Ain't They Grand!

By VALERIE MARCHANT

When they began to open at the beginning of the past century, America's grande-dame resort hotels, with their hundreds of stately rooms, huge, attentive staffs and sumptuous dining, catered to wealthy families who often traveled with servants, arrived in their own train cars and stayed for months at a time. Times changed. The grande dames began to fall out of favor--and some into disrepair.

Now they are coming back. Andy Pesky, president of the premium travel agency ProTravel-The Zenith Group, calls them "the hottest thing out there." While many mid-20th century middle-class folk might have felt uncomfortable in such swanky settings, today, observes Bjorn Hanson of PricewaterhouseCoopers, "everyone has moved up in economic status in their own mind, so everyone feels entitled--even feels that a luxury vacation is a birthright."

Today's grande-dame guests prefer to pamper themselves in these inimitable settings more often but for shorter periods. More and more companies are also choosing them for corporate meetings. Guests know, says Hanson, "they will not have to worry about anything or have to negotiate anything."

Though many are still owned by families or small private partnerships that value tradition, the grande dames are enjoying a renewed commitment by managements willing to invest in the future--and to offer an expanding number of affordable packages. Here's a guide to some of the best.

Silence Is Golden

GRAND HOTEL MACKINAC ISLAND, MICH.

The first guests to arrive at Mackinac (pronounced Mackinaw) Island's Grand Hotel in 1887 were met at the pier by horse-drawn carriages. When they ventured forth from the hotel, it was by horse or buggy or bike. And so it is today, as a ban on automobiles enacted a century ago remains in force. Like those early travelers, today's Grand guests sit in big, wooden rockers on what, at 660 ft., is still the world's longest hotel porch.

Always one of the country's most beloved hotels, the 381-room Grand has been anointed year after year by Conde Nast Traveler as "one of the best places to stay in the world." Unlike many other grande dames, the Grand did not fall on hard times. But as it ages, it requires constant care. The Musser family, which bought it in 1933, has in the past 20 years spent about $50 million on renovations. Last year the family completed the largest addition since the hotel opened, including a Millennium Wing with 42 new rooms and an expanded dining room, more elevators and first-time fiber-optic phone lines. This season the hotel will also offer more packages than it ever has--15 in all, including Somewhere in Time, named for the romantic movie filmed in 1979 at the Grand, which attracts more than 650 guests each summer.

A Southern Belle

THE JEFFERSON RICHMOND, VA.

It takes a lot (including peepholes in every door and 24-hour room service) to qualify for a Mobil five-star rating, and most hotels don't even bother trying. But the current owners of the Jefferson believed five stars were essential to the hotel's success. This year, for the first time in its 105-year history, the Jefferson made it, becoming one of 17 U.S. hotels to hold both a Mobil five-star and a AAA five-diamond rating.

Designed by Carrere and Hastings, architects of the New York Public Library and the Frick, the Jefferson is known for its stained-glass skylight soaring over the Palm Court lobby and its Grand Staircase, down which countless Southern belles and brides have descended. For almost a century, the 260-room hotel was the center of Richmond social life.

In 1991 Richmond businessmen William Goodwin and Beverley Armstrong rescued it from the Sheraton chain, where it was on a "continuous slide with an occupancy rate of only about 50%," according to general manager Joe Longo. Guided by early photographs, management has spent close to $15 million to restore all the rooms to their former glory--and to add a fitness center, luxury pool, glass conservatory and a new courtyard entrance. Says Longo: "Anyone visiting the hotel now would find it difficult to identify a renovation."

Back to the Summit

MOUNT WASHINGTON BRETTON WOODS, N.H.

In the summer of '44, this bucolic hotel at the base of the Presidential Range in New Hampshire's White Mountains might well have been at the top of the world. It was then and there that Franklin D. Roosevelt and the leaders of 43 other nations met under its Spanish Renaissance rooftops and established the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the gold standard--the basic structure of postwar international finance.

Less than 50 years later, its own finances in tatters, the hotel was on the auction block, its occupancy rate for the summer season at only 30%. For a mere $3.5 million, four couples bought the place. Sensible north-country folk, they were quickly operating in the black, drawing only on annual profits for the $12 million needed to renovate and winterize the 200-room palace so it could stay open year round for the first time since it was built in 1902. They also bought back 1,000 acres of the original property.

"Generally, old is bad, and antique is good," observes part-owner Cathy Bedor. "And this hotel is one of a few exquisite properties in the country that made it over the hump of being old to become antique." Bedor admits the hotel's reputation was shot by the time she and her partners bought it but says, "Guests were longing to have any excuse to come back." Many since have--along with new ones, attracted by affordable packages celebrating music, history, dance, sports, holidays and food.

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.