April 15 wasn’t just Tax Day. This year, April 15 was also the 100th anniversary of the grand opening of the Prince Charles Hotel — one of downtown Fayetteville’s most-prominent landmarks.
The storied edifice has towered above the 400 block of Hay Street for more than a century. Since before it opened, drama often surrounded it. At times it was a beacon of Fayetteville success. It also demonstrated how quickly success can sink into failure.
Today, the Prince Charles is an apartment building. It’s known as The Residences at the Prince Charles.
Read on for nuggets of the building’s history, and a glimpse of its future.
Grew from a hotel shortage in 1923
In 1922, civic clubs and the Chamber of Commerce formed a committee to study whether Fayetteville needed a new, 100-room hotel, The Fayetteville Observer reported in 1989 in an article about the hotel’s history.
North Carolina newspapers in April 1923 reported the committee’s findings.
“The investigation revealed the fact that, while the present hotels are doing the best they can to accommodate the public, many persons are being turned away almost daily, and that people are actually being kept away from Fayetteville by the overcrowded hotel conditions,” an account published in several newspapers said.
The new, not-yet-named hotel, would be “A thoroughly modern and up-to-date hotel to rank with the best in North Carolina.”
Financed with stock sales
The project became The Community Hotel Co. of Fayetteville, and stocks were sold for $100 per share to raise money for its construction, The Fayetteville Observer’s 1989 article says.
“By May 1, $271,000 had been raised, and the campaign closed with a parade of workers down Hay Street,” the 1989 history says. “It was reported that 593 people had bought stock.”
In October 1923, two construction companies from Charlotte won contracts totaling just under $300,000 to build the hotel, The News & Observer reported, and survey and foundation work started in early November.
The ‘Prince Charles’ name was decided in a contest
The hotel company held a contest seeking names for the hotel, The Charlotte Observer reported in September 1923. It said 400 ideas were submitted. The top three suggested names were “Clarendon,” “Eecles” and “Prince Charles,” and there was a deadlock among the project’s board of directors as to which one they would pick.
Residents were invited to vote for the winning name by sending letters to Community Hotel Co.’s secretary, R.M. Horsburgh. “Prince Charles” was declared the winner.
Who was Prince Charles?
While 21st century Americans grew up familiar with Great Britain’s Prince Charles (who now is King Charles III) the Prince Charles Hotel was not named for him. King Charles III wasn’t born until 1948.
North Carolina newspaper reports from 1923 say the hotel was named for Bonnie Prince Charlie of Scotland. He was Prince Charles Edward Stewart, who led a rebellion in 1745 against the British government in an effort to become king. He had gained a slight connection to Fayetteville 30 years later.
When the rebellion failed in 1746, Bonnie Prince Charlie fled for his life. He escaped Scotland with the help of Flora Macdonald. This made Macdonald famous. In the 1770s she and her family were part of the Highland Scot emigration to North Carolina. She lived in Cross Creek (what now is Fayetteville) for six months, according to NCpedia.
Warrant issued for missing hotel executive
The hotel’s construction continued through 1924. Then in early January 1925, Horsburgh, the Community Hotel Co.’s board secretary, disappeared while on a business trip to Southern Pines, the Greensboro Daily News said. Horsburgh also was secretary of Fayetteville’s Chamber of Commerce.
In February, The News & Observer said Horsburgh was reported to be “living festively” in Paris and that financial accounts he controlled in Fayetteville “are short approximately $22,000.”
One of the financial accounts was that of the Prince Charles Hotel, the newspaper said. Also reported to have been missing money were the local Ku Klux Klan chapter, where Horsburgh “is said to have been treasurer,” the Kiwanis Club, and other organizations.
Horburgh’s picture was published in missing person’s listings, and he was discovered in late March working for the Salvation Army in Memphis, Tennessee, under an assumed name, newspapers across the state said.
Prince Charles officials accused Horsburgh of forgery and embezzlement, and warrants were issued for his arrest. But he disappeared again. Then the charges were dropped after Horsburgh’s father-in-law “reached a settlement with persons who had sworn out the warrants alleging forgery,” The Asheville Times reported on April 3, 1925.
The grand opening
The April 15, 1925, grand opening promised to be “one of the most brilliant affairs ever held in Fayetteville,” with a banquet and dance for 150 people, and music provided by the Fifth Field Artillery orchestra of Fort Bragg, The News & Observer reported.
The hotel’s construction cost was then listed at $500,000, though later news reports put it back at $400,000.
The Greensboro Daily News published a front-page photo of Fayetteville’s new hotel, with details such as its seven-story height (the hotel now has eight stories), a ballroom with old rose draperies on the seventh floor, a ground floor dining room, and a mezzanine with a ladies’ drawing room, a ladies’ private parlor, a sitting room and writing room, and an area for radio concerts.
In May, the hotel hosted its first major convention, The Charlotte Observer reported, for the North Carolina Department of the Traveller’s Protective Association of America.
Foreclosure in 1920s, dead police chief in 1930s, prostitutes in 1970s
The hotel’s life was not always smooth, according to news reports from across the decades.
By February 1928 the hotel was headed toward foreclosure. It was auctioned in February 1929 for $225,000.
In 1935, the Fayetteville police chief was found unconscious in a bed on the fourth floor. He had been fatally wounded by a gunshot to his head, from his own gun. It was described as a mystery as to whether his death was murder or suicide.
Over time, ownership changed and changed again. The hotel was renovated and expanded to 160 rooms in the 1940s with the addition of a new wing. It was renovated again in the 1950s, then began to decline in the 1960s.
“By the late ’70s, the hotel had become home for transients and prostitutes,” The Fayetteville Observer said in 1989. The City of Fayetteville bought it in 1978 and closed it in 1979, the newspaper reported.
A trio of entrepreneurs bought the hotel in the 1980s and reopened it with a massive New Year’s Eve bash on Dec. 31, 1989, The Fayetteville Observer reported. Just eight months later, it was in bankruptcy and it shuttered again in December 1990.
Over the next 25 years, the hotel went through several sets of owners. Some succeeded for a time. But it eventually crashed — sometimes literally, as parts of the Prince Charles’ facade started falling onto the sidewalk in front of the building in 2011.
A new set of developers, Prince Charles Holdings of Durham, bought the property in February 2015 for $200,000. It was vacant again, and in bad condition. They renovated the 160-room hotel into a 59-unit apartment building that opened in 2019.
The Prince Charles’ future
The building was for sale a year ago, a member of the Prince Charles Holdings team told CityView at the time.
But now it’s off the market, Prince Charles Holdings spokeswoman Marston Waldo, vice president of RLF Communications, told CityView last week.
“Residential continues to do well, we are currently working on several potential retail leases that would fill the balance of the space but we cannot share more information at this time,” she said.
The Residences at the Prince Charles had a ribbon cutting ceremony in March. The Greater Fayetteville Business Journal reported that the eighth-floor ballroom was being renovated for use as an event space, and a couple planned to open a combination of an independent bookstore and wine bar on the first floor. There also is a coffee shop, The Coffee Scene, on the first floor.
Meanwhile, developers of the Prince Charles apartments are in a lawsuit with the City of Fayetteville in a dispute about the incomplete Hay Street parking deck development next door. The city sued in July.
The suit says the developers had a contract with the city to build a building on top of the parking deck for office, hotel or residential space, and have the building substantially finished by this past Oct. 31. But construction has not begun, it says.
The lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in June.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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