Print |
E-mail to a friend
BUSINESS
West Virginia Building is tallest in downtown Huntington skyline
The West Virginia Building towers over 4th Avenue in downtown Huntington.
Purchase this photo
Related:
Editor's note: This is part of a series of occasional stories examining some of downtown Huntington's historic structures.
HUNTINGTON -- You can't miss it.
The West Virginia Building is the tallest of the historical structures in downtown Huntington. And the 15-story building, which now reaches even higher with cell phone towers perched on its roof, has undergone a number of changes since it was built in 1924.
It started out as the Union Bank and Trust Building, filled with bustling professionals in blossoming early-20th-Century Huntington.
In 1943, the building went into receivership and was purchased by a group of Huntington businessmen, according to a 1985 report called a "Survey of Downtown Huntington," completed by historians at Marshall University.
One of the buyers, Realtor Eddie Kyle, renamed the structure the West Virginia Building.
Over the years, the building went through some more ownership changes. When Huey Perry of Perry, Monroe & Perry purchased it in January 1981, it was in sorry shape.
He had just moved to Huntington from Beckley, after selling a medical equipment business.
"We bought it at a fairly decent price, only $500,000," said Perry, who still lives in Huntington after selling the building a couple years ago. "It was in terrible shape, so we spent an enormous amount of money to bring it back. It was a 26-year project.
"We had to rebuild the inside and fix the outside. Windows were falling out, the heating system was gone."
It switched from all commercial to residential space, because finding businesses to come in was too difficult.
It was the first major architectural renovation in the rusting downtown Huntington of the 1980s, he said.
"We were renovating when everybody else was running," he said.
While he was sprucing up the place, he put a restaurant on the top floor, Permon's. It had a great view, Perry said.
"It was an extraordinary restaurant. It was a three-star restaurant the first year. Terrific menu," Perry said. "We unfortunately got caught up in a recession shortly after that and were only able to keep it alive five years."
Western movie star Dale Evans ate there one night and requested the recipe of the dish she had, Perry remembers.
"She said she'd traveled and eaten at fine restaurants all over the world and, 'This is the best meal I've had,'" he remembers her saying. "It was American cuisine -- steaks, fish. We always had specials running. The waiters were in tuxedos and assistant waiters in tuxes a different shade. It was just first class, I'd say -- close to the Greenbrier."
The West Virginia Building also was the original home to WSAZ-TV, recalls local historian Jim Casto.
"When the nearly new Tipton movie theater burned, the fire was less than a block away on 4th Avenue," said Casto, former associate editor of The Herald-Dispatch. "So the WSAZ crew simply opened a window, wheeled a camera over and televised the fire live. This was 1950 and surely must have been one of the first times such a broadcast was aired anywhere in the country."
Today, the West Virginia Building has 45 residential units, six commercial units, and two retail units. The Village Collection occupies the corner spot on 4th Avenue, and the building is about to get back into the restaurant business with upcoming Huntington Prime.
The restaurant will be ready for pre-opening, booked parties by the holidays, said Michael Bowe, its owner and head chef. And it should open to the public in early 2010.
He described it as fine dining. "It's going to be moderately priced, but the food will be delicately and freshly prepared," he said.
A stone-lined hearth oven in the dining room will bake artisan flatbreads, and from the back, the special will be a smoked prime rib, he said.
It'll have seared Mountain Trout, with trout from Elkins, W.Va., and have produce grown in West Virginia, Southern Ohio and Eastern Kentucky.
"It will be chef-run. Everyone in the back will be chefs," he said.
The West Virginia Building is a great place to be, said Vicki Rosenburg, owner of the Village Collection, a women's fashion boutique, which moved slightly westward from the Frederick Building in recent years.
"We like the light in the big windows, and it's in the middle of everything," she said. "I like the older buildings. It's not (in bad shape), but it has some of the old architecture."
The West Virginia Building now has about 90 percent occupancy, with two-and three-bedroom units available for rent this month, said Property Manager Matt McCormick.
"We just finished a brand new HVAC heating and cooling system, as well as newly renovated laundry facilities," he said. A new, small fitness facility is in the planning stages, he said.
Day-to-day operations are supervised by McCormick here in Huntington, but since 2007, the West Virginia Building has been owned by Jesse Wellner of Well Street Properties, LLC, based in New York.
Perry said Wellner contacted him about the building because he was interested in putting cell phone towers on the top of it.
"He actually tried to buy just the rooftop from me, and I wouldn't sell it that way," he said. Perry sold him Cabell County's tallest building for $3.2 million.
After buying it for half a million, that might sound like quite a profit, but not at all, he said.
"I doubt if we got all the money back (that we put in), considering the time involved," he said. "But it was a good project."
It's good to see Huntington coming back downtown, he said.
"I'm excited for it and appreciative of the people making an effort for it to come back," Perry said. "I think we're going to see better and better things happening in Huntington."
