Located on 110 acres, Spring Hill became designated as an official&nbsp;cemetery during the early 1870s, but the oldest grave on the grounds dates back to&nbsp;1838. Eldora McCoy, office manager at Spring Hill’s sales office, says that she believes from its location in the cemetery the 1838 marker is an original&nbsp;grave site. Spring Hill is the largest cemetery in Cabell County and is the final resting place of over 300 Civil War soldiers. Of&nbsp;the seven Civil War generals who were&nbsp;buried in West Virginia, two were buried&nbsp;at this&nbsp;cemetery--Confederate General Albert Gallatin Jenkins and Union General John Hunt Oley. There are also numerous veterans of the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts of the Cold War. Military personnel from these wars and other conflicts are buried in areas with designations such as&nbsp;“Soldier’s Rest,” “Soldier’s Field” and “Veterans’ Plot.” The "Soldier's Rest" plots were organized in 1925 by the newly-created Board of Park Commissioners and a large cross, designed and erected by Presbrey-Leland Inc. of New York City, overlooks the entire lot. Spring Hill is also the burial site of many of Huntington's most prominent founders and developers.&nbsp;

Spring Hill Cemetery is the oldest and largest cemetery in Cabell County

This Memorial at Spring Hill Cemetery pays tribute to the victims of the Marshall University plane crash of 1970

More information from Huntington Quarterly

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More information from West Virginia Culture and History

More information about the Marshall plane crash from the Herald-Dispatch of Huntington

Spring Hill Cemetery is the largest and oldest cemetery in continual operation in Huntington and Cabell County. The cemetery serves as the final resting place for over three hundred Civil War soldiers, as well as hundreds of veterans of the wars of the 20th century. The cemetery also contains a special memorial for the victims of the tragic Marshall University plane crash that killed seventy-five football players, coaches, fans, and flight personnel in 1970, as well as two memorials commemorating September 11th. 

Spring Hill Cemetery 

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The Charles Boldt Bottle factory holds significance to Kromer, as it is the workplace of his father Michael Albert Kromer. Michael Kromer being a blue collar glass blower, Kromer was exposed to the themes he commonly touched upon in his literature at a young age. 

Smith Hall was chosen for this tour because it is currently the location where the Parthenon is written. The Parthenon is the student newspaper for Marshall University. Although Tom Kromer never stepped foot within the walls of Smith Hall, it was not built until 1967, He was a contributor to the Parthenon newspaper. During his time as a student, Kromer wrote an article for the newspaper explaining what he had learned and experienced during a school project. During the project, he was instructed to live as a homeless man on the streets of Huntington for a week.

The Keith Albee Theatre is located on the same street where Kromer carried out his school project. His project was to live on the streets of Huntington as a homeless man. He would later write an article in the Parthenon, Marshalls newspaper, detailing what he had encountered during that week.
 
Huntington B&O Railroad Depot is a location integral to Kromer’s life and literature. Having to resort to a life of hoboism, Kromer used his hometowns railroad to traverse the countryside. The inspiration he took from this not so ideal journey formulated his most notable work “Waiting for Nothing.” Without the B&O Railroad, Kromer’s best seller may have never came to fruition. 

The Occoquan workhouse was a short-term jail for people serving for minor offenses, one individual being Thomas Kromer.  While on the “fritz” Kromer traveled across the U.S. searching for work like any other man was during the Great Depression, but was caught at the wrong place at the wrong time.  Finding himself in D.C. Kromer attempted to squat at an empty building, only to get caught and be detained in this very workhouse.

During the time of Kromer’s arrival to New Mexico, he was considered a “health seeker” - someone who travels to find a cure for a particular illness.  And in this case, Kromer was diagnosed with tuberculosis seeking special treatment promised in New Mexico.  So, after initially being treated for tuberculosis at a nearby St. Joseph’s Sanitarium, Tom Kromer was then transferred to Hillcrest Sanitarium, previously known as Sunnyside.  He was treated with the New Mexico sunshine until he was discharged from the sanitarium, keeping his promise to marry his soon to be Janet Kromer.

Kromer and his wife Janet purchased this house in 1937.  Tragically, Janet Kromer passed away of lung cancer after which Tom Kromer would leave their house of 23 years and move back to West Virginia to live with his mother and sisters.

After the passing of his wife Janet, Thomas Kromer would move into this home in 1960. This is where he spent the final days living as a recluse. He passed away in 1969 due to complications with tuberculosis.

