Poinsett Hotel Newspaper Article
| POINSETT SNAPS ON ITS REVIVED DOWNTOWN BEACON |
By Ben Szobody
STAFF WRITER
bszobody@greenvillenews.com
Published: Tuesday, January 1, 2008 – 2:00 amAfter 35 years in obscurity, the double-stroke neon tubes flared anew Monday night inside the giant red-metal letters that spell, on downtown’s east-looking skyline, “Poinsett Hotel.”A brief 7 p.m. ceremony featured the mayoral push of a T-shaped plunger switch and capped what the hotel’s general manager, Fabian Unterzaucher, said was a costly restoration of the 1960s glow that once proclaimed, “Jack Tar Poinsett Hotel,” after one of the hotel’s many owners.
Asked if there would be an incandescent, invitation-only New Year’s Eve rooftop party, Unterzaucher said there was none in the works. But once Mayor Knox White heard the suggestion he became enthused, repeatedly remarking that the rooftop would make an excellent location for feting. |
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White recounted to some of the 25 people in attendance his personal efforts to get the final piece of the historic hotel reignited and, poised to throw the switch, warned them, “Do not say, ‘Happy New Year.’ That’s later.”The asphalt roofing layer scraped the soles of the dress shoes in attendance as Charlotte-based sign man Jack Thomas said he doesn’t get such opportunities often.“In all honesty, it would have been cheaper for them to have us come in and tear it down,” said Thomas, who builds mostly new signs.
Instead, his job involved the removal and reconstruction of giant, open-face letters — much of it sanding and Bondo work. |
| He constructed new underpinnings and reinstalled the neon tubing.From the street, the sign is a crisp, porcelain white. On the roof, hotel employees and guests drank a champagne replacement beverage from flutes with strawberries on the rims because Unterzaucher said he felt it unwise to consume alcohol on the roof.The 200-room hotel, built in 1925, was gutted, refurbished and reopened in 2000.
Unterzaucher said the cost of refurbishment suggests the sign’s collectible value, but he did not give an exact figure. |
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Tags: Channel letters, Hotel Signs, Neon, Refurbish
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