Well, this might be another hotel you’d like to add to your bucket list, folks.

The abandoned building that was once well-known as a notorious mental asylum was reopened last week. This time, however, it’ll be going by the handle of The Blackburn Inn.

Yup,  you read that right – the Western State Lunatic Asylum in Staunton, Virginia, has officially converted into a boutique hotel.

Per a report by The News Leader, the asylum-turned-hotel held its ribbon-cutting ceremony last Thursday, June 21:

It took nearly a year to completely renovate the old administration office of what used to be the Western State Lunatic Asylum.

The announcement of the 49-room boutique hotel, owned and operated by the Blackburn Inn LLC and Retro Hospitality, coming to the Villages at Staunton came last August …

The project has been a labour of love, Paul Cooper, CEO of Retro Hospitality [pictured above, left] said.

“Everything has been restored to its original grandeur,” Cooper said.

You know, minus the straitjackets, dodgy therapy practices, and accommodating paying customers in lieu of patients, obviously.

Let’s take a look:

Via C-Ville:

Designed in 1828 by Thomas Blackburn, a master builder and protégé of Thomas Jefferson, the inn showcases Western State’s original heart pine floors, whitewashed wood trim, red brick and classical moldings. Sunlight from its many windows floods the wide-arched hallways and vaulted ceilings.

Sounds heavenly.

Not so much for the patients, though, who had to undergo forced sterilisations, electroshock therapy, lobotomies, being shackled and wearing straitjackets at this facility.

The hotel has 49 rooms spread across numerous floors, so you can imagine all the bloody staircases that the asylum patients and staff had to climb.

During a recent tour, Cooper set aside a velvet rope on the third floor that is used to block a white spiral staircase …

Cooper says this same path was taken by the mental patients, and the [360-degree] “serene” view was intended to calm them. Now he shows it off to groups of five or six people at a time, and eventually, he says it would be a nice place to take wedding photos.

How romantic. I bet the asylum staff would never have thought of such a thing.

Sheesh, these bedrooms and bathrooms look positively luxurious. They make those prison cells at Halden Prison look like super-average college dorms in comparison.

Not only can guests stay overnight, but they can enjoy the new 40-seat indoor bistro and bar, Second Draft Bar and Bistro. Guests and customers can choose to sit inside or out on an outdoor terrace and front porch. The restaurant and bar will be sourcing menu items locally and offer Virginia wines, beers and ciders.

Owner Robin Miller is pretty chuffed at how the hotel turned out:

This has been a long, hard battle. I first saw this property 16 years ago when John Avoli was mayor. He invited me to Staunton and we drove by the building and I just fell in love.

Now Miller can add “turning mental asylums into hotels” onto his CV.

[source:newsleader&c-ville]