Margaret Mitchell wrote part of her famous novel there, but like the title, the original Green Park Inn is “Gone With The Wind.”
And she wasn’t the only one. Eleanor Roosevelt stayed at the Green Park Inn. So did John D. Rockefeller, Annie Oakley, a few presidents, even members of the band, the Smiths stayed there.
When John Mathias Bernhardt (they called him Barny around Lenoir) left the job of running the Lenoir Furniture Factory (the town’s first), he went to Blowing Rock and began the high country’s tourist industry by building its first luxury hotel. With investment from his soon-to-be father-in-law, George Washington Finley Harper (known as “Major,” his Confederate rank in the Civil War), Bernhardt created a unique landmark.
Bernhardt grew up in Lenoir. Both his parents died over the winter of 1877, leaving he and brother George Lynn Bernhardt, orphans. They worked at a general store in Lenoir owned by Major Harper, who helped Barny attend college at Davidson, the Major’s alma mater. For three years, Bernhardt worked as a surveyor in Oregon before returning to western NC. He used his skills as a timber man to get into the lumber business.
By 1891, Barny had completed his opulent new venture. The Green Park Inn welcomed its first guests that summer, opening the mountains to something it had never seen before, wealthy vacationers. Before then, those who could afford extended stays to enjoy cooler air and flee from the threat of miasmic diseases of the low country, stayed in towns that could only see the mountains. In the 1880s, Hickory and Catawba Springs were about as far away as tourists could get. That changed when the doors of the Green Park Inn opened.
Each of Bernhardt’s 60 rooms had a fireplace, running water, electric alarm bells for summoning servants and furniture that came from Barny’s previous gig in Lenoir. It was Victorian fancy with a ballroom for dancing, a bowling alley, tennis court, shooting gallery and billiard room for gaming, along with a first class dining room. The Green Park Inn offered everything needed to idly pass away the time during an extended vacation.
Over the years, the Green Park Inn hosted multitudes. It served as a sentry into the High Country, letting travelers heading up 321 know that they had reached the summit, complete with a green horse as a mascot of sorts. Supposedly, it was haunted. With that many guests, how could it not be. However, what most passersby did not know was that the 1891 foundations were rotting away, thus the deterioration of the Inn. This summer began the demolition. By 2028, a new Green Park Inn will be built, smaller with some relics of the previous structure preserved.
Goodbye, Green Park Inn. I hope they keep the horse.
Photos: Supposedly built on the site of a late Civil War Federal garrison, the Green Park Inn stood for 134 years before it came down this summer. John Mathias Bernhardt standing behind his in-laws, the Major and his brother-in-law George Finley Harper.
