"The Bedford Springs Hotel Historic District is significant as one of the nation’s’s finest remaining examples of the mineral springs resort phenomenon of the 19th and early 20th centuries." The National Register of Historic Places

 

In 1991, the Bedford Springs Hotel and surrounding 2,332 acres were designated a National Historic Landmark. The following descriptions of the architecture are excerpts from the National Register of Historic Places.

 

The main hotel complex, comprised of six contiguous buildings built between 1806 and 1905, is a rare example of 19th and early 20th century resort spa architecture. The buildings’ ages, quality of workmanship, and material clearly link present day Bedford Springs with its 19th century past as one of the national’s premier watering spas.

 

The signature building of the Bedford Springs is the Greek Revival style Colonial Building, built between 1829 and 1842. The large three-story hip-roofed building, brick facade and full two-story colonnade with projecting pedimented portico announced to all visitors the resort’s prestige. Its dining room, which remains intact, was at the time one of the nation’s largest. The building was designed by local Architect Solomon Filler, who also designed Bedford County’s Greek Revival style Courthouse (1828).

 

The building still proudly displays the Crystal Room with a screen of Doric order columns at each end, the Reynolds Room (named for an early proprietor) and adjoining bar, decorated with scenes of colonial Bedford painted by 20th century Irish artist James Reynolds, the architecturally complex lobby and grand staircase. The historic scale, workmanship, materials and feeling of the Colonial Building remain intact.

 

During Bedford Springs’ heyday in the 1840's and 1850's, $170,000 worth of improvements were made to the resort. Existing buildings were enlarged; others built, new bath houses were constructed and a fountain featuring a state of Hygeia, goddess of health, sat at the main entrance. Newspaper advertisements announcing these and other changes appeared in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, New York, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Wheeling, reflecting the resort’s national appeal.

 

Extending north from the Colonial Building are the resort’s four wood frame lodging structures -- the Evitt House, Stone House, Swiss Cottage and Anderson House -- constructed in stages between circa 1806 and 1890. Their condition and integrity are exceptional. The three and four story buildings are unified by scale, material, Italianate and Queen Anne/Eastlake external galleries.

 

At the complex’s south end are two brick building connected to the Colonial Building. To the west is the Kitchen Building. Built in 1842, it originally served as a lodging and meeting building. It was converted into a kitchen c. 1903-05. In the early 1940's a Naval Training School was established at Bedford Springs and the kitchen was modernized and streamlined and a portion of the interior space used for a cafeteria.

 

The original two story brick Kitchen Building, which had stood to the Colonial Building’s’s south since 1842, was demolished c. 1903 and the two story Pool Building built in its place. The brick and wood Colonial Revival style building features a wrap - around veranda on the first story, and a low clerestory with a semi-octagonal solarium on the second. The semi-octagonal end has a series of twelve light French doors topped by a single light transom with sunburst muntins. The gable end has a fanlight window with delicate muntins. The impressive interior features a large swimming pool, galleries and a shallow vaulted ceiling.

 

Northeast of the hotel are Bedford Springs’ oldest extant buildings, two log houses and a stone mill, dating from at least the early 19th century. Over the years, the buildings served as lodging spaces for staff, milling facilities, and processing plants for the water-bottling operating. They retain much of their original integrity.

 

Other historical buildings in the district include the Dormitory Building, the six-story brick Barclay House, a fine bungalow-style manager’s house 1920 and the stables (1870-1920).

 

The Bedford Springs Hotel Historic District’s resort buildings retain exceptional integrity of location, design, setting, materials, and workmanship. The pristine setting, wooded hills and valleys, mineral springs, large extant buildings, hillside trails and landscaping combine to capture the resort’s 19th and early 20th centuries’ character.