As the saying goes, when one door closes, another opens. In our case, when all the hotels are full because of a university home football game, you can find new and unexpected places you never knew you wanted to visit. That’s how I felt about the Blackburn Inn.
When I can, I like to gift experiences instead of things, so when I lucked up on inexpensive tickets to see UVA and Florida State while we happened to be in Charlottesville, I grabbed them for Bryan’s birthday surprise.
But our busy schedules left little time for planning, and by the time we realized we needed to book a hotel room, everything (within reason) was full. I left it to Bryan, because he loves the challenge, and he’s good at finding deals.
When I asked him where we were staying, he just casually said he’d found an inn in Staunton (Virginia).
He knows I love historic, old places. We live in a fairly old home (built in 1936) and we have enjoyed renovating with updates that maintain its charm.
We got to Staunton late at night, so imagine my surprise when we turned onto a lane flanked by weeping willow trees, a harvest moon glowing behind tatters of clouds. I saw a building with majestic columns that seemed to stretch for miles, a fountain, the shadow of a gazebo.
I would learn that the Blackburn Inn was built between 1825 and 1828 by Thomas Blackburn, who at age 26 began working with Thomas Jefferson in 1821 as he was building the University of Virginia.
It was designed to be a state hospital, which was its function until 1976. After that, it was the Staunton Correctional Center from 1981 to 2002.
It’s a tedious process, a balancing act, to revise and restore a piece of history without betraying what first made it beautiful. Flanked by those massive columns, you enter through its narrow, heavy front door, walking on original pine floors through curved arches. Straight ahead, you find sweeping curved staircases, a library to the right with its original fireplace. Long hallways with high ceilings are punctuated with sweeping arches. The doors have original cast iron knobs with horizontal rim locks.
But what struck me the most were two tiny panels at the tops of many of the doors, designed perhaps for food and medicine to be given to someone on the other side, without the risk of escape or injury.
It was midnight, and we were tired, but we were too excited to sleep. We explored for a while, finding our way to the spiral staircase on the second floor that leads to a cupola. Soft lights illuminated the dome at the top. Stepping out onto the roof, we were rewarded with a 360 degree view of the Blackburn Inn’s 80 acres, and so many of the buildings that have yet to be renovated.
The next day, we walked among those buildings, where ivy creeps up walls and into broken windows. My trade is the study of language, particularly the kind of words and writing we do when no one’s looking, so I want so badly to see those walls inside, to read what the people confined there had to say. (Not surprisingly, those buildings are unsafe and off limits.) But there’s beauty in their bones, their grandeur. Even with the dark history that hides in the hallways, you can see the promise of what they’ll be.
Walking down a path we see the remains of what looks like a dairy farm, and nearby, a watch tower overgrown with ivy and weathered.
Still further is a hill, and a grove of trees. “What am I looking at there?” Bryan says, and I use my phone to zoom in on the dark spots dotting the hillside.
Graves.
The front desk clerk confirms what we suspect: that these rows and rows of square, uniform gravestones belonged to patients and inmates. There are so many, all nameless, without dates So many of these old buildings yet to be renovated sit adjacent to the graveyard that I wonder what it felt like to know that place would be the end of the line for so many people.
But away from that space there were orchards, farmland, gardens, places where patients were-at one time-encouraged to stroll and be restored by nature.
Back inside, we see watercolors of Blackburn’s architectural plans decorating the walls. An art gallery with paintings for sale by local artists can be found on the third floor.
Our room, with its high ceilings and pine floors hints at what it used to be, those old doors with the iron knobs and two little panels.There is no traditional closet; a niche with a hook at wood hangers offers just enough space to hang clothes. Glass and industrial hardware in the bathroom. Neutral colors. It is one of the most beautiful and relaxing spaces I’ve ever been in. I don’t want to leave.
Our breakfast is included in the little bistro near our room: (mouth-watering scones, fruit, and yogurt) so we take it onto the terrace where we notice the iron fence in the distance separating the property and the highway. I later find out that the fence was installed in the 1800’s to keep the public from using the front lawn as a picnic area, which interfered with the patients’ privacy.
As we walk through the halls and along the pathways between buildings, I tell Bryan that if ghosts exist, surely this is the place to encounter them. But on this visit, they leave us alone. #virginiainns @blackburninn #oldhotels #mustsee #romanticgetaway
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