Zelda & F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Grove Park Inn in Adheville

 

I am reading GUESTS ON EARTH by Lee Smith.  It takes place in an hospital for the insane in Asheville, North Carolina.   The mental hospital, John Hopkins Hospital, had as one of is patients Zelda Zayre.  Interesting name, both given and sur names starts with Z.  Zelda married F. Scott Fitzgerald (true) and was killed in 1948, in a fire at the hospital, her and a bunch more (true).  The story is told a first person girl, probably under ten.  I don’t know how much is researched and true and what is not.  Maybe I’ll read a good explanation someplace. 

What I like about the book it gives good tours of Asheville.  They take the inmates out on picnics and outings.  They go to different famous mountains, parks, and markets or whatever.

One place I just read was Grove Park Inn.  Grove Park is where Zelda and F. Scott meet at times.  I think the book implied that he had a permanent room there, to be near Zelda. 

Once on a tour with the Greyline Tour Company at Grove Park the tour guide or docent pointed to a room window overlooking the entrance where you check in.  He said at one time that was F.  Scott Fitzgerald’s room.  He was in a position to see who was checking in.  If he saw a beautiful sexy woman checking in he went to the lobby to put  his charm on her.

So!  The Grove Park part I just read.  As I said, Several years ago we took a tour of Ashville with the Grey Lines and these are most the pictures of Grove Park I took.

The below pictures are not of the Grove Park Inn but the Grove Park Mall in downtown Asheville.  The ugly gargoyles were meant to look like people who did not pay their share of the construction of the construction costs, but the guide said it looks like them, in an ugly way.