His body rest at Spring Hill Cemetery in a family plot, and can still be visited today. His grave marker has the simple phrase, "Brother, Thomas M. Kromer, 1906-1969."

Michael Owens was born in Mason County, West Virginia in 1859. At the age of ten, he left school to become a glassware apprentice at J. H. Hobbs, Brockunier and Company in Wheeling. In 1888, Owens moved to Toledo, Ohio, where he worked at a glass factory owned by Edward Drummond Libbey. After rising through the company’s ranks, and with Libbey’s financial support, Owens invented a machine that automated the bottle-making process. The machine could produce 240 bottles per minute and reduced labor costs by eighty percent. In 1903, Owens and Libbey founded the Owens Bottle Machine Company in order to license Owens’s invention. The company also acquired various glass-related companies, purchasing over fifteen between 1909 and 1920. With these purchases, the Owens Bottle Machine Company became a producer of bottles as well as bottle machines. The company opened three plants in West Virginia: one in Fairmont, one in Kanawha City, and one in Huntington. The Huntington plant originated as a factory of the Charles Boldt Glass Company, which grew out of the Muncie Glass Company of Muncie, Indiana, in 1900. That same year, Charles Boldt built a factory in Cincinnati, Ohio. While Boldt continued to use the Muncie plant, production at the new factory soon outpaced the older facility, leading the company to dispose of the Muncie operation in 1909. At some point between late 1905 and early 1906, the firm changed its name from the Charles Boldt Glass Company to the Charles Boldt Company. In 1910, Boldt acquired a license to make liquor bottles and flasks with the Owens Automatic Bottle Machine, and soon two were in operation in Cincinnati. Attracted by Huntington’s rail and river connections, Boldt purchased a ten-acre site on the city's south side for a new glass factory in late 1913. The facility, which was completed the following year, initially operated with two Owens machines and three furnaces. It later added a fourth furnace, as well as a box factory and corrugated paper factory, but the plant primarily produced liquor bottles and flasks. This soon proved troublesome, however, as rising numbers of state and local governments banned alcohol consumption, and Boldt’s license to use the Owens machines applied only to liquor ware. By late 1916, the factory possessed three 6-arm machines and eight 10-arm bottling machines, but the majority of them sat idle. With the collapse of the liquor industry in 1919, the Owens Bottle Machine Company took control of Boldt’s Huntington plant. Owens refurbished the plant and installed new equipment to produce a line of non-liquor glass products like “canning jars, soft drink bottles, milk jugs, baby food jars and bottles, medicine bottles, and special bottles, such as those used by the Avon company for their colognes.” Around the same time that the Boldt plant was sold, Owens changed the name of his company to the Owens Bottle Company, which reflected its production of not only bottling machines, but bottles themselves. On the night of June 30, 1925, eight buildings of the Huntington factory were destroyed by fire, but rebuilding began almost immediately. In 1929, the company underwent another name change when the Owens Bottle Company merged with the Illinois Glass Company. Following this change, the Huntington operation continued as Plant No. 2 of the Owens-Illinois Glass Company. Over the years that followed, Owens-Illinois grew into a giant of the glass industry despite the difficulties of Prohibition and the Great Depression. To work around the loss of the liquor industry and the devastation of the Great Depression, the company diversified production by manufacturing not only glass, but also cardboard shipping containers. Although six of Owens-Illinois’s plants were closed in 1929, the Huntington factory remained in operation, producing items like milk bottles and fruit jars. When Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the bottling industry boomed and Owens-Illinois’s earnings tripled. That same year, the company showcased an impressive Art Moderne building of glass blocks for the World’s Fair in Chicago. At the 1939 World's Fair in New York, Owens-Illinois exhibited another futuristic design in collaboration with Corning Glass Works and Pittsburgh Plate Glass. In the decades after the Second World War, Owens-Illinois expanded its production and investments both nationally and internationally. By 1947, the company’s West Virginia plants were making millions of containers each year and employing over one thousand workers. In 1954, the firm changed its name from the Owens-Illinois Glass Co. to Owens-Illinois, Inc., in a reflection of its diverse interests beyond glassware. Even as Owens-Illinois expanded during the latter half of the twentieth century, the glass industry entered a decline due to the dramatic rise of the plastics industry. Production fell sharply at the company’s West Virginia glass plants, leading the Kanawha City facility, which was once the world’s largest bottle-making factory, to close in 1963. The Fairmont plant followed suit in 1982. The Huntington factory closed in 1993, leaving six hundred workers without jobs. After its closure, the city of Huntington bought the plant and renamed it the Huntington Industrial Center, hoping that companies would locate there and bring business to the area. One of these was Level 1 Fasteners, which makes high-performance fasteners for the U.S. Navy and its subcontractors, as well as for aerospace, aircraft, medical and oil drilling applications. The company, which purchased the center in 2011, occupies the largest building of the former Owens-Illinois complex. Other businesses there include Robert C. Jones Alloys and Koppers, a rail-products company.

