behind AotW

Walter David McAdoo came from a long line of successful merchants and entrepreneurs in Greensboro, Guilford County, NC. He left Dickinson College in Pennsylvania at the start of the Civil War and enlisted as a Private soldier in the Guilford Greys – soon afterward Company B of the 27th North Carolina Infantry.

He was wounded in the battle at Sharpsburg in September 1862 and while home in Greensboro on a wounded furlough, in February 1863, transferred to the 57th North Carolina Infantry. He was seriously wounded in action with them at Gettysburg in July and did not recover enough to serve again in the field.

After the war he was a merchant, banker, and real estate developer – and he made a packet – but his most enduring legacy was that of hotel proprietor. This postcard shows his block-long grand hotel, “The McAdoo,” on South Elm Street in Greensboro in about 1912.

He built it in 1871 and ran it until about 1891, and it continued to be a local landmark and luxury destination until it was destroyed by fire in 1916, 8 years after W.D. McAdoo’s death.

This postcard is online from the North Carolina Postcards collection at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.