Memories made at the Park View Inn
by John Douglas - 12/13/2006

Right from the start, the Park View Inn was a success. And right from the start, the inn struck its guests as having a somewhat nostalgic quality, almost like the proverbial “grandmother’s house.”

“It wasn’t so much planned that way as it just happened,” William “Bill” Harmison said when I interviewed him about the history of the inn back in September, 1980. Harmison died at age 82 in January, following a long illness. The nephew of inn founders Walter and Jennie Harmison, he worked in the hotel much of his life, doing just about every job at some point.

After the death of his aunt and uncle, Bill and his wife, Betty Lou, ran the business until they sold it in 1972 to Jack and Adele Barker, who changed the name to The Country Inn. Later it was called The Inn & Spa at Berkeley Springs, but Stjepan and Nancy Sostaric, who bought the hotel in October, have returned to The Country Inn name.

“We were never commercial,” Bill Harmison said. “None of us wanted commercialization. It was home to us. It was run as a home. We cared about the guests. Once we got them, we really got them for years. It was almost embarrassing. They’d pay the bill, then you’d get a big bouquet of flowers and thank-you notes.”

“Most of the guests from spring to fall would come for anywhere from two weeks to a month to all summer,” he said. “Before they’d leave, they’d make their reservations for the next summer.”

“I used to tell the guests, ‘If you put up with us, then we’ll put up with you,” Harmison said.

Business built despite the Depression

The story really begins with Walter Harmison, known to everyone as “Toad.” He grew up around hotels and always wanted to own one. He used to say: “You’re an innkeeper or you’re not.” He clearly was.

“My father, Henry Harmison, and Uncle Toady started out at the Hotel Jack in Winchester,” said Bill Harmison. The two brothers ran away and ended up back in Berkeley Springs where the Harmison family had long been involved with the hotel business.

In the 1840s, for instance, Colonel William Harmison operated the Fairfax Inn on Fairfax Street while, about 1870, Toad Harmison’s father drove the stagecoach that brought guests to town from the B&O Railroad Station at Sir Johns Run, a route that was discontinued when Hancock Station opened in 1889.

Both Henry and Toad Harmison worked as bellboys at the Dunn Hotel, which was located where the Magistrate & Family Court building is today. The pair shared in the management of the Dunn in the early 1920s.

Then, in 1929, Toad and his wife Jennie opened the Park View Inn in what is now the Catholic rectory. They had bigger plans, however.

Despite the Great Depression, the Harmisons set out to build a bigger Park View Inn on the vacant lot where the famous Berkeley Springs Hotel once stood. That hotel, once owned by the Strother family, had burned in March, 1898. Often through the years, grand plans were announced for a new hotel next to the springs in the park, but nothing ever came of them until Toad and Jennie Harmison made it happen.

When the new inn opened its doors in 1933, the guests carried their own chairs across Washington Street from the old dining room to the new one. That way the Park View never missed serving a meal.

The Harmisons always believed that such participation by the guests themselves helped give the inn its special quality.

Visitors to Berkeley Springs generally stayed awhile and enjoyed what Bill Harmison called “the simple pleasures.”

Mountain parties &

nightclubbing

Betty Lou Harmison said Toad was a sort of “camp director” at the inn, even if he didn’t realize it. He would organize fishing parties and other activities.

In the 1930s, these outings took the form of “Mountain Parties.” According to reports in The Morgan Messenger, Toad took a group from the inn to Jake Puffinberger’s home near the Fish Hatchery to hear mountain folklore and music and to see a shooting display.

Puffinberger was known as “The Knight of the Mountains” and his wife was known as “The Queen of the Hills.”

The inn provided the food, and everyone had a fine time.

Then there was “nightclubbing.” If he felt life got too slow and boring, Toad circulated the word that the guests would be going “nightclubbing” that evening in a “swanky place in Maryland.”

The women dressed in their Jean Harlow evening gowns and the men in their dinner jackets, and Toad would arrange for cars to take them over the river to Effie’s on Blue Hill in Hancock.