For almost seventy-five years, a large tract of land on Huntington’s south side was home to a glass manufacturing factory. The plant was first built in 1914 by Charles Boldt, who founded the Charles Boldt Glass Company in Muncie, Indiana, in 1900. Boldt’s factory primarily manufactured liquor bottles and flasks, but it soon entered a decline due to the Prohibition movement. In 1919, the factory was purchased by Michael Owens, owner of the Owens Bottle Company and inventor of a bottle-making machine that had revolutionized the glass industry. In 1929, the Owens Bottle Company merged with the Illinois Glass Company to form the Owens-Illinois Glass Company. Despite the challenges of Prohibition and the Great Depression, Owens-Illinois became a giant of the glass industry and produced millions of bottles at its Huntington plant. During the latter half of the twentieth century, however, production declined as the plastics industry boomed, leading Owens-Illinois to close its Huntington plant in 1993. Following the closure, the city renamed the facility the Huntington Industrial Center and recruited new industries to occupy the plant, including Level 1 Fasteners, which makes high-quality fasteners for the military and NASA.

Charles Boldt Bottle Factory (1914-1919); Owens-Illinois Glass Factory (1919-1993)

Marshall experienced a large surge in enrollment during the late 1940s following the end of World War II. To accommodate the need for more classrooms, a former naval barracks was constructed in a low field to the north of Old Main. It housed engineering, math, sociology, language, philosophy, and military science classes. Referred to as the Old Main Annex, this frame structure was meant to be temporary but remained in use for nearly twenty years. It was finally demolished in the 1960s to make way for Smith Hall.In 1963 the West Virginia legislature approved a $7 million bond to fund improvements and construction projects on campus. Around $3.8 million was allocated to build a large new Academic Center and Music Hall. Construction began with a groundbreaking ceremony on April 27, 1965 and continued for two years. Designed by the Huntington architectural firm of Dean and Dean, the complex featured an eight-story tower, a three-story music hall, and a communications building. Smith Hall was named in honor of Marshall President Stewart H. Smith (1904-1982) and his wife Evelyn Marion Hollberg. Smith served as President from 1946 to 1968, the longest tenure in Marshall’s history; he was also one of the school’s most popular presidents among both students and the Huntington community. Marshall grew substantially under his administration. Enrollment tripled; new buildings were constructed; and the Graduate College was established. Smith zealously advocated for the state legislature to provide more funding, and in 1961 he oversaw Marshall’s transition from a college to a university. After twenty-two years of service, Stewart Smith sent notice of his resignation on November 7, 1967, effective the following July. Four days later, Smith and his wife were surprised at the dedication ceremony of the new Academic Center on November 11 when officials announced that it would be named the Stewart Harold Smith Academic Center and the Evelyn Hollberg Smith Music Hall.<blockquote>"Marshall University is on the move, but there are many things to be done. I would remind our administrators, faculty, staff and students that they are part of a great institution which knows no frontiers..." -Stewart H. Smith</blockquote>Today Smith Hall houses classrooms, offices, and other facilities for parts of the College of Liberal Arts and the College of Arts and Media. This includes the School of Music, the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass Communications, and the Mathematics, Political Science, Sociology, Criminal Justice, Modern Languages, Communication Studies, and Communication Disorders Departments. The ground floor contains a student lounge, a café, the Marshall University Speech and Hearing Center, and the Birke Art Gallery. The Communications Building is home to The Parthenon student newspaper, the WMUL radio station, and the MU Report television broadcast station.

Smith Hall is an academic complex that consists of Stewart Smith Hall, Evelyn Hollberg Smith Music Hall, the Birke Art Gallery, and the Communications Building. The building opened in 1967 and replaced a former naval barracks that acted as temporary classrooms. Smith Hall is named after popular longtime Marshall President Stewart H. Smith, who served from 1946 to 1968. Today the facility is utilized for many general education classes. It is home to many College of Liberal Arts and College of Arts and Media Departments, including the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass Communications and the School of Music. Smith Hall also contains a student lounge, cafe, speech clinic, offices for The Parthenon, and the WMUL radio station. 

