historic hotels of America

Chocolate Dreams: The Hotel Hershey's Grand Renovation

Filed under: Luxury Travel & Hotels, By Design

Craig J. Smith and Christina Romann, are partners in C2 – a high end interior design firm specializing in designing and restoring luxury hotels. They have been designing,, restoring and renovating for over 20 years, and have never been without significant work, as they have done renovations to The Greenbrier Sporting Club, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, The Turks and Caicos Sporting Club, in Ambergris Cay, BWI, The Trump International Hotel & Tower and the Lowell, both in New York, to name just a few.

But the 67M recent renovation of the Hotel Hershey in Pennsylvania provided them unique challenges and memorable lessons, both aesthetically and philosophically. Or, as Christina said, " My first impression when we walked into the Hotel, before we ever considered any renovation work at all, was, what is a hotel like this doing here?"

What Christina and Craig both saw was an elegant, though somewhat fading, 80 year old hotel, with a personal and philanthropic legacy. It originally was constructed on a small hill, overlooking Mr. Hershey's chocolate factory. Nonetheless, it reflected the worldly character of the original visionary, Milton Hershey, who created of the original recipe for Hershey's Milk Chocolate -- still a happily absolute NEED in many of our lives.