Harpers Ferry's Historic Black-Owned Hotel Under Restoration
Harpers Ferry, WV
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The hotel is closed and undergoing a $150 million restoration. Exterior can be viewed at no cost. Check hilltophousehotel.com for reopening updates.
Access
Limited Access
Hillside terrain; the hotel overlooks the Potomac and Shenandoah confluence
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1890 · African American Business History · Harpers Ferry Civil War History · West Virginia Historic Landmark · Storer College Legacy
Thomas S. Lovett opened the Hill Top House Hotel in 1890 with a singular vision: to build a destination hotel above the town that John Brown's 1859 raid had made famous, on a site with sweeping views of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers at their confluence. Lovett had graduated from Storer College, the historically Black institution established in Harpers Ferry after the Civil War, and he and his wife Lavonia ran the hotel through considerable adversity.
As one of the largest hotels in the United States owned by an African American, Hill Top House operated in a peculiar social register — serving a White clientele of national prominence while being Black-owned in a border state in the decades following Reconstruction. Among its documented guests: Mark Twain, Alexander Graham Bell, and Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Bill Clinton.
The hotel's physical history is one of repeated loss and rebuilding. The original frame structure burned in 1912 — described in contemporary accounts as the most substantial new building erected in Harpers Ferry since the Civil War. Lovett and his wife rebuilt, and the replacement hotel burned again in an electrical fire in June 1919. They rebuilt a second time. This hotel survived for decades before eventually falling into structural decline.
The condition had deteriorated sufficiently by 2007 that the hotel closed permanently. In 2021, developers Fred and Karen Schaufeld of SWaN & Legend Venture Partners acquired the property and began a $150 million renovation project, deconstructing the existing structure and building anew. As of 2024, the project was still in progress, with the Jefferson County Commission pursuing Tax Increment Financing district designation. The planned reopening was expected to feature a restaurant program overseen by chef José Andrés.
Sources
Harpers Ferry itself is among the most historically charged locations in American history, and the Hill Top House Hotel — built to overlook the site of John Brown's 1859 raid on the federal armory — carries that weight directly into its paranormal reputation.
The most documented accounts center on a phantom regiment. Multiple visitors to the hotel reported, independently, seeing what appeared to be Civil War soldiers — men in period military uniforms — moving through the building's rooms and in some accounts marching along the exterior grounds. The time window most frequently cited for these encounters is between 2 and 3 a.m.
Along with the regiment sightings, the kitchen area of the hotel has been reported as a source of unexplained noise: banging pots, laughter, and voices — sounds audible from other parts of the hotel despite an empty kitchen. The combination of auditory and visual accounts across an extended period of hotel operation has made the Hill Top House one of the more consistently documented sites in West Virginia paranormal records.
The paranormal history was documented in detail by Theresa's Haunted History of the Tri-State, which published a profile of the hotel in December 2011. The Haunted Road Trip website has also catalogued the accounts. As the building undergoes full reconstruction, the question of whether its documented phenomena will transfer to the rebuilt structure — or whether they were embedded in the original materials — remains an open one among investigators familiar with the site.
Notable Entities
View the Hill Top House Hotel site from the road. The hotel has been fenced off since 2021 as part of a $150 million restoration project by developers Fred and Karen Schaufeld. The site overlooks the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers at the historic town of Harpers Ferry.
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