cases that year. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Dr. Jonas Salk worked on developing a vaccine for polio, and after extensive field trials, the vaccine was considered a success in 1955.

Morris Memorial Hospital began to treat fewer patients due to the vaccine and closed as a children’s hospital in 1960 after treating nearly 10,000 patients.

In 1961, the city of Milton leased the property to the Morris Memorial Nursing Home. The nursing home was operational until February 2009, when it closed due to low patient numbers.