Palm Room, Oglebay (Hilltop Welcome Center)

Oglebay's Hilltop in Wheeling still holds several buildings from the Oglebays' time: the mansion, the Guest House, the Palm Room and greenhouses, and the farm office and manager's house, according to the Oglebay Foundation. Earl W. Oglebay, an industrialist of Wheeling and Cleveland, acquired the property in 1900 according to Wikipedia, in 1901 according to the Ohio County Public Library; he renamed it Waddington Farm and used it as a summer estate and model farm. The foundation writes that Mrs. Oglebay used the Palm Room and adjacent greenhouses to grow exotic flowers for arrangements throughout the mansion; the park's website, for its part, says the Palm Room once housed Sallie Oglebay's exotic plants.

According to the foundation, the Palm Room and adjacent greenhouses were designed by Lord & Burnham, a greenhouse manufacturer and builder of major public conservatories, which also designed the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh (1892-93). The foundation calls the Palm Room a status symbol of the early 1900s.

Earl Oglebay died in 1926 and left the estate to the people of Wheeling for public recreation (by will according to the Ohio County Public Library, by deed according to Wikipedia); the city took responsibility for it and the park opened in 1928. The park's greenhouses were later used to raise thousands of trees for the arboretum planted in the 1930s, according to the official site. In 2021 the foundation announced that the horticulture team planned to return the Palm Room to its original function as a conservatory; the park's website now describes it as a restored glass conservatory.

The official site describes the Palm Room as a glass-enclosed, beautifully restored conservatory. The Oglebay Foundation credits its design, like that of the adjacent greenhouses, to Lord & Burnham. According to Wikipedia, the firm, founded in 1849 in Buffalo, New York, and closed in 1988, made wood-and-glass greenhouses and conservatories as well as boilers. None of the pages read gives the building's structure, dimensions or date.

The Palm Room forms, together with the greenhouses and the neighbouring Welcome Center buildings, the Aileen Kraft Garden Center, and the official site links a visit to the Welcome Center with one to the Palm Room. Aerial imagery shows, within 30 m of the Garden Bistro as OpenStreetMap locates it, two long glass-roofed ranges, parallel and attached to an adjoining building; OpenStreetMap draws them as two blocks of about 34 by 9 m and 29 by 11 m.

In 2021 the foundation planned to reintroduce a water feature in the conservatory.

Historic photographs of the Palm Room, the Oglebay Foundation writes, show towering banana palms, exotic pygmy dates, lush ferns, shrubs and other plants. With the adjacent greenhouses, it served Mrs. Oglebay for growing exotic flowers for arrangements in the mansion.

For the refit announced in 2021, the horticulture team intended to rely on tropical plants such as crotons, bromeliads, lilies and palms, with a seasonal rotation: pansies and spring flowers, petunias and summer annuals, chrysanthemums in autumn, poinsettias and Christmas plantings. The official site now speaks more modestly of seasonal displays throughout the year.

The outdoor beds on the Hilltop follow the same rhythm, according to the foundation: tulips and daffodils in spring, then celosia, canna, salvia, begonia and hanging petunia baskets in summer, and chrysanthemums in autumn.

The Palm Room goes with the Hilltop Welcome Center, where the official site suggests starting a visit to the park: an exhibit of photographs and artefacts on the transformation of Waddington Farm, the Grow Lab devoted to sustainable gardening and, from May to October, the Garden Bistro. The Welcome Center is open daily.

Next to it, Bissonnette Gardens cover 16 acres (about 6.5 ha) of flower beds, fountains and brick paths; they recreate Mrs. Oglebay's gardens of the turn of the 20th century and have borne the name of Joseph F. Bissonnette since 1999. The Mansion Museum, Earl Oglebay's summer house built in 1846 and fitted with 13 period rooms, and the arboretum of the 1930s are close by. In winter the Festival of Lights illuminates the park.