Covenant College Renovation Latest Chapter In Carter Hall’s Storied History

Sitting like a castle on a high spot on Lookout Mountain, Covenant College’s Carter Hall has uniquely been visible from miles away since it opened as a hotel in 1928. 

But in recent weeks, an up-close look at the building has also been garnering plenty of attention, as Brasfield & Gorrie Construction has begun a $19.4 million restoration mostly on the building’s exterior. 

That includes removing the exterior insulation and finishing system (commonly called EIFS) to make the original stucco covering visible, and restoring the landmark tower to look like it once did. 

“We thought we had an opportunity to recognize and save the original architecture,” said campus architect David Northcutt. “The administration recognized the value of saving the original building.” 

As part of the work that began this summer and is to continue in four six-month phases through 2017, the stucco will also be recoated, the stonework will be repaired, and a new roof will be put on the building. Also, the porches on the south and north ends of the 129,000-square-foot building will be brought back, double windows will be installed and the tower will receive a cupola-style top like it once had. 

About 35 years ago, the top of the tower was redone to offer a glass-enclosed space, and the entire area was covered with a roof. 

“I think it’s pretty exciting to be going back to the original design,” added Jen Allen, director of marketing and communications for the Presbyterian Church in America-affiliated college, as she and Mr. Northcutt recently gave a tour of the work. “The building has some cool, intricate lines and a lot of interesting detail.” 

Some limited interior work is also being done, including the installation of a fire sprinkling system. The large wooden beam-paneled dining hall inside the building – which was considered a unique feature due to its size when the building was a hotel – will also be remodeled in the summer of 2016 in a separate project. 

While each six-month phase of the Carter Hall work is being done, staff and students will be relocated from each area under remodeling. The building currently houses 300 of the college’s nearly 1,200 students and is also the site of the bookstore, café, mailroom, and offices, in addition to the dining hall. 

Putting EIFS coverings on buildings, as was done to Covenant’s Carter Hall during the 1979-80 project, has been commonly done in recent decades to buildings, particularly in North America. 

Mr. Northcutt believes the former project was likely proposed at Covenant as an energy-saving measure. Giving a building an updated or new look is also a common reason for new siding. 

Covenant College began using the building designed by noted Chattanooga architect R.H. Hunt in 1964. Prior to that, the structure served as a hotel. 

In his 1977 autobiographical book, “Paul B. Carter: His Family, Friends and Great Adventures,” Mr. Carter wrote that he opened the hotel on June 23, 1928, amid dinner and dancing. Mr. Carter also goes into much detail about how he got the large and somewhat secluded hotel funded and built. 

According to some research done by Dade County historian Donna M. Street of Trenton, Mr. Carter and his father, James Inman Carter, had begun building the hotel after purchasing three tracts of land from the Lookout Mountain Land Co. in 1927. 

But much of the hotel’s existence after its opening seems a little shrouded in mystery, and finding detailed information is not as easy as seeing the original architectural detail of the building simply by removing the EIFS covering. Few documented materials seem readily available, but plenty of tales have been told of the hotel over the years being the scene of gambling or illegal liquor consumption and sale, in addition to typical hotel activities. And then there is the hard-to-verify story of movie stars Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher staying there. 

The Chattanooga city directories on file at the library for those years do shed a little light on at least when the hotel was in operation after its 1928 opening. The directories from the first few years describe the hotel as being under the direction of president Paul Carter and vice president/treasurer J.I. Carter. Early managers included Murray Judkins and Harry Hough, who each served apparently for only about a year. 

The hotel is not listed in the directory from the early-to-mid-1930s, so it must have been closed during that period. And that is certainly understandable. If many Americans could not even afford a loaf of bread at the height of the Great Depression, a summertime stay at a nice mountain hotel was definitely out of the question. 

But in what has to be an uplifting comeback story, the hotel reopened. It was listed again beginning in the 1937 city directory, with an S. John Littlegreen identified as the manager, a position he would hold into the middle 1950s. It is not known if Mr. Carter still owned the hotel then. 

In the 1940 directory, the hotel was even listed as having a barbershop, beauty shop, soda shop and swimming pool. 

