Tag: o. henry hotel

New in the collection: O. Henry Hotel sticker

Luggage label with image of O'Henry Hotel with text about the hotel.

“The original O. Henry Hotel was built in downtown Greensboro in 1919 at the southwest corner of Bellemeade and North Elm Streets. The first of the city’s modern hotels, the O. Henry was built through local stock subscriptions….

“Within six weeks after opening, it could not accommodate all the guests. An adjoining tobacco warehouse was converted to take care of the overflow. Having 300 rooms, the O. Henry was one of the largest and finest hotels in the state for many decades.

“As interstates were built and the city grew away from downtown, business declined and the hotel closed in the ’60s. The original O. Henry Hotel was razed in 1979.”

—  From “Original O. Henry Hotel.”

This luggage label is from the O. Henry’s time (1936 on) as a link in the Atlanta-based Dinkler Hotels chain.

In 1998 a new O.Henry Hotel with 131 rooms opened 3 miles west of the original site.

Zelda’s knickerbockers unappreciated by NC ‘yokelry’

“About the time we crossed the white chalk line which divides Virginia from North Carolina, we became aware that some sort of dispute was taking place in the interior of the car….When we reached a town of some size we sought out the largest garage and demanded an inspection….

“[The mechanic] glanced in at the knickerbocker-clad Zelda, seated in nonchalant gravity in the front seat….

” ‘It’s a pity that a nice girl like you should be let to wear those clothes.’

“It was fifty years of provincialism speaking; it was the negative morality of the poor white — and yet it filled me with helpless and inarticulate rage…..

“We got ourselves eventually from the garage…but we could not erase it from our minds that, so long as Zelda wore her white knickerbockers, the surrounding yokelry regarded us with cold, priggish superiority, as ‘sports.’ We were in Carolina, and we had not conducted ourselves sartorially as the Carolinians….

“At twilight we came into Greensboro, which offered the O. Henry Hotel, an elaborate hostelry, at sight of which Zelda decided to slip on a skirt over her knickerbockers….”

— From “The Cruise of the Rolling Junk” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a somewhat fictionalized account of a trip the Fitzgeralds took from Westport, Conn., to Montgomery, Ala., in 1920.  Serialized in Motor magazine (March-May 1924)