An ornate fireplace mantle that once graced the now defunct Pine Forest Inn in the present-day President Circle has recently made its way back home thanks to the efforts of community members who relocated the remnant from Atlanta, Georgia to the Summerville-Dorchester Museum.
Sal Kibler, a granddaughter of the building’s last proprietor T.W. Salisbury, put the wheels in motion by donating the family treasure to the downtown historic venue as a result of the benefactor moving to a smaller residence.
The fireplace is one of the last vestiges of the inn — originally known as the Dorchester Hotel when it opened its doors in 1891 — along with several mantlepieces and the entrance gates that were once prominent fixtures on the 60-acre property.
“It was the showpiece inn around here. It was not that the first inn; it was the showpiece,” explained the museum’s volunteer historian Ed West, who recounted how the location’s original owner, Frederick Wagener, had a grand vision for a hotel in the “healthy city” of Summerville.
“In 1888, in an international conference of physicians in Paris, Summerville was declared one of the two healthiest places in the world for people with respiratory illnesses and primary levels of tuberculosis. And so, people from all over the world were suddenly coming to Summerville,” continued West, himself a longtime pediatrician.
From the 1890s through the early 1920s, in fact, the Pine Forest Inn emerged as a thriving tourist attraction that featured four floors, 150 sleeping apartments and other amenities, including its own power plant, a telegraph office and long-distance telephone service. All of its luxuries of the day made the resort-style destination a go-to spot for the rich and famous, such as U.S. Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Howard Taft.
The inn’s popularity was on the wane entering the 1930s, however, as northeast travelers on the coastal railroad began bypassing Summerville in favor of Florida, which was gaining steam as a getaway tropical paradise, according to West.
“It had a brief revival in the 1940s as a school. They called it ‘The Adventure School.’ It was more of a residential school,” he added about the institution that resembled a summer camp of sorts, with a swimming pool and a myriad of children’s activities to boot.
Salisbury, who acquired the edifice and its surrounding land, in an auction in 1931 opted to demolish the edifice sometime in the early 1960s, said West, since it was deemed a fire hazard.
And though the Pine Forest Inn is now nothing more than a far-away, distant memory, the theory about Summerville being a “healthy” city due to its abundance of pine trees has persisted.
“What’s healthy about the area is mosquitoes aren’t where pine trees are, and that’s because of the soil,” mentioned West. “The soil around here is sandy and well-drained by the ravines.
“Pine trees grow in well-drained, sandy soil [and] mosquitoes don’t, and so, they didn’t have malaria and yellow fever. They figured that out after 1900, basically.”
Those interested in an up-close and personal viewing of the Pine Forest Inn fireplace mantle are invited to visit the Summerville-Dorchester Museum at 100 E. Doty Ave. Go to www.ourmuseum.org for days and hours of operation.
