9 April 2003
Rebecca Lythgoe Critograph Reporter
The story of Westover Hall began long before Josephus and Sarah Hopwood bought the building to house what was then called Virginia Christian College.
“Westover was modeled on a French chateau,”, alumna and history Professor Dorothy-Bundy Potter said. Specifically, the hotel built in 1891 was modeled after the Chateau Chambord.
Designed by a New York architect, Westover Hotel, originally West Lynchburg Inn, had mixed success from the beginning. Library archives report the hotel was sold once before Dr. Hopwood bought it, although reports vary as to when the hotel was sold.
The hotel was built near mineral springs and had a variety of amenities to attract guests, including croquet, shuffleboard, tennis and bowling alleys, according to the Lynchburg College Library archives.
Edmund Potter’s thesis “Westover: The Changing Functions of a Resort Structure” states the hotel “became the victim of an economic depression and financial mismanagement.”
The hotel was auctioned off and Hopwood bought the property for $12,500, according to Dr. Michael Santos, director of the Center of the History and Culture of Central Virginia and LC history professor: Currently Santos is working on a book chronicling the first 100 years of LC.
The building was renamed Westover Hall. It stood four stories tall and was constructed completely of wood.
The building was in the shape of a T, had two corner turrets and was encircled by three -levels of balconies and verandas.
Library archives stated that the building was the “largest French chateau ever seen in Piedmont, Virginia.”
However, the hotel was not suited for being a yearlong place to work, study and live when Hopwood purchased it. The hotel was renovated to suit the college’s needs. Library archives noted that a steam plant was added to heat the building. The hotel’s dining room was converted into a chapel, while the basement bar was turned into a dining room. The floors were altered to separate the sexes since the college was to be co-educational.
As the college grew and changed, Westover Hall was renovated to fit the role it needed to fill. Later, the large rooms became dining rooms and classrooms, the chapel briefly became a gym and then later a dining hall. The basement was turned into a recreational room suited for dancing. In the beginning years, Westover was the entire campus. –
Beginning in the 1930s the LC administration began to show disinterest in the founding building. According to Santos, there was a discussion of tearing down the two turrets, bricking Westover Hall and changing the name to Hopwood Memorial Hall. The lack of money made the plan impossible and Westover remained untouched.
It was “really a unique building,” Santos said. But it didn’t fit architecturally with the other buildings on campus that were all brick.
By the late 1960s administration built Montgomery Hall to replace Westover and decided to tear the building down. The college administration felt that the building being an all-wooden structure was a fire hazard, too expensive to heat and cool, therefore, not an efficient use of the heating plant. It also required repainting on occasion, Santos said. Westover Hall was torn down in August 1970.
“It took three whacks [from the wrecking ball] before the building even took a dent,” Santos said. Alumni were extremely upset, Dorothy-Bundy Potter said. They had planned an alumni dance in Westover for October and were not told that the building would be torn down.
To the alumni, the building wasn’t just another dorm. Although neither Dorothy-Bundy Potter nor Dr. Clifton W. Potter, professors of history and alumnus, lived in Westover, they said the building was very much a part of their college experience.
Both had friends who lived in the building. Dorothy-Bundy Potter, who spent her four years at LC in Hundley Hall, regarded Hundley as only a. place to sleep, while Westover was where she spent most of her time.
She recalled the girls lying out on the second floor tin roof with a blanket and a water spray bottle sunbathing. They would take turns reading to each other from popular novels. Boys waited outside hoping to catch a glimpse of the girls in their bathing suits when carpenter bees made the girls jump up screaming.
“Walking in that building sort of made me decide to come here,” Clifton Potter said.
Today, Westover Hall lives on; alumni remember fondly the building that was so central to their college life. The mace that is carried by the college marshal at formal college ceremonies is made from a piece of Westover wood, Santos stated.
According to Dr. Clifton W. Potter there has been talk among the alumni to lay a brick outline in the Dell where Westover Hall once stood. Right now, there is only the Westover Garden across from Snidow Chapel, alumni stories and pictures of the building to remember Westover Hall.