To The past And Beyond!
During your stay, you probably will see a bit of construction and landscaping work happening. We promise to keep the dust and noise to a minimum. But we are working as fast as we can to bring Wigwam Village No. 2 back to 1937, so you can sleep back in time and so Wigwam Village No 2 will be here for your grand kids’ grand kids. Among our priorities is replacing the doors. The louvered doors here now are not original. They likely were installed during the ‘50s or ’60s to make up for lack of air conditioning. Since then, however, just about all of the glass louvers have been broken and replaced with wood. Not a good look. We have commissioned the talented folks (and friends) at Prajna Design & Construction out of Lexington, Kentucky, to make new doors that look like the ones from 1937. They are also helping us panel the interiors with knotty pine, the way the teepees looked in 1937. And we are replacing the windows with the original-looking sliders so they can be opened. The heating and cooling will be handled with mini-splits discreetly concealed in the rooms. We are installing insulation and other ventilation. Outside, we are re-stuccoing the teepees and returning the red zigzag around their middles. The teepee flaps will be painted white, as they were in 1937. We are re-landscaping the property to its 1937 lushness — Wigwam Village No. 2 had many trees and bushes, some of them still here eight decades later, but many of them long gone and not replaced. We also are landscaping the front of the property, where it meets Dixie Highway, so the parking lot is safer and more attractive. The BigWam will become a coffee shop with seating inside and outside. It will serve pastries and other prepared food and sell marshmallows for your evening bonfire. And, yes — it will sell souvenirs. It is an ambitious but doable plan, one that we hope carries Wigwam Village No. 2 into the next century and beyond. Our goals are your comfort and historical accuracy. Please note the image above on this page, an advertising card from 1940 that details the “Comfort, Cleanliness and Refinement” you should expect as a guest at Wigwam Village No. 2. Frank had the right recipe in 1937, and we plan to follow it. Have a great stay and please visit with us again soon to see how we are doing with the restoration!