Even without that spiral staircase that affords an exit for spectacular sunset views and views of the city of Staunton, the Blackburn Inn and Conference Center is a study in history, beauty, serenity, and uniqueness as a hotel for visitors to this city in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.
In its previous lives, it’s been an insane asylum, a state mental hospital, a medium security prison and abandoned. Today it is on the Nation’s Registry of Historic Sites and is a stately 49 room hotel on 8 acres, the focal point of an array of buildings that are both part of, an independent of, the hotel.
Constructed in 1828 to the design of the state-owned second choice architect, the Blackburn Inn was built and designed by Thomas Blackburn, a distinguished builder of the 19th century. As a young carpenter he had worked on the construction of Thomas Jefferson’s “academical village” at the University of Virginia.
At the same time, Blackburn also studied architectural design under Jefferson, and copies of his drawings seen today show a variety of residential and civic commissions and why he is recognized as a prolific architect. The Blackburn family itself is a study in history with many connections to both Jefferson and George Washington as well as in government.
The Inn was built as the Western State Lunatic Asylum Hospital at a time when the Shenandoah Valley and specifically Staunton were directly on the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road, making it a centrally located site with comparatively easy access from anywhere on the east coast at the time.
It was the idea of the state’s head mental experts at the time that spacious grounds, orchards, pasture lands and the beauty and solitude of nature would help replenish and heal patients staying there. It also gave the patients the opportunity to work on the farms and replenish their own food supplies.
The estate is surrounded by an iron fence around the outskirts of the property, a fence built not to keep patients contained but to keep residents out. At a time when parks were few and far between in Staunton, families took advantage of the lush green lawns for family picnics and games. Hospital leadership thought the crowds would be disturbing for the patients and built the fence.
But that standard of care vanished later in the 19th century, and the hospital was more a place for warehousing patients, with methods that included physical coercion, straitjackets, ankle and wrist restraints, and sterilization of patients. Lobotomies and electroshock were also practiced there when a eugenicist was director of the hospital for the most part of the 20th century until 1943.
The Western State Hospital opened its mental hospital here in 1981, staying until 2002 when it closed and moved to its present location near Highway 81. The state then opened the building as a prison for medium security prisoners and abandoned that use four years later. It was then purchased from the city by Robin Miller and Associates who had many plans for the lush property and buildings, with today’s hotel being a major part of that plan.
One of the buildings on the estate is the chapel visited by President Millard Fillmore during his term in office in 1851 and still the home of a pipe organ donated by a philanthropist traveling with the President. Another is the Spa associated with the hotel,others are private apartments and more.
But it is within the hotel, the former hospital administration building, that today an elevator or walk up to the third floor, and a 25-step staircase to the fourth floor gets you to the base of the 41-step spiral staircase to the highest peak, spectacular sunset viewing, and a high point for viewing the spectacular scenery I all directions.
The staircase was part of Blackburn’s architectural plans and a unique blend of mental health and architecture working together, built to enable patients to climb the steps to view mountains and beauty, part of the hospital’s original prescription for improved mental health.
As a hotel in a town of numerous B&Bs, the Blackburn Inn is probably the best bargain in the accommodation business in town, a few blocks, walkable and up and down hills designed only for the sturdy, from the historic areas of town, comfortable, clean, friendly, and loaded with the simple amenities one expects in a quality hotel.
It needs a larger staff, hopefully as friendly and accommodating as the skeleton staff on duty now, a restaurant that’s open for lunch or dinner every night, perhaps a cocktail lounge as well, and a visit from the tourism department of Staunton to make it near perfect.
Mr. Jefferson would be proud!
Read my other story on the Blackburn Inn HERE
