The Greenbrier

 hotel, Cold War 1947-1991, bunker, NRHP - National Register of Historic Places, U.S. National Historic Landmark

300 West Main Street
White Sulphur Springs, WV 24986
(844) 837-2466
www.greenbrier.com

Historic luxury resort built by the Chesapeake and Ohio railway in 1913 on the site of an earlier hotel, which had become famous for the medicinal powers of the local spring water. The hotel was taken over by the government during WWII and used first as housing for interned German, Japanese and Italian diplomats and their families, and then as a military hospital.

After the war, the railroad had to restore the building, and chose noted decorator Dorothy Draper to supervise the task. Her combinations of bold primary colors and wild floral motifs created an instantly iconic look, which the hotel has maintained ever since.

The hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990, one of the few resort properties on either list.

During the Cold War, the government found a new use for the hotel. The construction of a new wing of the hotel was used as cover for the building of a massive underground bunker meant to house top members of the government and their families after a nuclear war. The addition contained two above-ground meeting rooms, with 100 and 435 seats respectively, meant as Senate and House chambers. Somehow even these suspicious rooms, which were used continuously for public functions, never tipped anyone off and the secret was maintained until the end of the Cold War, when the Washington Post finally exposed the bunker. It has since been decommissioned and made into a tourist attraction.