Hill Top House Hotel

[1] The original hotel was built in 1888 and operated until shortly before his death by Thomas S. Lovett, an African-American graduate of Harpers Ferry's Storer College, at the time the only college in the state of West Virginia that accepted students of all skin colors.

The hotel, the college, John Brown's Fort, and the Island Park Resort and Amusement Park combined to make Harpers Ferry a center of African-American tourism and a frequent excursion from Baltimore and Washington, D.C. With two structures lost to fire, but insured and rebuilt, the hotel operated until 2007, when it had deteriorated beyond reasonable repair.

As one of the few larger hotels in the U.S. owned by African Americans, located in a place of historic significance, where the end of slavery began, and a short train ride from Washington, D.C., the hotel experienced phenomenal success serving a White clientele.

Luminaries who visited the Hill Top House Hotel include former Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge and Bill Clinton, as well as Vice President Al Gore, Mark Twain, Carl Sandburg, Alexander Graham Bell, Pearl S. Buck, W. E. B.

[7] According to Karen Schaufeld, “We’ll be putting it back up in approximately the same footprint of the original hotel and the dance pavilion that were there in 1914."

[8] Some locals oppose the hotel, conference center, and cooking school as overdevelopment for such a small village as is Harpers Ferry.