Growing up, one of the phrases I could not stand to hear was “get around to it”. The older I get I am learning that I too am falling victim to this phrase. Ha. The door you see here is from when the Pence Springs Hotel was first constructed in 1918.
We recently added a new kitchen and a second bathroom on our log house in Pence Springs; we used it as the door in the bathroom. It had to have layer after layer of hot pink and yellow paint stripped to show the beautiful oak finish. This was from the days it served as West Virginia State Prison for Women from 1947 to 1985.
Around my junior year of high school, my late friend and fellow local historian, Ashby Berkley, was restoring the Coiner Boarding House in Pence Springs. It is a 2-story wood frame structure from 1830 built around a 1762 one room log house. I would make regular trips to visit with Ashby and examine the restoration of this historic property.
On one of these visits, Ashby was moving into the recently finished boarding house and found the original Pence Springs Hotel room number “215” you see here. He then gave it to me to add to my collection. I stripped the layers and layers of paint off of it as well.
Since the door is an original door from the hotel, I placed 215 on it as well. I would love to know the stories this room could tell, especially which prison inmate it housed.
It’s nice to know that after 23 years I finally “got around to it”! Ha.