Smith Hall, Marshall University

The Keith-Albee Theatre in downtown Huntington, West Virginia opened to the public on May 7, 1928. Brothers A. B. and S. J. Hyman built the Keith Albee, with Thomas Lamb as the architect, and added it to their list of theaters along with the State, Orpheum and Huntington. The new theater was constructed under the supervision of vaudeville tycoons B. F. Keith and Edward Albee. The theater became part of their Keith-Albee circuit, the premier vaudeville tour on the East Coast of the United States. American vaudeville was a type of theater performance that was popular from the 1880s to the 1930s, that showcased different specialty acts such as comedy and burlesque. The Scottish-born architect Thomas W. Lamb designed 153 other theaters around the world; unfortunately, only forty-three of these theaters are still open. Seventy-one have been demolished, and the rest will depend upon preservationists for restoration or they will share the same fate.The Keith Albee includes the atmospheric elements that became popular in the largest theaters of the day. The ceiling is designed to resemble the night sky, complete with small lights that were placed in the ceiling to resemble stars. The design also implements intricate gold plasterwork, chandeliers, smoking rooms, and fireplaces in the bathrooms. Lamb exceeded his original $250,000 budget to over two million dollars, which was quite a sizable sum in 1928.The Keith Albee Theater was dubbed a “temple of amusement” by Huntington’s Herald-Dispatch newspaper. In addition to its famous name, the theater boasted the most luxurious modern accommodations, with a new ventilation system, Wurlitzer organ, 8-piece orchestra, and about 20 ushers with their signature red and gold uniforms. The opening day performance on May 8, 1928 featured performer Rae Samuels, nicknamed the “Blue Streak of Vaudeville” for her versatile acting ability..Due to the decline in vaudeville in the 1930s, the Keith Albee started running movies to turn a profit. During this time period, many of these types of movie palaces were torn down or demolished because they could no longer sell tickets and fill seats. The Keith Albee survived the flood of 1937, but changing habits of consumers were more difficult to overcome. Television took a toll on the theatre, and by the 1960s and 1970s plans were in place to convert the large auditorium into three separate movie theaters. Efforts were made by local organizations, such as "Save the Keith," but the theater would be split up anyway with a fourth theater added in a conjoining retail space. The plans were carefully made so that the splitting of the auditorium could be easily reversed, as it was during later renovations. By 2006, the Keith Albee stopped running as a movie theater due to financial woes caused by a larger and more modern movie theater that opened in Pullman Square just two blocks away. The Keith Albee was transferred to the Marshall University Foundation and continues to be the home of the Marshall Artist Series. Since then, renovation projects have been in place to slowly revert the theater back to its original glory. The project has a goal of full restoration by the theater's 100th Anniversary.The Keith Albee is a staple in the history of the Huntington area. It is home to the beloved Marshall Artist Series and it has hosted a few notable film premiers such as "We Are Marshall" and "Rain Man." The theater represents a time period when a trip to the vaudeville palace was a grand event and a time when a trip to a movie palace acted as an escape from reality during hard times. The design and architecture of the building is very unique and represents an important era of theater architecture history.

The Keith Albee Theatre, located on 4th Avenue in Huntington, WV, opened in May of 1928 with a seating capacity of 2,720. The theater was originally built as a vaudeville performing center by the Hyman family, who also ran the Orpheum, State, and Huntington Theatres. The Keith Albee was named after the Keith-Albee-Orpheum Corporation, one of the leading vaudeville performance chains in the 1920s. When the Keith Albee opened, it was the largest performance theater in West Virginia and was second largest nationally next to the Roxy in New York City. The Keith Albee was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and joined the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2014. The theater still holds numerous events each year through the Marshall Artist Series. 

