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The Greenbrier
Rating Details »
300 W Main St
White Sulphur Springs, WV 24986
(304) 536-1110
White Sulphur Springs, WV 24986
(304) 536-1110
- Price Range:
-
$$$$
7 reviews for The Greenbrier
The Greenbrier is Southern Traditional Americana at it's finest. Decorated by the late designer Dorothy Draper, each room takes on a different character because each room is adorned in its own unique style. Truly decadent, refined, elegant and amazing!
Throughout the hotel every room was decorated to the hilt with beautifully lit gigantic Christmas trees and poinsettas....charming during Christmas!
Absolutely incredible place for a wedding in the Cameo room, which is what brought us here.
This hotel and grounds are gargantuous and host 3 golf courses, a spa, shops, museums, a bowling alley, indoor pool, restaurants, bike and hiking trails, horseback riding, a list of daily activities...like the power walk or skeet shooting. A movie theatre screening a movie for guests in the evenings or see a history of the Greenbrier. The bunker is another interesting tour, a place built beneath the hotel secretly during the cold war, where Congress could be brought and hidden safe from nuclear fallout.
A refined southern afternoon tea was complimentary to guests with a pianist and violinist.
The main street of old town Lewisberg is quaint and charming with antique shops and restaurants.
Rooms are very nice, but some aspects are not updated as other hotels. I imagine that is part of the charm. This is not to mean run-down...this place is immaculately kept! Bathrooms are smaller and they still have CD alarm clocks on their night tables.
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I went as guest of friend who had a home on the Greenbrier resort. It's a lavish hotel but the super rich and wealthy have crazy huge gorgeous vacation homes(some mansions) all around it. With it comes access to all the greenbrier facilities and everything can be charged to the house instead of the room. (at a $100, 000 membership fee beside your million dollar home)
It's a beautiful hotel. Just breathtakingly timeless and extravagent. The pool facitlities are lovely-so lovely they make you want to come back in the wee hours of the night and sneak in for some late night fun.
Service is remarkable but of course it should be for the price people pay for rooms. Apparently back in the day this place had secret quarters to safe house the president and advisors in a national crisis situation.
I was there for a week, there is only so much swimming, putting and drinking you can do. We started to get pretty bored. So we went shopping and just happened to buy a bb gun for the hell of it. We went back and practiced shooting-don't think the super proper up tight neighbors like it very much. I think that put out the red flag that evil doers were on premises.
We also did a lil drinking and decided to sneak into the pool-just something to do (and very easy to do-a lil ridge hopping).
Somehow after a hour of playing around here come a whole bunch of flashlight. The calvary had arrived. We were taken down to the police station/office and interrogated for hours! Apparently we were there to steal stuff not just have some poolside fun. Wow, those Virginian simpletons need to learn to lighten up.
Long story short we were cited for trespassing. Considering I flew to Vegas 2 days later, I wasnt going to pay to go back to court. So I probably have a warrant for my arrest out there.
Such a criminal!
Beautiful, worthy of checking out if you have somebody else putting you up. But better mind your Ps and Qs don't do anything bad or you'll end up in handcuffs.
There are way more beautiful places out there where your actually encouraged to have fun. Go there instead.
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30 miles from White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, I found myself in a bar where the dirt is carried in from the parking lot and gets ground into the floor in a process as gradual and imperceptible as the forces that grind its patrons into tacit acceptance that they will spend every weekend at this bar that is located on a street between their former high school and their local cemetery.
The grit contrasted with the silver and black Foosball table. It had never been used. After our second game she told me, "Your writing needs more structure." I was indignant, "Stream of consciousness Yelp reviews aren't good enough for you?" She shook her head; moments later she would batter my face with the fist that had recently been employed in the transportation of a glass of Wild Turkey 151 to her gullet. Her critique lingered longer than the mild bruising. Writing was architecture and I was building a shantytown.
It's not surprising that this conversation took place after a day at the Greenbrier Resort. The Greenbrier is an anachronism whose decor, activities and hospitality all evoke the antebellum South as seen through the filter of the Lost Generation. I expected to see Jay Gatsby strolling in front of the Greenbrier's stark, antiseptic white buildings, which could all pass for 19th century hospitals or large plantation houses. The interiors are the opposite of the unadorned exterior, exploding in ostentatiousness from the crystal chandeliers to the floral patterned carpet on the floors.
"Ostentatious" is not exactly a complimentary word, and yet that is all there is to describe the interior. In Arkansas, my grandmother has a room full of vaguely expensive looking colonial furniture and statuary. No one is allowed in this gilded "living room" and attempting to sit on any of the furniture results in a gentle chiding and relocation. Imagine your grandmother was given the resources to decorate a decadent hotel. She would create a Disney World for octogenarians. Indeed, you will see many old women quietly sitting in chairs throughout the common areas. One gets the impression that the Greenbrier in winter is the world's fanciest hospice facility.
However, it was never the decor that convinced us to drive four hours to a strange state; we came for the activities. The website's glib descriptions of "off-road driving," "croquet" and "falconry" just provided more room for our imaginations to fill in the gaps. Imagined affixing a saddle to my falcon and solving mysteries together. All those things were icing on the cake, and the cake was made out of a Cold War fallout shelter housed under the Greenbrier's medical wing.
