Hotel Roanoke

The Hotel Roanoke is the city's grand dame — a Tudor Revival landmark on a low hill just north of the railway tracks, with twin turrets, gables and half-timbered upper stories. The original 1882 wooden structure was rebuilt in 1938 in red brick and stone, and the place has been at the centre of Roanoke's civic life ever since. A pedestrian walkway over the tracks, the Hotel Roanoke Bridge, links it directly to the City Market and downtown.

You don't need to be a guest to visit. The Pine Room bar is one of the more atmospheric drinking rooms in Virginia — dim, oak-panelled, hung with old N&W railway memorabilia. The Regency Room serves a Sunday brunch that draws people from across the valley. The lobby, with its high ceilings, original murals, and a model train of the railway that built it, is worth a walk-through.

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A story
The Norfolk & Western Railway built the hotel in 1882 to serve travellers on its newly completed lines, then expanded it through the early 20th century into the grand Tudor Revival pile it is today. By the 1980s it was bankrupt and slated for demolition, but the city, the railway, and the local Virginia Tech campus jointly bought and restored it — and the hotel reopened in 1995 with the original ceiling murals and dining rooms intact.