Keith Albee Theatre

Huntington, West Virginia was historically known as a thriving railroad town thanks to Collis P. Huntington, the Chesapeake &amp; Ohio Railroad (C&amp;O), and the Baltimore &amp; Ohio Railroad (B&amp;O). Originally, Huntington served as the westernmost depot on the C&amp;O Railroad, which traveled south through the coalfields and into Richmond and Newport News on the East Coast. Collis P. Huntington chose this location along the Ohio River so that the steamboat and railroad systems could link together, thus making Huntington a boom town in 1871. The B&amp;O depot was constructed in 1892, when the B&amp;O line was extended into the city. The extension of the B&amp;O, coupled with the C&amp;O and the Ohio River, made Huntington a major regional destination for travelers and trade.The first B&amp;O train departed Huntington on August 10, 1892.  The B&amp;O depot made news in December 1892, when Tom Collins and Burrell Forgey boarded a train at the site and attempted to rob it. At 16th street, Collins and Forgey put their masks on and began shooting at the ceiling of the train car. Passengers listened to the robbers’ demands, all except Oscar Dic, who attempted to disarm one of the robbers. Captain Samuel Mathison, Chairman of the Democratic State Executive Committee, attempted to help Dic. When Mathison and Dic took the pistol away from one robber, he pulled out another gun and shot Dic point blank in the face. The other robber was shooting at the end of the train car as W. A. Zingerly, the train ticket collector, appeared and began shooting at the robbers. Both robbers were shot, but they were able to pull the bell-rope and jump off at the Guyandotte Station. The escaped robbers were caught three days later in Bradrick, Ohio, just across the river from Huntington. Collins and Burrell were sentenced to twelve years in the state penitentiary.  By 1900, the B&amp;O trains arriving and departing from the depot were carrying passengers, mail, and freight. The B&amp;O Railroad profited from the coal industry so much that it allowed them to expand and give Huntington passengers access to thirteen different states by 1917. The railroad industry was wildly popular in the community during the 1920s, and became the most utilized form of transportation as the majority of Huntington residents did not yet own cars. However, when the Great Depression struck in the 1930s, service at the Huntington depot was reduced to only two trains daily. World War II once briefly revived the industry in Huntington as war supplies were carried by trains and gas rationing led to an increase in passenger usage.  Passenger train use declined once again in the post-war era, and the popular Pullman Cars were slowly phased out; nighttime trains stopped running in 1953, and all daytime passenger trains were halted in 1957. One of the Pullman Cars now sits on the Heritage Station property. The collapse in passenger train popularity was due primarily to the availability of automobiles and the construction of the interstate highway system. Freight trains still passed through the Huntington Depot until the line was closed in 1965. Afterwards the depot sat empty until 1977, when the Urban Renewal Authority started to restore the entire train station so that it could be re-purposed as an artisan center. It opened as Heritage Station, a retail facility offering spaces for new local businesses and artisans. Since the 1970s Heritage Station has hosted numerous shops, restaurants, and community events. The original depot building houses the Huntington Area Convention &amp; Visitors Bureau, which promotes tourism in the local area.  Elk River Coal &amp; Lumber Company #10 Steam Locomotive In front of the Depot stands the Elk River Coal &amp; Lumber Company #10 Steam Locomotive, also on the National Register of Historic Places. This locomotive operated on the Buffalo Creek &amp; Gailey Railroad between 1950 and 1959, largely carrying mine waste from Rich Run Mine (Walden, WV) to a “gob pile” (a pile of material removed while digging) a short distance away. #10 was taken out of service in 1959 and placed in storage for a few years before being given to the Huntington Railway Museum, Inc./Collis P. Huntington Railroad Historical Society, Inc. in 1963. CPHRHS moved the locomotive to Huntington and put her into storage at the Chesapeake &amp; Ohio’s Huntington Locomotive Shops. When Heritage Station opened in 1977 the locomotive was moved here, and ownership passed to The Greater Huntington Park and Recreation District that same year. Originally, #10 was repainted to represent a Baltimore &amp; Ohio locomotive with the number 4559 to represent the last B &amp; O steam locomotive to operate in Huntington, but that was an incorrect designation. The engine was restored in 2000 and its correct ERC&amp;LC #10 lettering was repainted. The #10 locomotive was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006.

This former Baltimore & Ohio Railroad depot was built in 1887, and served Huntington until the mid-1960s. Concerned citizens worked to preserve the historic railway station during the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973, the B&O depot was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. With the support of the Urban Renewal Authority, the facility was repurposed in 1977 as Heritage Station, a center for artisans and other retail outlets. Today, Heritage Station is a hub for local businesses and events, while the original depot building serves as the headquarters for the Huntington Area Convention & Visitors Bureau. In front of the Depot stands the Elk River Coal & Lumber Company #10 Steam Locomotive, also on the National Register of Historic Places. 