We styled ourselves as "Nuclear Tourists." We vaguely expected others to have the same motivation. They would come from around the nation, clad in radiation suits or those lead smocks you wear during X-rays, looking to crib notes and inspiration for their personal fallout shelters. Instead, we got a gaggle of pleasant middle aged couples with their pants high and their hair slickly parted to one side.
The tour was interesting, but I didn't feel I learned much more than I did reading articles and looking at pictures of the bunker. You don't get to see a great deal of the bunker, as much of it is now used for corporate document storage. The areas you do see have been redecorated for the Greenbrier's cooking courses or they were open to the public during the bunker's operational period, so you never really get the sense that you're seeing a top-secret facility that you were never meant to set eyes upon. Also, the tour guide that couldn't answer question about the blast radius of a Hydrogen Bomb or the bunker's protection from electromagnetic pulses. These are things a nuclear fallout shelter tour guide should know.
After the shelter, we explored the grounds in the wane sunlight of February. It was warm, but there was still enough ice on the ponds to support the weight of multiple geese. Walking the sloping hills of the Greenbrier allows for the kind of conversation you can't have in the din of a DC sidewalk. A walk where a pause isn't awkward and a person kept at arms length can become real; then special. We sat on the grass and shared our favorite anecdotes involving vomit.
The fine treatment you will receive from the Greenbrier staff can only be found at its unique crossroads of "five-star hotel" and "southern hospitality." Everything is charged to the room, but they don't check room keys for afternoon tea, so have a cup and a scone and play chess at one of the solid wood chess tables. The tabletop flips to become a backgammon board and there are dominoes and checkers, if you're so inclined. The staff is always incredibly nice, they always smile genuinely at you and refer to you as ma'am or sir even if your social station does not require such titles.
The Greenbrier is, succinctly put, 'Da Bomb", but the high cost and aged vibe mean I probably won't return.
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I can't believe only one other person has written about the Greenbrier. I have been coming here almost yearly with my family since before I can remember and can honestly say the Greenbrier is by far the nicest, most welcoming resort I have ever had the opportunity to visit. The food is unbelievable - we typically split our time between a big table in the main dining room and one at the more casual steakhouse and have never been disappointed with a meal. I have yet to experience a dining experience that could compete with the dining room here. I haven't been in a couple years, so I can't remember any entrees specifically - but everything is wonderful.
Brunch is fabulous. There are tons of things to do during the day including an amazing spa (famous for waters from the White Sulphur Springs of Virginia), bowling alley, golf courses, multiple pools, croquet, afternoon tea, and much more.
Above all, the service here is impeccable. I have never met a friendlier, more hospitable staff. Josh is right - it takes you back to an old-world lifestyle that these days would I suppose make some uncomfortable, but is still hard to even compare. The Southern hospitality as this resort has always made me feel like home, and I can't wait to go back. Yes, the price is over the top, but is worth every penny.
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So... this is a "classic" old southern hotel/resort, I get that. The setting and location are beautiful...I only stopped in for a snack and a cocktail, I did not see the guest rooms (thank god) Maybe they're nice, I would suppose they are. The lobby, the bar, the common areas are nightmare-ish! It is sooooo dated and gawdy. Maybe there is a lot more that I didn't see, but good lord, the decor is awful. Seriously.
Our family recently visited the Greebrier for a vacation before the boys went off to college. We have been to Hawaii and many resorts and this was the best vacation we have ever had. To begin with, the hotel was purchased by a local wealthy railroad and wheat owner who has put millions into the hotel. When we were there, they were constructing an underground casino (not what you think- only hotel guests in jackets will be allowed, etc). They also are adding 3 new restaurants (which are definitely needed). The hospitality from the doormen to the maids to the waiters was fantastic. We stayed in a two bedroom cottage just down the road from the main hotel. Great place, big living room and bedrooms. While we were there for the week - played Golf (3 courses on site), tennis (indoor and out), worked out in gym, great pool, bowled (on site), went skeet/clay shooting (5 min away), did falconry (5 min) away and did white water rafting on the Gauley river. It was expensive, but it didn't matter we had such a good time. Only criticism was the main restaurant was pricey and OK but not great. But they will have 3 additional restaurants. It was not easy to get to from the West coast, but I would go again in a heart beat.
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The Greenbrier is an experience that is hard to describe in the words I'll give it here. It is a totally old fashioned resort that takes you back to a time and lifestyle that many would scoff at, but I think is a totally unique, eye opening, and educational experience. I will say it's prohibitively expensive. I don't know if I will ever go again because of that. These were family business trips, so I can only guess at the cost, but I know it would make me wet my pants.
But, with that money, you get treated like a kIng and you don't take out your wallet once while you're on the grounds. Everything goes to the "room." The food is excellent, the alcohol flows like a river, the grounds are beautiful and the activities are endless. There are three excellent golf courses that are mature with giant trees and a true sense of history along with a host of other outdoor activities for those not interested in golf. The manor/main hotel has a fascinating back story that is not to be missed.
Spending several days at The Greenbrier is like descending into a different time and a truly different place.
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