Danville’s first newspaper office, known as the “Old Bee,” stood at 117 South Union. Built around 1899, this three-story building housed a basement printing press, ground floor offices, and a second-story newsroom. Following a fire at the adjacent Masonic Temple in 1920, the Register and Bee relocated, leaving the “Old Bee” to house businesses ranging from furniture stores to grocery stores. In 1939, the building was completely remodeled in the Moderne style into a segregated movie theater called “The Dan.” This Moderne facade remains today, replacing the “Old Bee’s” original brick exterior.
Across from the city’s South Union park stood the grand “New Bee” building at 123 South Union. Constructed in 1921 as the James A. Rorer Memorial Building, the “New Bee” became the second home of the Register Bee Danville Va. The building’s distinctive design marked the newspaper’s golden age, spanning from the 1920s to the 1990s.
The Register and Bee remained in the Rorer family throughout the 20th century. Its first head was Rorer Abraham James (1859-1921), a journalist, lawyer, and politician who served as a delegate in the Virginia House of Delegates and Senate, as well as a Democratic U.S. Congressman. After James’s death in 1921, his son, Rorer Abraham James Jr. (1897–1937), took over the family business. James Jr. died suddenly in 1937, leaving the newspaper to his 17-year-old daughter, Elizabeth. By age 21, Elizabeth Stuart James Grant (1920-1990) became president of the paper but entrusted daily management to her husband, Walter L. Grant (1920–1972), who served as publisher beginning in 1945. Mrs. Grant was an active figure in Danville’s preservation movement and instrumental in preserving the birthplace of Lady Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor, the first woman to sit in the British House of Commons.
Following a family dispute in the 1970s, Mrs. Grant moved the newspaper operations from the “New Bee” on South Union and built offices and a production plant at 700 Monument Street, the newspaper’s current location. The offices at South Union subsequently sat vacant for more than 40 years.
By 2020, the 1921 newspaper building and its 1899 predecessor had been reimagined as a new boutique hotel for Danville called “The Bee.” The hotel features 47 suite rooms, some with full apartment amenities, and a stunning rooftop terrace atop the “New Bee.” Many of the building’s historic details have been retained and restored, including the original wood flooring in the “Old Bee’s” lobby, the original spiral staircase connecting the printing press to the editor’s office on the third floor of the “New Bee,” the “Rorer A. James” inscription on the facade, and the intricate polychrome terra cotta design on the front porch ceiling. The original newsboy statue above the “New Bee’s” South Union Street lobby entrance welcomes guests to the building that once symbolized Danville’s progress.
