A hundred years ago there was a hostelry atop our mountain. Its glorious opening soon gave way to hard economic times. A rebirth as a community center and theater ended with a fire in 1976.
When the rockledge opened in 1892, having been built at a cost of $10,200, the carriage ride to the top of the mountain took two hours or more.
It’s a pleasant day – May 3, 1892. Mill Mountain is beginning to bud with not only the fresh colors of spring, but with the stylish garb of 30 or so railroad dignitaries and their wives, who have come to help christen Roanoke’s new mountaintop getaway: the Tavern on Mill Mountain. Built by the Roanoke Gas and Water Company at a cost of $10,200, the tavern is the area’s first resort.
N&W President Fredrick J. Kimball and his entourage of guests arrive by special coach from Philadelphia to sign the white, waiting pages of the tavern’s guest book and to join in opening-day festivities at the 25-room hostelry. This evening they will dine on lobster salad and Russian caviar, expensive champagne and Saratoga chips.
The view down the mountain takes in a Roanoke skyline that includes the new Hotel Roanoke, now just 10 years old, as well as the seven-story Terry Building, Roanoke’s first skyscraper.
It’s a grand occasion, but occurs at a transitional time in the city’s history. That transitional economic reality made it perhaps wishful thinking that brought these revelers here that festive day in 1892; for below in the city of Roanoke, there was a financial disaster brewing that would bring many a dream to an untimely end. Foreclosures and bankruptcies were beginning to mount. The city’s public schools would be forced to close in 1894; and even Kirnball’s own Norfolk & Western Railroad would go into receivership in 1895.
In retrospect, the depression of the early 1890s was simply not the time to be opening a leisure-oriented business like the Tavern on Mill Mountain, later known as the Rockledge Inn.
Besides the backdrop of economic hardship, the inn had stiff competition from other local, more accessible and established concerns. The Hotel Roanoke, built by the Norfolk & Western in 1882 at a cost of $60,000, had 100 rooms complete with all the modem conveniences, including its own sewer system (the first in town). Other hostelries such as the City Hotel and the Ponce De Leon were located in the heart of downtown, where markets and saloons catered to a burgeoning population. That population had increased 2,733 percent – to 16,400 people in the previous nine years.
A month after the grand opening of the Tavern on Mill Mountain, Roanoke celebrated its decennial. On the morning of Saturday, June 18, 50,000 people flooded into the city for two days of speechmaking, concerts, horse racing and games. But the numbers would not significantly impact the fate of the tavern, whose location and limited number of rooms appealed to a select few. The horse drawn coach ride up the mountain alone took two to three hours. And activities at the hotel itself were Spartan, highlighted perhaps by a quiet walk in the woods.
These lean first years are reflected most clearly in the lack of even a single entry in the hotel’s register between August 29, 1893 and August 13, 1910.
The Rockledge Inn was nearly dormant from 1893 till 1910, when the Mill Mountain Incline reawakened it. The inn then became a spot for dances and dinners until it finished its life, in the 1970s, as the home of Mill Mountain Theatre.
The coming of the Mill Mountain Incline, a tram-like system of cable cars running up the face of Mill Mountain, seemed to mark a new beginning for the tavern in 1910. The 25-cent roundtrip fare was paid by 1,500 people on opening day, August 14. The two counterbalanced cars ran on parallel tracks and were raised and lowered by steel cables.
The inn was refurbished during this period and used for a variety of social gatherings, including dances held by the German Club, where participants danced to tunes like “Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly” and “Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet.” The inn’s buffet suppers were especially popular with the incline crowd.
Around 1920, the Henritze family came into ownership of the mountain and all its amenities, including the tavern, which was then renamed the Rockledge Inn. They had big plans for the site: a bigger, grander building furnished with fine antiques and a mammoth statue of Robert E. Lee on horseback. None of these dreams would come to fruition, but the Henritzes did try to make a go of things at the Rockledge Inn. The inn received a fresh coat of yellow paint and its wide porches were outfitted with some 125 bentwood rocking chairs. Chintz cushioned wicker furniture graced the parlors and sitting rooms, while Aunt Fanny Henritze herself prepared her famous creamed chicken and waffle dinners for only $1.50. Still, the inn’s rather small rooms – now down to 11 in number – and the thought of sharing one of the inn’s only two bath-rooms was considered roughing it, even by country inn standards.
In 1924, the Henritzes completed construction of a concrete road up Mill Mountain at a cost of $140,000. The new age of the automobile would mark the end of the incline, which ceased operation in 1928, and the beginning of another chapter in the life of the Rockledge Inn. But it would not be a pretty picture.
The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing depression dealt the final blow to the Rockledge Inn’s hopes of ever achieving renown as a hostelry. The inn’s hodge-podge architecture and rustic accommodations would be relegated to the status of local dance hall for the next 30 years, as Mill Mountain as a whole went largely into hibernation. Still, in the height of the Great Depression, entertainment was a precious commodity. Clare White, historian with The Roanoke Valley History Museum remembers those days fondly.
“The dances were fun,” recalls Clare White. “Much like the dances that were later held at Lakeside. It was a place to go.”
Sometimes a piano was the only source of accompaniment. But, according to White, that didn’t dampen the spirits of the attendees.
“When I was a teenager, my mother let me have a dance,” says White with some relish. “Hemdon Slicer played the piano and the Charleston was the popular dance of the day. That piano was never the same after that night.” In 1964, the old place was again dusted off to serve as a showplace for theater. The Mill Mountain Playhouse put on lavish productions using Equity actors. The City of Roanoke also played its best supporting role, providing the fledgling theater with needed maintenance and other services. But when the New York actors went home, the prospect of future productions seemed doubtful.
Mona Black, a local theater aficionado, was determined to do what she could do to keep theater alive in the Roanoke Valley. She contacted Jim Ayers, a producer in North Carolina, and a plan was conceived to resurrect the Rockledge Inn as the new home for Mill Mountain Theatre productions. In the summer of 1970, the troupe put on the first of its six seasonal productions, “The Eiffel Tower Wedding Party,” and things were off and running once again.
“The Rockledge was truly a pretty place for the community to come and enjoy live theater,” re-calls Black.
“I was always running here and there for the theater,” says Black. “I remember going up on he parkway handing out flyers, or just leaving them on a certain rock and hoping we wouldn’t get caught for littering.”
Mona Black was there to the very end. On October 15, 1976, as Black and her associates looked on with tears in their eyes, an electrical fire destroyed the building.
“It was a sad, sad day,” recalls Black. “Those were wonderful years on the mountain. The refrigerator always leaked, the wiring was bad, but they were wonderful times.”
Today Mill Mountain Theatre and Mona Black are taking their bows down at Center in the Square. The Rockledge Inn has become a fond memory for many and an inspiration for those
who’d like to see the top of Mill Mountain returned to its long-ago, if tenuous status as a destination for dining and lodging.
Originally published in the Jan/Feb, 1997 issue of The Roanoker
