{"id":277,"date":"2014-05-27T11:57:58","date_gmt":"2014-05-27T16:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/offbeattenn.com\/?p=277"},"modified":"2014-05-27T16:47:53","modified_gmt":"2014-05-27T21:47:53","slug":"nashville-hotel-visited-7-presidents-numerous-celebs-destroyed-fire-sixties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/offbeattenn.com\/?p=277","title":{"rendered":"Nashville hotel visited by 7 presidents, and numerous celebs, destroyed by fire in the sixties"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Nashville's<\/a>

Nashville’s Maxwell House Hotel 1925<\/p><\/div>\n

The Maxwell House Hotel was a major hotel in downtown Nashville at which seven US Presidents and other prominent guests stayed and was one of the grandest hotels in the south<\/p>\n

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Zolicor Baracks (Maxwell House) In Nashville Following The Civil War<\/p><\/div>\n

What local citizens called “Overton’s Folly” finally opened in fall 1869; total costs were $500,000. It was quite a grand hotel when Nashville only had a population of 17,000 at that time. The hotel\u00a0had\u00a0five stories and 240 rooms. It advertised steam heat, gas lighting, and a bath on every floor. Rooms cost $4 a day, including meals.Located on the northeast corner of Fourth Avenue North and Church Street, the hotel had its front entrance, flanked by eight Corinthian columns, on Fourth Avenue in the “Men’s Quarter” and a separate entrance for women on Church Street. The main lobby featured mahogany cabinetry, brass fixtures, gilded mirrors, and chandeliers. There were ladies’ and men’s parlors, billiard rooms, barrooms, shaving “saloons,” and a grand staircase to the large ball or dining room.<\/p>\n

\"Maxwell<\/a><\/p>\n

The hotel was at its height from the 1890s to the early twentieth century. Its Christmas dinner featuring calf’s head, black bear, opossum, and other unusual delicacies became famous. Hotel guests included Jane Addams, Sarah Bernhardt, William Jennings Bryan, Enrico Caruso, “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Annie Oakley, William Sydney Porter (O. Henry), General Tom Thumb, Cornelius Vanderbilt, George Westinghouse.\u00a0Presidents Andrew Johnson, Rutherford B. Hayes, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson have stayed at the hotel<\/p>\n

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Senator John F. Kennedy with Senator Albert Gore, Sr. and Mrs. Ben West at a Democratic party banquet in the Maxwell House Hotel, 1959<\/p><\/div>\n

During President Roosevelt’s visit he exclaimed the coffee “is good to the last drop” which became the slogan for the Maxwell House coffee that was based on and served at the hotel. \u00a0The Maxwell House Coffee brand became the best selling coffee brand in the US up until the 1980’s<\/p>\n