Jul. 28--She was once the undisputed queen, reigning over an oceanfront domain of cottages and sand, a haughty, elegant monarch peering down from her grassy throne. When The Cavalier hotel opened in 1927, perched on a high dune overlooking the Atlantic, she didn't just dominate the Virginia Beach skyline, she was the skyline. 

Seven stories and three wings of imposing brick, distinguished by innumerable architectural details recalling Thomas Jefferson and the Old Dominion's Colonial heritage, the hotel was a source of enormous local pride and the center of the beach's social life. 

For years, trains deposited visitors from around the world at her front door. In the evenings, Benny Goodman, Cab Calloway, Glen Miller and Frank Sinatra serenaded fashionable guests at the oceanfront, open-air beach club as waves pounded in the background. 

Dinner was as much an event as a meal. 

"You couldn't come any old way, you had to be dressed -- tuxedos, gowns," said Carlos Wilson, who started at The Cavalier as a busboy in 1938 and still works there as director of guest services. 

"You couldn't get in the dining room without reservations, even if we were half empty," Wilson recalled. "You couldn't just walk in off the street." 

Today, you can. 

The old hotel still looms above the busy traffic on Atlantic Avenue, showing her age a bit, but unmistakably grand in ways that more modern structures could never hope to imitate. 

She faces competition from new high-rise hotels that stretch 40 blocks to the south. And she overlooks a city filled with restaurants, souvenir shops, vacation homes and miniature golf courses. 

Across the street, the 11-story "new" Cavalier, built in 1973, attracts most of the hotel's guests, drawn by the easy access to the beach. A 50,000-square-foot oceanfront convention center hides the old beach club, its wooden dance floor dry and fading in the salt air. 

For the past three decades, most of the action at The Cavalier focused on the new building, with its rooftop dining and swimming pool by the sea. 

The old hotel closed in 1973 and people talked, at least briefly, about tearing it down. It reopened in 1976, crumbling and uncomfortable, its rooms filled with mismatched furniture, rugs and curtains scrounged from across the street and from its nearly forgotten glory days. 

Most of the guests at the old Cavalier were looking for accommodations less expensive than those offered by its modern cousin on the oceanfront. 

The old queen wore a tarnished crown for some of those years. But born to royalty, she retained a quiet dignity. And just beneath the aging surface, her innate elegance endured, patiently waiting to be restored. 

Bringing the old Cavalier back to life has been a long, often arduous process. 

The hotel's owners, a Virginia family with a summer home in the shadows of The Cavalier, avoided a splashy -- and expensive -- all-encompassing renovation, opting instead for a gradual revival, a pay-as-you-go approach that is beginning to show obvious results. 

"It has been done with pride and love and passion," said Cliff Myers, the hotel's director of sales and marketing. "There's a lot of momentum now, no question about it." 

The work isn't finished, but The Cavalier on the Hill is beginning to look a lot like the grand hotel that welcomed its first guests 75 years ago. 

The Cavalier began as a glint in the eyes Norfolk business leaders, who envisioned a world-class resort in nearby Virginia Beach. 

Construction began in 1926. It took $2 million, 225 workers, more than 500,000 bricks and 13 months to build the hotel. 

Its first officers and directors included bankers, lawyers, railroad executives and a newspaper publisher. 

The Cavalier's official opening in April 1927 garnered front page coverage from The Virginian-Pilot and prompted a gush of purple prose. 

The newspaper reported that the hotel "is ready for operation and is sending out its call to the world to come to Virginia's great playground, and play and rest and enjoy the benefits that nature, with man's assistance, has provided there." 

The benefits were considerable: 300 rooms, each with spigots providing hot and cold fresh water, cold salt water and ice water. The grounds encompassed 60 acres on the ocean and another 190 for golf, hunting and horseback riding. 

The hotel, marked by serpentine walls, Palladian windows, Greek columns, numerous domes and a circular foyer opening into the main lobby, offered all the latest conveniences. 

After taking a dip in the giant indoor pool, which was sometimes filled with salt water gushing from the mouths of brass lion heads, visitors could browse in the gift shop or the guest library, pick up a smoke at the cigar stand or have their hair cut at the hotel barber shop. 

If business intruded, a brokerage firm ran an office in the lower lobby with "ticker service directly from the New York Stock Exchange." And if all that activity left one feeling under the weather, a house physician was available to make room calls. 

A few days before the hotel opened, Al Jolson telegraphed his best wishes to its musical director, Elliott Jacoby: "I know you will put it over as you always do." 

Two weeks later, The Cavalier hosted its first big meeting, a gathering of the Virginia and West Virginia Wholesale Grocers Association. 

Fifteen dollars a day bought you a room and two meals, including a prime rib dinner and cocktails. 

"Most people were on the beach during the day, so they didn't want lunch," said Wilson, who earned $29 a month when he started working at the hotel. 

"A lot of the same people came back year after year. And we've had the presidents and the big people," said Wilson, who is 80. "I've seen them all, from Elizabeth Taylor on down." 

Ten presidents have visited The Cavalier, from Calvin Coolidge to George Bush the elder, who gave a speech there when he was envoy to China. Richard Nixon is said to have spent hours in front of the huge fireplace at the Hunt Room, a dark-paneled restaurant in the basement of the old hotel. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bob Hope, Bette Davis, Judy Garland and Bing Crosby all called The Cavalier home, at least for a night or two. 

