Berkeley Springs Walking Tour: Upper Fairfax Street

16. Upper Fairfax Street

The upper reaches of Fairfax St. east of Green St. were not opened until after 1874. The house on the southeast corner of Green and Fairfax was built in 1903 by former sheriff Harmison who purchased the lot from the Doles. Called the Old School House lot, it was fenced in by Dole in 1885 and site of a builders’ shop.

Next east, is the Bathkeeper’s Quarters, part of Highlawn Inn. It was built in 1907-8 by Henry Harrison Hunter for his son Latrobe. From 1908 to ‘37, the town’s telephone switchboard was located in the living room. Most historic is the tiny white building behind the structure which was H.H.Hunter’s workshop, built with materials left over from construction in Berkeley Springs State Park during the 1880s. There is original board and batten on the square section as well acorn trim and horizontal siding that matches the small building in the park possibly dating the bricking of that structure, if not its actual construction, to the Victorian period.

Berkeley Springs, West Virginia Mountainview, the next house up the hill was built by Henry Harrison Hunter as his final home in 1885. Adjacent is the The Manor Bed and Breakfast in a Second Empire style two-story home with slate-covered mansard roof and board and batten siding. The Hunter family built this for local manufacturer Alexander Sloat in 1879. Sloat was briefly Mayor of Bath in 1882. During the 1920s and ‘30s, the Hunter family used it as a boarding house. It is on the National Register of Historic Places.

A quarter mile further up the hill is War Memorial Hospital built on the former Dent Estate. In 1934, the Pines Crippled Childrens Clinic was built to use the waters of Berkeley Springs. It was visited the following year by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In 1938, a second building was constructed to expand the clinic. Due to the efforts of a group of local businessmen, Morgan County took over the defunct Pines opening War Memorial Hospital there in 1950.

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Travel Berkeley Springs
Berkeley Springs - Morgan County Chamber of Commerce
127 Fairfax Street
Berkeley Springs, WV 25411
800-447-8797