DATE: Monday, November 17, 1997             TAG: 9711170150

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

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1887: THE PRINCESS ANNE HOTEL

The identity of the mother and daughter who were having their

photo taken on the sandy reaches of Virginia Beach many years ago is

unknown, but the building behind them was the nationally known

Virginia Beach Hotel that opened in 1884 and was renamed the

Princess Anne Hotel in 1888. The elegant late-Victorian structure,

noted for a vast dining room that specialized in the best Southern

cooking, was a popular winter as well as summer rendezvous for high

society from all parts of the country. Its business was also

boosted when a doctor read a paper before a national convention in

1887 extolling the area's pine trees and salt air as conducive to

good health. For many years thereafter, doctors from the North

prescribed long visits to the hotel for sickly patients. Meanwhile,

perfectly healthy upper-crust socialites flocked there to enjoy the

sea bathing, dancing, gastronomy and other amenities for which the

hotel was famous. The hotel burned in 1907. From then on there was

no comparable hostelry at Virginia Beach until the Cavalier Hotel

opened in 1927.

- George Tucker

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