Like any grand old hotel worth its salt, The Cavalier has seen its share of tragedy and mystery. 

In the 1929, beer tycoon Adolph Coors fell to his death from one of the hotel's sixth story windows. 

Wilson witnessed one of The Cavalier's strangest tales. 

Through much of the late 1940s, Joseph Joreman, a jovial and rotund man who loved cats, presided as manager of the hotel's beach club. 

When he fell ill in the early 1950s, Wilson attended to him, bringing him food and whatever else he needed. When Joreman finally left to live with his brother in Washington, he told Wilson he would be returning to The Cavalier -- as a cat. 

Not long after, word arrived that Joreman had died. A few days later, a cat showed up at the beach club and settled down at the entrance. Joreman had spent evenings on that very spot, greeting guests. 

"For the rest of the summer, that cat showed up every evening at four o'clock, right at that front door where Mr. Joreman met the people coming to the club," Wilson said. 

The feline visitor unnerved a lot of the staff: "Some people wouldn't go through the front door if that cat was there. I was the only one who would feed it." 

At summer's end, the cat disappeared. 

During World War II, The Cavalier was leased by the Navy as a training school. 

The war's end found the old building in rough shape. Silverware was missing, holes were punched in the walls. Even the bell from the tower atop the hotel went missing and was never found. 

The hotel was restored, but it never regained its former glory. In the 1950s, it served as a private club. 

In 1959, Gene Dixon, a businessman from Dillwyn, purchased The Cavalier with a group of partners. He bought them out two years later. 

The family still owns and operates the property. Gene Dixon Jr. calls the shots now but leaves most of the day-to-day operations to the staff. 

The original Cavalier sank to its lowest point after the high-rise across the street was built in 1973. 

Closed for three years, it reopened in 1976, a seedy shadow of its old self. 

But the hotel on the hill has gradually regained its luster. 

For the first few years after reopening, renovations were largely superficial: a fresh coat of paint here, a bit of patching work there. 

But the Dixon family was determined to bring the old hotel back to life. 

"If the Dixons didn't have such a passion for this place, it wouldn't work," said Myers, the marketing director. "They've put a lot of money back into the building. There's a lot of pride in this place." 

The renovations have come slowly, year-to-year, with most of the work performed by the hotel's own construction and maintenance staff. 

"Because we use our own guys, it takes a little longer," said Greg Connors, who manages the original hotel. 

"Our philosophy has been to pay the bills as we go," said Daniel Batchelor, the general manager who oversees both properties. "So we don't have a $70 million or $80 million note hanging over our head. That's a good feeling." 

But the gradual rebirth has confused some fans of the old Cavalier. With no grand opening or splashy unveiling, many don't realize the building has made tremendous progress, especially in the past few years. 

"The history of that building is what separates us from the competition," Batchelor said. "The greatest asset we have is that in 1927, we opened as The Cavalier and in 2002, we're still The Cavalier." 

Since the 1970s, The Cavalier has mainly sold itself as a modern, beachfront hotel and conference center. But the original hotel's revival has progressed enough to begin taking aim at another market: folks who want the ambiance of an elegant, historic hotel that just happens to have a great view of the Atlantic. 

Myers said The Cavalier is seeking a spot on the National Register of Historic Places. It also has recently applied for membership in Historic Hotels of America, a prestigious association that includes The Jefferson in Richmond and New York's Plaza Hotel. 

Batchelor is optimistic that The Cavalier will be accepted. A walk around the old hotel explains why. 

It's not perfect yet -- a faded yellow "Fallout Shelter" sign still hangs beside one door -- but the exterior and the public spaces in the old Cavalier have regained much of their magic. 

Sea breezes blow through the open doors as a couple of children splash in the indoor pool. 

An older guest strolls through the lobby, glancing up. "Oh what a lovely chandelier." 

Upstairs, about 30 rooms have been restored, and go for about $215 a night in the summer. Another 30 are comfortable but functional, with older furniture and smaller bathrooms. They're about $50 cheaper and will eventually be fully restored. 

Another 40 rooms, in the wing facing the ocean, are being renovated and should be ready later this summer and early next summer. 

The new rooms are much larger than their predecessors. 

"When we renovate, we turn two of the old rooms into one new one," Myers said. "In those days, the rooms were much smaller. People used them for showering and sleeping." 

No wonder. The sumptuous sitting rooms, clubs and dining rooms beckoned from below. 

Today, the downstairs isn't as lively. But it's picking up. The guest rooms close in the winter -- that's when most of the restoration work gets done -- but the public rooms are open all year, and have, once again, become a popular spot for weddings and receptions. 

"When you step through those doors, you step back in time," Myers said. 

Twenty years ago, that wasn't an altogether good thing. The hotel was old, but not entirely inviting. That's all changing. In five years or so, the old Cavalier should be completely renovated, a compelling mix of 1920s elegance and 21st century comfort. 

"That's a great old building," Wilson said. "It has a lot of history. I know, because I've seen it all." 

-----To see more of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesdispatch.com

(c) 2002, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.