Repurposed for
PURPOSE
Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel By Jonathan Scott | Photography by Diana Matthews
In 1970, William Benton carried a lit flashlight through dark, winding hallways of the Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel, an abandoned 10-story building in downtown Raleigh. One of the dismal paths opened up to the once grand Virginia Dare Ballroom with dilapidated arched windows, dusty chandeliers and marble floors. A mural of Sir Walter Raleigh, in his iconic pose laying down his coat in the mud, kept vigil on the wall since the ballroom and hotel were built in 1924. Glimpses in the dark revealed the hotel’s elite past during the Roaring Twenties, when 80 percent of the state’s legislators – alongside lobbyists, aides, jurors, journalists and North Carolina power brokers – called the hotel “home.” With a historic and scandalous past, by the 1970s the Sir Walter Raleigh Hotel was a forgotten relic that was about to get needed rehabilitation that would end up bringing it back to its original glory and help the local community. Intrigued by the dimly lit walk, Benton and his business partner, David Weill, decided to buy the building in 1970. The partners had a choice. They could have removed of all traces of the 1920s and gone head-to-head against the ultra-modern hotels that were competing for the lucrative convention business. But there was one more interesting discovery that influenced their decision on how to rehabilitate the historic building. There was another, albeit slightly scandalous, side to the hotel
26 OutreachNC.com JANUARY 2015