DESIGN |
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A king guest room at Hill Hall at approximately 330 square feet. |
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“ The 1923 high school and the mid-century middle school have completely different personalities,” she said.“ The goal was to find a common language between them.”
Pate and her team were drawn to the memory of school rather than a school-themed hotel. In practice, that meant keeping the elements that already evoked the buildings’ past, including clocks, wood furniture, shelving and the long corridors reminiscent of school. On top of those elements, the design team added softer lighting and textiles, so the spaces read as welcoming rather than institutional.
The building itself, not the budget or the schedule, proved the greatest constraint.“ An existing building has a way of making its own requirements known,” Pate said.“ Some of the most interesting decisions
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came from working with a condition, rather than trying to erase it. Adaptive reuse is a lot of negotiation between what you want the building to become and what it’ s willing to let you do.” For instance, Mountain Shore knew early on that it wanted to preserve all existing beadboard wainscoting, picture rails, woodpaneled ceilings, and oversized windows.“ Those details carried
A lounge at Hill Hall with walnut-toned paneling and built-in seating.
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so much of the buildings’ original character,” Pate said.
FUNCTION FOLLOWS THE FLOOR PLAN The original layouts largely shaped how each space was reused, and the result favors character over convenience. Classrooms became guestrooms, a former science room became the hotel’ s
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restaurant, Patsy’ s, and the school offices became reception. The Mural Room, which had always served as a flexible space, is now a lounge anchored by a mural from West Virginia artist Nichole Westfall. Corridors stayed as corridors, which Pate mentioned preserved one of the strongest impressions of the buildings’ past.
Converting classrooms into
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80 hotelsmag. com Oct / Nov 2026 |