Tag: Daniel Boone Hotel

Sept. 4, 1964: Businessman A.W. Cox Dies at 79

Businessman A. W. Cox died on September 4, 1964. He was 79 years old.  

The Roane County native attended a one-room school through the eighth grade. And, by 17, he was operating his father’s sawmill. After a brief teaching career, he got a part-time job at a store in Clendenin in northern Kanawha County. While working there, Cox decided to make a career of retail sales. He moved to Charleston in 1914, when he was 29, and bought out a downtown department store. It became the first in a chain of 21 A. W. Cox Department Stores in West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky. 

In the 1920s, he partnered with Wehrle Geary to found two Charleston landmarks: Their Diamond Department Store opened in 1926 on the site of the former capitol building, and, in 1929, they opened the nearby Daniel Boone Hotel, which became headquarters for out-of-town state legislators and eventually hosted celebrities ranging from Bob Hope to Elvis Presley to Bob Dylan.

A. W. Cox is also remembered as a prominent philanthropist who gave money to several churches and to Morris Harvey College—today’s University of Charleston.

March 2, 1927: West Virginia’s Pasteboard Capitol Burns to the Ground

On March 2, 1927, West Virginia’s so-called pasteboard capitol burned to the ground. It was the second time in six years that a West Virginia capitol had been destroyed by fire.

In 1921, a devastating fire demolished the state’s magnificent Victorian capitol, which stood on Capitol Street in downtown Charleston. Needing to house state employees, the pasteboard capitol was thrown together hastily in only 42 days. The wood-frame building, located across the street from the old Victorian capitol, was a stopgap solution until the state’s current capitol could be completed on Charleston’s East End. Fortunately, the pasteboard capitol fire led to no serious injuries or fatalities, and most important records had already been removed to the finished portion of the new capitol or to the Capitol Annex building.

After the fire, Charleston businessmen acquired the lot and erected the Daniel Boone Hotel. The luxurious hotel was a home-away-from-home for many legislators over the years. A running joke arose that more official state business was accomplished in the bar of the Daniel Boone than had ever been conducted in the temporary capitol on that site.

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