Meticulously restored and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Pink Fancy hotel is a romantic blend of our bygone plantation era with the sophisticated cachet of the inn's founder.

It was in 1948 that Jane Winton Gottlieb, an actress and former dancer with the Ziegfeld Follies, opened the doors of a small Caribbean lodging, her Pink Fancy, to its first guests. Writers, artists, and theatrical people from her sophisticated world were drawn to this charming spot, including playwright Noel Coward.

Turning to writing in the1950's, Gottlieb wrote historic novels of intrigue like Passion is the Gale: Temptation and Torment in the Tropics, no doubt set in a town very much like colonial Christiansted.

Just as Jane Gottlieb was, guests of the Pink Fancy hotel become immersed in the intriguing history of West Indies just outside their door. The oldest part of the four-building inn was constructed in 1780 when the young seafront town of Christiansted was the bustling capital of the Danish West Indies.

Sugar and cotton plantations dominated island life then, the economy boomed, and merchants with family and trade ties to Europe and America built elegant townhouses of yellow Danish brick that came to the island on sailing ships as ballast.

Where Prince Street meets Strand Street, the jewel of a building now known as Pink Fancy became a private club for wealthy planters. Those who gathered remembered, no doubt, the impoverished but impressive young clerk, Alexander Hamilton, who left the island to be educated in New York in 1773. After joining the revolution, he served General George Washington, and rose to become America's first Secretary of the Treasury-and he still is spoken of often in Christiansted.

By the mid-nineteenth century, king sugar was dethroned by the abolition of slavery and by development of sugar beets that could be grown in cooler climates. St. Croix settled into a sleepy existence under the sun, all but forgotten by the world until March 31, 1917. That day, the United States, seeking a stronger Caribbean presence for national security, purchased the Danish West Indies for $25 million in gold.

After World War II, with the development of jet aircraft, St. Croix saw an influx of "continentals" from the mainland, delighted to vacation in America's paradise. Some, like Jane Gottlieb, chose to begin new lives here and help restore the charming colonial town. The St. Croix Landmarks League swung into action in 1948, the year Pink Fancy's doors opened. Its members fought to preserve the Christiansted Historic Site, an open air treasure now under the auspices of the National Park Service.

And so, along with its historic setting, Pink Fancy has been preserved for your delight, as one of the last remaining historic Caribbean inns. This unique, small hotel is a living symbol of St. Croix's golden age, the late 18th and early 19th centuries when sugar was king-as well as the island's rebirth under the American flag.