The Westin Poinsett Hotel celebrates 100 years in Greenville
- Charles Reams
- Jun 22
- 5 min read
The 100-year history of the Westin Poinsett Hotel was front and center on Sunday.
John Nolan, president of the Greenville County Historical Society, put on a show. He has a talent for bringing history to life with his animated delivery mixed with insights, humor and wit.
Nolan spoke to a ballroom full of Greenville history buffs. Mayor Knox White also spoke and visibly reveled in the presentation. Before the Poinsett was constructed, Greenville had three restaurants. Today, there are 238.
There have only been three hotel managers during the hotel’s long history. That speaks to the competence of this cadre of talented men, Nolan said.
Greenville became the center of textile innovation for the South. This created a need for better hotels to attract guests from a national pool of clients.
John Woodside owned the largest mill in Greenville when the city became the center of the textile industry.
Executives from Ford, the textile industry, and various celebrities like Amelia Earhart and others streamed to the best hotel in Greenville.
A Charleston newspaper posted the Poinsett rate of $5 a week, and guests poured in from all over the state and beyond.
Boston had been the leading city of textiles until 1915 when Greenville surpassed it.
When the textile convention moved to Greenville, there were 30,000 conventioneers in attendance. In the next years, there were 40,000 on hand.
Local investors ponied up $1.5 million.
William Stoppard drew up the plans in conjunction with J. E. Sirrine. Sirrine had designed more than 200 mills in the south.
Charles Day was designated as the hotel manager. There have only been three managers over the decades.
Three finalists were entered for the name of the new hotel: Hotel Greenville, John C Calhoun, and the Poinsett.
Poinsett was the overwhelming favorite. Why?
Joel Roberts Poinsett, then ambassador to Mexico, brought back a flower from abroad, and they called it the Poinsettia.
Nolan found a letter well preserved that was signed by Joel Poinsett, and he bought it for $30.
Gorham, a renowned silversmith of Rhode Island, produced the original silver for the hotel. Some of the silver pieces were on hand for the presentation today.
Photos by William Cox were famous for their high quality. They could be enlarged to “see the fingerprints on them,” Nolan said with a laugh. Cox took a picture of the Poinsett under construction.
Fun fact: what is the weight of the hotel?
Answer: 36 million pounds
The hotel boasted the best quality in everything from the bed to the furniture, carpets, and appliances. Each room was fully air-conditioned. All the wood was walnut. Harford-Saxony rugs were the best of the best.
Then, in 1929, the stock market failed. J. Mason Alexander came in to save the hotel.
He lived by the four Cs: cleanliness, cooking, competence, and courtesy.
Each towel had to be 60 inches long, and it was of the highest quality. There were two postcards and stamps on each desk, and two novels on each nightstand. Near the entrance is the original mail chute.
Bellmen, meticulously uniformed, were required to remember the names of guests, and were instructed to repeat their names three times as they greeted them and carried their luggage to their rooms.
The hotel featured rooftop dancing with a live orchestra.
When Mayor Knox White was told that the Poinsett had to be torn down, he became physically sick. Steve Dopp called me from Charleston. He told me that he had just renovated the luxury Francis Marion Hotel in Charleston. So, he had instant credibility.
He said, “I renovated a hotel built by the same architect in Charleston. I know where the boiler is.” White pealed off a reassuring smile. Paradoxically, the city had just recently spurned Dopp’s overture under a previous mayor.
Dopp kept insisting that he could renovate the Poinsett. That was his forte, he insisted, restoring old buildings. It took a while for Dopp to raise the funds, acquire the hotel, and restore it.
Dopp narrowly saved the building from being renovated by Greenville Tech. Even so, the college would have occupied only the top stories, and the hotel would have occupied six lower stories.
When Dopp had put the financing together and started the restoration in earnest, he discovered that the project was much like an archeological dig. He had a picture of the dining room, but he could not easily find the original location. It has been moved and the ceiling lowered, and a very thick carpet had elevated the floor.
While knocking down a wall near the lobby, they found the vault in the men’s bathroom behind the piano.
Dopp intentionally ran far over budget, doing all the extras that made an impact on the project.
Dopp asked the public to bring hotel souvenirs from the glory days, and they flooded him with all kinds of memorabilia. He then invited former employees to share their memories. How they pulled this off before the Internet had been invented is a wonder to this day.
One guy knew a lot of the others, and soon stories streamed in. Dopp scheduled an open house for former employees. Cooks, waiters, bellmen, housekeepers, and the like attended the function. There were about 25 to 30 people, including the famous spoon bread lady, then in her 80s.
The hotel was famous for cleaning dollar bills. Staff in white gloves cleaned china, silverware, and other items. Then the hotel obtained a money-cleaning machine. That proved to be a standing feature that guests highly appreciated.
Dopp had an architect from Paris do research on the original hotel. He suggested the construction of two fountains with a statue in the middle of the courtyard square.
That was when he asked if there were any statues in the city. When I told him no, he asked, Don’t you have history?
We dug up the asphalt and laid the brick down, and created this special place for outdoor gathering. The total cost of the fountain project was $65,000. A donor called, I thought to donate $1,000. He promptly corrected me and said he would cover the entire cost if we would name the project after his mother.
The momentum shifted during the construction of the Poinsett from idly watching downtown die to massive urban renewal.
At first, no one believed that the Poinsett would ever be restored. Then the public finally got it. It was a turning point in the city’s momentum.
The Westin Poinsett Hotel in Greenville, SC, is independently owned by Steven Dopp and Greg Lenox, though it operates under the Westin franchise of Marriott International. Dopp and Lenox purchased the hotel in 1997 and renovated it before reopening it as a Westin in 2000.
Original builder
The Westin Poinsett Hotel, originally known as the Poinsett Hotel, was built in 1925 by the J.E. Sirrine Company. The hotel was designed by New York architect William Lee Stoddart, who used his signature Beaux Arts style. The 12-story building cost $1.5 million to construct.
The Westin Poinsett is a historic hotel, a member of Historic Hotels of America, and the only AAA Four-Star Diamond hotel in Greenville, according to trending travel.com