Huntington B&O Railroad Depot (Heritage Station)

The origin of the prison can be traced back to 1908, when President Theodore Roosevelt appointed a panel to investigate conditions in Washington's jails and prison. The panel issued several recommendations, including the transfer of inmates who had committed non-violent crimes away from the high-security prison. Congress responded by providing funding for a medium-security reformatory and workhouse that would be built to resemble a college campus and emphasize rehabilitation through labor. The DC department of corrections selected inmates and transferred them from the high-security complex to the present site in 1910. Occoquan was built in several phases, with labor being provided by these first prisoners. In 1916, the brick structure was complete. Over time, the Department of Corrections transformed Occoquan from a minimum security facility into Lorton Prison, complete with high walls and guard towers.    During the Cold War, the federal government built an underground bunker that held weapons and equipment in reserve. Less attention was given to the actual state of the prison, which became outdated and overcrowded. Prisoners were transferred to other facilities during the 1990s, and the prison closed in 2002. Control of the land and buildings transferred to Fairfax County, where community leaders worked to transform the former prison into a cultural arts center. In 2008, the Workhouse Arts Center opened offering several galleries and studios, as well as a youth arts center and theater.

The Lorton Reformatory, previously known as the Occoquan Workhouse, was established in 1910 as part of the Progressive Movement's effort to reform the penal system. The prison is best known for its deplorable treatment of women who were sent to Occoquan in 1917 following their arrest for participating in protests for women's suffrage at the nation's capital. Lucy Burns, Alice Paul and other prisoners launched a hunger strike in order to protest their arrest and publicize incidents of violence and sexual abuse. Prison guards force-fed the protesting prisoners. On the night of November 14th, 1917, the guards severely beat some of the women. News of the abuse galvanized support for women's suffrage and led to investigations into the treatment of prisoners at the workhouse and other prisons.  

Occoquan Workhouse/Lorton Reformatory (1910-2002)

Inspired by a believe that the high altitude air and desert environment had healing properties, Albuquerque, New Mexico fashioned itself as a health capital for tuberculous. This sanitarium saw many "heath seekers," who were people with tuberculous who traveled for treatmentOne of these health seekers was author Tom Kromer. Kromer was diagnosed with tuberculosis seeking special treatment promised in New Mexico. So, after initially being treated for tuberculosis at a nearby St. Joseph’s Sanitarium, Tom Kromer was then transferred to Hillcrest Sanitarium, previously known as Sunnyside. He was treated with the New Mexico sunshine until he was discharged from the sanitarium, keeping his promise to marry his soon to be Janet Kromer.

Also known as Sunnyside and St. John Sanitarium, this was the location of a tuberculosis sanitarium, including many visitors who traveled for the treatment in the New Mexico sun and air. This site is a contributing entry and Included in this tour for their treatment of Huntington West Virginia author Thomas Kromer. Today the site is a hospital.

Hillcrest Sanitarium

An adobe styled home that was initially purchased by West Virginian author Thomas M. Kromer in 1937. He was accompanied by his wife, Janet Kromer, whom he met while being treated for tuberculosis at St. Joseph's Hospital.Kromer is most known for his novel Waiting for Nothing, and it is said that the Kromer household is where Kromer began working on another novel titled Michael Kohler, a canny reference to his grandfather during his time as a coal miner. After being married, they bought this very house and lived here in Albuquerque until 1960, when sadly, Kromer’s wife, Janet passed away due to lung cancer.After her passing, Kromer sold the home and returned to West Virginia to live with family as a recluse. He would die in 1969, and is buried in Huntington, West Virginia.

The home of West Virginia born author Thomas M. Kromer. Famous for his only full published novel Waiting for Nothing, published in 1935, he bought this house with his wife 2 years later. They would live here for 23 years before Janet Kromer, Thomas Kromer's wife, died of lung cancer in 1960. The house is now private residence.

Kromer House

The house at 3613 Brandon Road is important to the life of Thomas Kromer because this is where he primarily spent the last years of his life. Kromer lived a solitary life at this house, normally confining himself in his room at the back of the house listening to records and quaffing red wine. The house was owned by Kromers family and was primarily cared for by his two sisters Emogene and Katherine.Other relatives of Kromer that still live in the Huntington area today say they would seldom see him outside of his room only leaving if he absolutely had to and even then not for very long. The house on Brandon Road is the last segment in Tom Kromer and gives insight into his final years that help us to better understand the ending of this man’s story.Following his death, he was buried in Spring Hill Cemetery, 6 miles away from his final home, which is currently private residence.

This is the family home of the Kromer family, and is the last location the Huntington, West Virginia area author Thomas Kromer lived. Having grown up in Huntington, he wrote the novel Waiting for Nothing about his experience living as homeless person in and around Huntington. Having moved to New Mexico, he returned to his home town due to health problems, and this is the house he lived in. He would die in 1969, and is buried in Huntington.

Tom Kromer Driving Tour

Spring Hill Cemetery

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources

Additional Information