Bill Harmison always described Effie’s place as having a speakeasy atmosphere and a sawdust floor. As the fancy-dressed Park View Inn guests came through the door, Effie would clear some tables by announcing to her regulars, “All right, you %*&@*, get out of the way, we’ve got paying customers now.”

“After the initial shock, they all had a great time,” Harmison said.

Those 1930s tourists, many of them quite wealthy, enjoyed eating pretzels dipped in mustard and listening to Effie’s tales. Turned out that no matter how tough Effie appeared, she would take the car keys from drunks so they couldn’t drive home, refused to let “run arounds” in and generally ran a tight ship, Harmison said.

Back at the Park View Inn, the guests might play bingo for a nickel a game. Once Toad, to cause a little excitement, asked the local police to “raid” the place for gambling. It was a good show.

“He got by with it all. The city people were never offended by what he did,” said Betty Lou Harmison.

Always flowers

Other parts of the inn were the domains of Jennie Harmison, who ran a tight ship herself. Dining room hours were strict. Breakfast was 6 or 7 to 9, lunch noon to 2, and dinner 5 to 7. Jennie closed the hotel at 11 p.m. and was apt to make a snappy remark to those who came in late. Toad often slept on the couch so he could answer the door for latecomers.

Jennie was the one who made certain there was always fruit available for guests and bouquets of fresh homegrown flowers on the tables in all rooms. There were two gardeners on the grounds and wildflowers were brought in from the countryside.

Aunt Jennie could be finicky about such things, as she once was about providing just the right floral arrangement for the wife of Harry Truman’s Vice President, Alben Barkley, when Mrs. Barkley was ill during a visit here.

Other times Jennie could be downright blunt. Once when NBC newscaster David Brinkley was checking in, she looked him up and down and finally proclaimed, “They say you’re important, but I’ve never heard of you.”

Many of the guests came back time and again, like Alice Roosevelt Longworth and John L. Lewis, president of the United Mine Workers, who sometimes stayed at Folkestone, a home that the Harmisons rented to those who wanted more privacy.

Some people took a special interest in Berkeley Springs while staying here. There was a Pittsburgh brewer who provided passes for Little Leaguers to see the Pirates play, and there was a man named Green from Virginia who would hire the theater every year and let all the local kids in free.

“Mr. Green also gave kids poems to learn and, if they memorized it by evening, he’d give them a dollar,” said Bill Harmison.

“Just country cooking”

Other regular guests were a Pittsburgh Press travel editor, who wrote about the inn a couple times a year, and Duncan Hines of cake mix fame, who started a book of good places to eat. “You couldn’t pay to get in that book,” Harmison said, but Hines included the Park View Inn.

He described the inn’s food as “just country cooking” by local women who were used to baking bread and preparing big meals.

In the early years, the inn had its own produce garden at the south end of the hotel. Most of the food served was local, from country ham to freshly picked berries.

In the summer, the staff canned fruits and vegetables to serve to diners in the winter. The cellar featured “cabinets that reached to the sky, long rows of canned things,” said Betty Lou Harmison.

“We had an Apple Butter Festival each fall and we didn’t even know it,” said Bill Harmison, referring to the seasonal apple butter making. The guests often took a turn stirring.

A second home

Regular visitors came to think of the Park View Inn as “a second home.” They knew that if they left something behind, they could come back the next year and still find it in the cloakroom. After all, said Harmison, “we never threw anything out.”

Harmison said the guests were like friends visiting his home, and he had a special bond with some of the employees as well.

“When he died last winter, it was so touching the letters I got from old bellboys,” said Betty Lou Harmison, who still lives near the inn. “Some thanked him for helping them get started in life.”

Harmison had wanted his pallbearers to be the inn’s onetime bellhops, but many of them could not be located.

Others remembered that his hospitality extended even to kids playing in the park. Sometimes he’d invite them in the kitchen for hot rolls, a sandwich or a drink on a hot day. Once when the pool in the park was closed, he let kids splash around in a fountain in front of the inn.

“The hotel, how it operated, was a thing of the past,” said Betty Lou Harmison. “I’m glad I had it.”

Reprinted from The Morgan Messenger, December 13, 2006