During the 1920s, the twelve-story West Virginian Hotel was built. It has been adapted and in the 21st century is operated as the West Virginia Manor and Retirement Home. In 1924, nearby Graham, Virginia decided to rename itself as Bluefield to try to unite the two towns, which had been feuding since the civil war. Nobel Prize-winning economist and mathematician John Forbes Nash was born in Bluefield in 1928. George Marshall Palmer, the well-renowned Purdue University Professor of aeronautics and director of the AerospaceSciences Laboratory at Purdue, lead of the invention of the Boeing wind tunnel and a pioneer in the aerodynamic and structural testing of skyscrapers was born in Bluefield in 1921.