Travel
Hill Hall: From Schoolhouse to Stylish Stay Near New River Gorge
Two former schools in Fayetteville, West Virginia, are reborn into a design-forward hotel just minutes from the national park
Talk to most boutique inn developers these days about inspiration, and you’ll likely hear phrases like “hospitality-forward,” “design-led,” and “locally rooted”—buzzwords that have become shorthand for highly curated stays. Then there’s Stephen Wendell, CEO of Mountain Shore Properties. When I asked what inspired his latest hotel, the forty-key Hill Hall in Fayetteville, West Virginia, he didn’t hesitate: “My grandmother has been the North Star of every decision.”
Wendell’s granny, Pat Phillips Wendell, was a pillar of Fayetteville. An antiques dealer by day, she became the town’s unofficial historian and was instrumental in getting Fayetteville’s historic district added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
“She did all of this pre-computer,” Wendell says. And thanks in large part to her work, his new boutique inn, built within the town’s former middle and high schools, was possible. “Without that designation, we could not have gotten these historic buildings, which had sat vacant since the ’90s.”
Today, the halls that once bustled with students have a second life—the principal’s office is the check-in desk, the former chemistry lab is, fittingly, the bar—and the timing couldn’t be better. In 2020, New River Gorge became the country’s newest national park, putting Fayetteville, its de facto gateway, on the radar of a new wave of travelers. The Canyon Rim Visitor Center is just a short drive from downtown, yet until Hill Hall’s arrival, overnight options leaned heavily toward rustic cabins and vacation rentals. The new hotel gives visitors a stylish West Virginia welcome that has Pat’s fingerprints all over it.
“The restaurant is named Patsy’s after her, so we had to include some of her recipes,” Wendell says. At the honey-hued wood bar, guests can sip cocktails with a bowl of Pat’s beloved Chex mix on the side. Chef Jeffrey Toth started with Pat’s well-worn recipe book and has been reinterpreting her home cooking (think mustard greens and meatloaf) for hotel guests.
That sense of nostalgia carries beyond the restaurant. Throughout the former school, where classrooms have become guest rooms, a midcentury-modern aesthetic with a hint of Wes Anderson plays off the buildings’ past. The dining room displays books in a library-esque stack. The lounge has a mural of the region by West Virginia artist Nichole Westfall. Mae Pate, head of design at Mountain Shore Properties, led the look of the rooms and public spaces, channeling their history in her material choices and furnishings. But former students will spot more direct shadows of the school’s former life, as Wendell recently witnessed when alums returned for an August soft opening.
“There are some Easter eggs for former Pirates,” he says. The Wi-Fi password, for one, offers a wink to those in the know. A mural of the swashbuckling school mascot makes a subtler cameo, tucked into the design for sharp-eyed alums to find. Wendell hopes these little details will tempt graduates back for a staycation.
For everyone else, there’s plenty of reason to check in: cozy, character-rich interiors that wouldn’t look out of place in a West Virginia reboot of The Grand Budapest Hotel; home-cooked comforts at Patsy’s, from honey-butter wings to blackberry cobbler; and, just beyond the doors, the wilds of New River Gorge, including what Wendell calls “world-class rapids that should not be trifled with.”
I asked him what Pat would think if she could see what he’s built in the town she loved so much.
“What would she say? I think about that often. It makes me a bit emotional. I think she’d be what she used to call ‘tickled,’” Wendell says. “This state is often overlooked; therefore, the town is overlooked. I think she’d be most proud that Fayetteville is getting its due and deserving of it.”
Kinsey Gidick is a freelance writer based in Central Virginia. She previously served as editor in chief of Charleston City Paper in Charleston, South Carolina, and has been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Travel + Leisure, BBC, Atlas Obscura, and Anthony Bourdain’s Explore Parts Unknown, among others. When not writing, she spends her time traveling with her son and husband. Read her work at kinseygidick.com.