Did you know? Since the first conference convened in Montreat in 1897, housing for everyone who comes has been challenging. For the first few years, tents were the only option. In 1900 Hotel Montreat opened, but it was not nearly large enough to accommodate all visitors. The addition of the Alba Hotel in 1907 helped, but even both hotels could not meet the demand.
Before the construction of Hotel Montreat, at least two of the early residents, the Salernos and Louise and Adaline Green, opened up extra rooms in their homes to visitors. By 1900 the Green sisters had constructed Hickory Lodge, a three-story structure intended as a boarding house from the start.
Other individuals soon followed suit. An early Montreat brochure, circa 1906, lists the following boarding houses: Hickory Lodge, Ivy Cottage, Rest Cottage, Caraway Cottage, Cooper Cottage, The Jessamine, Salerno Cottage, Mountain View, and Restdon. Some of them offered single rooms; others were divided into small apartments; two of them were for single families only. Those that did not provide meals usually recommended boarding with the Misses Green.
By 1911 some larger boarding houses appeared. Margaret Oliver constructed a three-story house on Texas Road that she named Minnehaha. The first floor contained a small bedroom, parlor, dining room, and kitchen. Each of the second and third floors had five or six bedrooms with a bath at the end of the hall. This home remained a boarding house until the late 1960s.
By 1923 a number of large boarding houses appeared in advertisements, including Chapman Home, the N. C. Home, the William Brearley Home, and Geneva Hall, as well as about a dozen more smaller boarding houses.
The Presbyterian Heritage Center would like to know more about the boarding houses of Montreat. Was your home was once a boarding house? What boarding houses have you heard about (we are betting that there were quite a few)? Please contact Nancy Midgette (nancy@phcmontreat.org) with any information you have!