It was called for years the Lookout Mountain Hotel, and one former Chattanoogan remembered that its patio was a popular place for local dances for young people in the mid-20th century. 

In the 1958 city directory, the hotel is listed under a new name -- the Castle in the Clouds Hotel. It stayed in business under that name into the early 1960s before closing. 

That is when Covenant College entered the picture. Covenant had been founded in 1955 in Pasadena, Calif., although that was not planned to be the permanent location. 

The next year the school moved to St. Louis, Mo., where it shared campus space with the Covenant Seminary. Eventually needing more room, the growing school of about 150 students began looking for a place it could afford. 

And that led to the old Lookout Mountain Hotel. Although a building with a somewhat heathen past seemed an unlikely location for a Christ-centered college, it turned out to be a perfect fit in terms of the physical space available. Its hotel rooms could be converted into dorm rooms, and its restaurant could easily be converted into a dining hall. 

“One of the college’s trustees lived in Huntsville, Ala., and he was in real estate and he knew of the vacancy and brought it to the college’s attention,” recalled Joel Belz, a former employee who still serves on the school’s board of directors. “They held him at arm’s length and laughed at him. But a delegation from the college’s board made a trip and were more impressed with the facility than they thought they would be.” 

The college ended up beginning the purchase process in late 1963. The seller was the large American National Insurance Company of Galveston, Texas, whose president, pioneering businesswoman Mary Moody Northen, headed many of the companies started by her father, William Lewis Moody Jr. 

Mr. Belz had graduated from Covenant in 1962 in St. Louis and was attending graduate school at the University of Iowa when he received an unusual call from Covenant President Robert Rayburn in January 1964. 

“He asked me to drop my studies and go to Chattanooga and do advance publicity work,” recalled Mr. Belz, saying the school was planning to begin holding classes in the former hotel building beginning in the fall of 1964. 

While a public relations job for one’s alma mater might have seemed like a dream job for a man in his 20s, and it was for Mr. Belz, it was his after-hours responsibilities that seemed a little harrowing. 

“From February through April, I lived in the hotel by myself,” he recalled. “I was the only resident. I moved every night to stay ahead of the ghosts. To live in a building that big by yourself was a little spooky.” 

The building at the time was definitely looking run down, he recalled, with broken windows and other scenes of vandalism apparent, despite the fact that it had not been closed for more than two or three years. 

Not long after moving in, Mr. Belz also began hearing the stories of Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher honeymooning in room 431. Over the years, he said he grew to think it was probably just a rumor. But it did make for some interesting times. 

“We had visitors and those people wanted to come up to room 431,” he said. “It had garish red wallpaper that was as ugly as sin. And as the visitors came, each one picked a little off as a souvenir.” 

As a result, the wallpaper soon disappeared. 

But Covenant would remain and grow and prosper. Mr. Belz also stayed there and ended up marrying a fellow employee, Carol Esther Jackson, who worked in the library. Four of their five daughters graduated from Covenant. 

He also taught freshman English at Covenant in addition to his public relations work before leaving in 1977 to start World News Group, a world news magazine written from a Christian perspective. Today, he lives in Asheville, N.C. 

While Carter Hall is coming full circle with its original exterior look coming back, Mr. Belz also shared another story of reconnection at the site. He said that the college began visiting Mr. Carter after it had been there a few years, in part, of course, because he had several hundred acres surrounding the school. 

But what quickly became apparent was that Mr. Carter, a successful Coca-Cola bottler, was still a little sore about his failed dream of a hotel attracting people from around the world to Chattanooga. As a result, being connected with Covenant was a painful reminder of that time. 

But he was told that actually this dream had been fulfilled through Covenant College, which had grown to several hundred students then and was attracting people from around the world, with many deciding to settle in the area. 

“Mr. Carter was impressed with that argument and he ended up giving several hundred acres,” Mr. Belz recalled, adding that he had previously sold about 25 acres on the north end to the school in 1969. 

And today, the attractive mountaintop building being made new again bears the name of this man who first dreamed of the structure. 

Jcshearer2@comcast.net