Carnegie Hall’s free lunchtime lecture series, Brown Bag Tuesdays, resumes Tuesday, Sept. 17, at 12 noon in the Hamilton Auditorium. Dr. Bob Conte, historian at The Greenbrier Hotel, will present “100 Years of Golf at The Greenbrier.” Don’t miss this rare opportunity to learn about The Greenbrier Hotel from an informed and unique perspective.
Robert Conte graduated with a B.A. in History from Santa Clara University in 1968. Following two years of military service, he began graduate work in American Studies at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio where he received his Ph.D. in 1975. He has been the Historian at The Greenbrier since 1978. Dr. Conte is responsible for establishing and maintaining the archives of The Greenbrier’s historical materials, is the curator of the Presidents’ Cottage Museum and gives various presentations and tours explaining the resort’s 200 year history to guests of The Greenbrier.
Dr. Conte’s comprehensive chronicle of the resort’s history, The History of The Greenbrier, America’s Resort, was first published in 1990. A revised and expanded edition appeared in 1998 which was updated in 2010. In 2007, he produced a historical chapter used in a coffee-table photography book, The Greenbrier: America’s Resort. An informal but wide-ranging conversation with Erik Hastings, the resort’s director of media productions, resulted in the creation of a DVD in 2011 entitled “A Brief History of The Greenbrier” which includes photographs and footage from the resort’s archives.
Dr. Conte has been interviewed frequently about The Greenbrier’s famous secret bunker, on NPR’s All Things Considered, A&E’s America’s Castles, CBS’s Good Morning America, as well as the History Channel, the Travel Channel, the Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel and NBC’s Today Show. His comments have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.
The program will take place the third Tuesday of each month, featuring different guests and speakers, through December. Brown Bag Tuesdays is presented with financial assistance from the WV Division of Culture and Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts, with approval from the WV Commission on the Arts.