The 1927 Lake Lure Inn

The 1927 Lake Lure Inn. . In Spring of 1927, this sixty-room hotel was opened simultaneously with the incorporation of the Town of Lake Lure (sister city of Lake Como, Italy) and the completion of the Lake Lure Dam which formed the lake, along with other matching “Mediterranean” architectures: the Arcade Commerce Building, the Haynes Hill Mansion, and the original Lake Lure Schoolhouse (razed 1982). During World War II, the Inn provided rest and relaxation for officers of the U.S. Army Air Corps, while the Arcade Commerce Building housed enlisted men. This hotel has hosted Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Emily Post, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the cast of the original motion picture “Dirty Dancing,” and stage and screen stars. In 2004, the hotel was purchased and painstakingly restored by Hope and George Wittmer, so that it once again embodied the graceful and inviting mountain charm of its first designation as “the little Waldorf of the south.”