"There's only one stop sign between Charlottesville and Sweet Springs," I was told when planning my first site visit to the derelict resort two hours away.
Years before, I had initially discovered "the Old Sweet" exploring UNC Charlotte's library as an undergrad. A never checked-out copy of Perceval Reniers' The Springs of Virginia went home with me that day to accrue long awaited late fees. Through the playwright's work, he introduced me to the collective Virginia mineral springs (of which Sweet Springs is one) as theatrical scenes for life, love, and even death. Unfortunately, much of his social history was not just burlesqued, it was undocumented. His magnum opus could not be seriously accepted but the stage that he set was nonetheless memorable. Now, as a graduate student at the University of Virginia, I had the chance not only to confirm or question his writing but to compose my own story based on personal experience and verifiable facts.
Sweet Springs was selected as the focus of my master's thesis for several reasons. It was not just easy for me to reach from Charlottesville, it had never been seriously studied despite being a place that most certainly mattered. In its heyday during America’s nascent years, there were dozens of luxury resorts in the mountains that attracted clientele from New York to New Orleans and so far away as Europe. There may be just one stop sign today between Charlottesville and the Old Sweet but these springs were treks in the early nineteenth century. Every summer up to 1861, thousands of well-to-do guests made strenuous journeys by ship, riverboat, and stagecoach that could have taken weeks for them to travel. Equally arduous efforts were made by innkeepers who competed with each other to import luxury goods such as French brandies and champagne not only for fêtes but regular consumption. However, although they were important socio-political centers, many of these elite watering places were physically destroyed by troop movements in the Civil War. The Old Sweet presented a unique opportunity for me to research, document, and interpret one of the few surviving antebellum complexes.
That is not to say Sweet Springs was left unscathed, though. In June of 1864, eighteen thousand Union troops arrived at the grand hotel. They had been cut off from supply lines for nearly three weeks and the men were famished. When their officers allowed them to go find food, they ransacked its surrounding valley. "The boys acted like madmen," William B. Stark of the 34th Massachusetts Volunteers wrote about Lynnside Plantation nearby, "and destroyed much that was of no use to them. They found wine and other liquors of which they partook freely. They played upon the piano and then pocketed the keys for mementos." As a result of this plundering, and further complicated by its abandonment, there has been an almost complete loss of information prior to that year. Failing memories of the Old Sweet have become more myth than reality. Even its highway historical marker erroneously states that Thomas Jefferson himself designed the main building in 1833 although he died in 1826.
Despite this, the walls can tell its story- and they do. Sweet Springs is impressively monumental with a massiveness and elegance unknown for miles. It not only would have exhausted local resources, building the Old Sweet required expertise in architecture, engineering, and construction. My decision to 3D scan the main hotel started the process of creating a new archive for information with primary source data. In so doing, I was able to glean fact from fiction by validating period accounts of the resort with indisputable evidence. There was not just one stop sign between me and Sweet Springs, there were 153 years separating me from understanding it but I was determined to narrow that distance.
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