620 W Main St

From the National Register nomination

The General Wayne Inn, originally called the Hotel General Wayne, is a three-and-a-half-story, seven-bay brick-faced cinder block hotel building in the Colonial Revival style built in three major phases. As originally constructed the hotel consisted of the main block facing onto W. Main and an ell to the rear. The building's architectural features included the five-course American bond (Flemish vanant) brickwork, eight-over-eight double-hung windows with wooden architrave moldings, a wood cornice with modillions, a two-story, a three-bay portico with unfluted Doric columns and pilasters, wide frieze, and dentil molding, and a prominent centered entry with a pedimented and pilastered surround. The fagade's first-story exterior wall incorporates six arched recesses at other door and window openings, creating an arcaded effect that is enhanced by the use of header bricks laid in a grid pattern in the arches over the square-headed windows and doors. The hotel's side-gabled roof has three gabled dormers, each with a six-over-six double-hung window. Interior end brick chimneys define the main block's end walls, and fan-shaped attic windows flanking the chimney decorate the east gable. The two later expansions of the building were located to the rear as extensions of the ell, and were designed to match the rest of the building in every exterior detail except for the adoption of a hipped roof, linking back to the ell's gable, for the final section. At the rear of the property, the expanded ell actually stands four-and-a-half stories high; since floor levels were maintained from the older to the newer sections, and since the lot slopes downhill from front to back, a half-buried basement level was then possible. In early 1937 the Waynesboro Hotel Corp. retained Waynesboro architect Daley Craig to design a hotel in the "Southern Colonial style." In April Craig and another Waynesboro architect, Fleming R. Hurt, completed their design for a forty-room hotel with a banquet hall, coffee shop, lounge, and the city's first passenger elevator. Craig specified cinder block--then a novel material--with a facing of brick, and he sited the hotel back from the street so as to create "ample lawn in front to carry out the Colonial Inn idea." Harry Brooks was the general contactor. The hotel opened to much fanfare in Spring 1938. A twenty-room addition was made to the rear in 1950, ten more rooms were added in 1956, and the building was remodeled in 1960 and renamed the General Wayne Motor Inn after the motel annex built across Main Street in 1958-59. Now owned by Fishburne Military School and assigned the name Barger Hall, the building is presently vacant and awaiting rehabilitation (News- Virginian, March 13, April 15 and 27, 1937, April 13, 1938, and September 19, 1967; Wells and Dalton, Virginia Architects 100).