In the bath, there may be separate shower and tub facilities. The floors and counters are likely marble, there may be a lighted makeup mirror and a heat lamp. Designer bath amenities are available.
Check, check and check. The tub is deep and blinding white, the robes spotless and thick, the towels as long as burial shrouds. You could shoot a movie under these lights, but you couldn't find a spore of mildew. My wife fills the tub with drifts of warm bubbles. I open the mini bar . . . .
The Jefferson hasn't always worked so well, or looked so good. Richmond's fanciest hotel was built at the end of the 1800s expressly to be one of the finest in the South, and for much of the 20th century it was a well-upholstered crossroads of Richmond society and American celebrity. But a ruinous fire in 1901 checked its career, and another blaze in 1944 set off a gradual decline to mediocrity that finally shuttered the Jefferson completely in 1980. It reopened six years later as a Sheraton but still with poor reviews from those who remembered its glory days.
"It was seedy," Richmond businessman William Goodwin tells me over a breakfast of grits and fruit in Lemaire, the hotel's four-star restaurant. Goodwin was no hotelier (he made his fortunes through computer leasing and as the one-time owner of AMF Bowling), but he still perked up as a proud native when an investor asked him and his partner to put up some money to save the good old Jefferson. "If it hadn't been the Jefferson in Richmond we never would have had that meeting at all. As it was, we ended up owning the hotel."
They brought in a hospitality wunderkind from Washington named Prem Devadas and told him he had $5 million to get it turned around. Last year, they sunk another $4 million into expanding the dining room, adding a vast new porte coche{grv}re entrance and an indoor pool.
Services: Concierge service is available 24 hours per day. Services are unlimited and include babysitting, personal shopping, pet sitting, etc. The concierge staff is creative in handling requests.
"We've had people lend guests their running shoes," says Jeanita Harris, a 15-year employee and now director of guest services. Ebullient, of course. "We've washed shirts and taken them home to iron at midnight. We've run to Wal-Mart at 3 in the morning to find computer equipment for a guest."
Clothing disasters are the most common, Harris says -- forgotten tuxedos, mismatched socks. Men and brides are the worst. "We keep a box of cuff links and collar stays standing by," she says. Recently, a guest asked the concierge desk to organize a quick helicopter tour to Williamsburg and back. "Whatever it takes."
Last fall, I learned how hard it is to stump the Jefferson concierge desk. A friend and I stayed here during a kayaking weekend along the in-town rapids of the James River. After our last run, we called the hotel for a ride. A few minutes later, a black limo pulled up at the river's edge and I climbed in -- soaking wet, muddy neoprene and all.
The driver's only comment: "How was the water, Mr. Hendrix?"
Escape Keys
GETTING THERE: Richmond is about 100 miles south on I-95. Driving time varies from 90 minutes to more than two hours, depending on traffic around the dreaded Mixing Bowl. Several Amtrak southbound trains stop in Richmond for one-way fares as low as $28 (800-872-7245, www.amtrak.com).
STAYING THERE: Standard rooms at the Jefferson start at $210, but the hotel offers occasional weekend specials of $170 (Franklin and Adams streets, 804-788-8000, www.jefferson-hotel.com). Lemaire, the Jefferson's four-star restaurant, offers entrees in the $30 range.
OTHER NEARBY FIVE-STAR HOTELS:
• Virginia: The Inn at Little Washington (Washington, 540-675-3800)
• D.C.: None
• Maryland: None.
• Delaware: None.
• Pennsylvania: None.
• West Virginia: The Greenbri -- oops. None. (The Greenbrier lost its fifth star last year.)
