Chattanooga’s Read House Celebrates Milestone Anniversary
The Read House was, in 1872, a modest yet humble lodging facility. Today, a proud legacy radiates throughout the historic 241-room hotel in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee, that through the years has hosted parties, dinners, weddings and proms, and welcomed high-profile guests ranging from Hollywood celebrities, politicians, foreign diplomats, and even a notorious mobster.
Inside the lobby of the oldest continuously operating hotel in the Southeast is a scene resembling the Great Gatsby, with bellhops adorned in 1920s attire tipping their hats, standing ready to transport visitors back to the era of flappers and jazz music and good times.
To celebrate its sesquicentennial, dinner selections from different menus from different decades of the Read House’s existence will be available on November 12. Through the rest of the year, displays of historical items from the hotel’s past, including stationery, postcards and menus will offer a trip down memory lane in the lobby. Guests have the opportunity to place items related to the hotel in a time capsule. Room discounts are available throughout the 150th-anniversary celebration.
‘Great food and hospitable nature'
Before opening 150 years ago, another hotel occupied the same property where the Read House stands today. Named after former Mayor Thomas Crutchfield, the Crutchfield House had opened in 1847. It served those coming through the city via trains arriving at the Western & Atlantic rail station across the street from the hotel with a hot meal and friendly service. “Because of its great food and the hospitable nature of its owners, the hotel played a key role in the development in Chattanooga,” said Read House historian Tyler Logue.
Chattanooga was a key city during the Civil War, and the Crutchfield House was no exception. Jefferson Davis, who would soon be president of the Confederacy, stopped there to discuss secession after resigning from the Senate. The hotel also served as a command center and hospital for the Union Army in 1863.
“When the Union took control of Chattanooga, they set up a hospital in the hotel that could accommodate 500 soldiers,” Logue said.
Several years after a fire in 1867 destroyed the Crutchfield House, Doctor John T. Read, a surgeon during the Civil War, saw potential in the property. Read and his wife, Caroline, had a hotel in their hometown of McMinnville, Tennessee.
“That hotel, like the Crutchfield House, burned to the ground, and the Read family had to look elsewhere to make a living,” Logue said. The family moved to Chattanooga in 1871 for better economic opportunity in the city’s economic boom during Reconstruction.
Read persuaded several prominent businesspeople to sell him a three-story office building that had been built on the site of the Crutchfield House, on the corner of Broad and Ninth Street, for a hotel. On January 1, 1872, the Read House opened to guests as a 45-room hotel after the building’s offices were converted to bedrooms.
“Some of the rooms were interior rooms with no ventilation,” Logue said. While it didn’t have the same prestige as other hotels in the city, the family’s treatment of their guests and superb meals made The Read House a quality choice for lodging in Chattanooga. “It was the hospitality and compassion of the Reads that made people come back,” Logue said.
In 1879, Read sold the hotel to his 19-year-old son Samuel, who expanded the property during the final years of the 19th century and into the 20th century. Thanks to Chattanooga’s real estate boom and additional rail lines, the Read House expanded to 250 rooms in 1902.
Later amenities included an upscale dining room, billiards, a Victorian era spa with Turkish baths, telephones in every room, and Peacock Alley, a place for wealthy patrons to stroll, mingle, and be seen by others. The most significant expansion came in 1926, when the original 1872 building was replaced with a 10-story Georgian-style, 400-room facility designed after the Palmer House in Chicago.
“The 1926 building was a major extension of the original hotel, but it did not change sites,” Logue said. “It operates on the same site since the hotel was opened in 1872 except for seven months in 1877, when it moved across the street for a lower rent.”
The expansion included aesthetic upgrades such as Waterford chandeliers suspended from the 25-foot ceiling of a ballroom that was once the largest in the South, soaring columns in the lobby, marbled floors, and panels made with fine-crafted woodwork. Several restaurants were also opened, including the Green Room, the hotel’s most popular dining facility to date.
Progress changes things
After Samuel Read died in 1942, Albert Noe Jr., owner of several hotels throughout the South under the Albert Noe Hotel brand, purchased the Read House. Noe kept the service, dining options, and atmosphere created under Samuel Read.
With construction of the interstate through downtown Chattanooga—and due to the changing nature of traveling—the Read House opened a six-story motor inn behind the 10-story hotel in 1962, with an underground garage and outdoor pool to appeal to interstate travelers. With that, the Read House moved beyond attracting the business and wealthy classes that had primarily made up the target audience of the hotel’s early years. It now attracted middle-class families traveling by car.
“It gave people a choice between a traditional elegant hotel or a fast road-trip stay in the motor inn,” Logue said.
After a quarter-century under the Albert Noe brand, the Provident Insurance Company purchased the Read House in 1968. The company wasted no time giving the hotel’s interior a more modern look, with new carpeting, paint, and furniture. During Provident’s ownership, a Bavarian-themed restaurant and a rock ‘n’ roll radio station were added. In 1978, the Chattanooga Choo Choo, the original Chattanooga terminal rail station, bought the Read House and added a disco on the mezzanine level that only lasted two years.
The 1970s saw the decline of downtown Chattanooga as a viable central business district, including the closure of the train station in 1973. Seven different owners tried keeping the hotel afloat between 1980 and 2000. Despite having staying open during the 1873 cholera epidemic, the 1878 yellow fever epidemic, numerous floods and the Great Depression, there was talk at the time of transitioning to apartments.
“Various groups owned the hotel throughout the 1980s, and then in the 1990s we saw bankruptcy and a continual change in décor and service, known as the Read House’s dark ages,” Logue said.
The jewel of Chattanooga
Downtown Chattanooga saw a rebirth at the end of the 20th century that continues to this day. Despite that, it would be a while before the Read House shared in the fortunes of growth. Sheraton Hotel focused its efforts at the Read House on modern business class travelers after purchasing the hotel in 2004, adding an indoor pool, fitness center, and an upscale steakhouse that replaced the Green Room. However, it was not until Avocet Hospitality of Charleston, South Carolina, bought the building in 2016 that the long-time jewel of Chattanooga saw its fortunes rise again. In 2018, Avocet began a $28 million facelift of the hotel’s interior by redesigning all the guest rooms and restoring the lobby to its roaring 1920s heyday. Logue said the company consulted with local historians, architects, and residents to make the completed renovations as authentic as possible.
“Avocet came in and wanted to restore the hotel to its former glory, to create an atmosphere that makes our guests feel like they have stepped back in time,” Read House General Manager Jim Bambrey said.
During renovation, the hotel saw the addition of Bridgeman’s Chophouse, a rat-pack themed steakhouse named after “Peter ‘Rabbit’ Bridgeman, a hard-working, sociable, well-known waiter who worked here for about 50 years, Logue said. Guest rooms in the 1926 tower, the penthouse, and the adjacent Manor House were enlarged and updated. A new speakeasy-styled Bar and Billiards room pays tribute to the hotel’s Prohibition days with billiards tables located behind a pocket door. The historic Silver Ballroom was restored, with its original silver leaf chandeliers beautifully showcased.
One room restored to its original 1920s appearance is Room 311, where gangster Al Capone spent his last night of freedom before turning himself in to be imprisoned for tax evasion.
“Ironically, Al Capone stayed in the same room where a murder occurred a few years earlier,” guest service ambassador John Kirby said, and some say the murder victim haunts it. Fans of the supernatural can stay in Room 311 during October for Halloween, while guests can tour the room at certain times of the day year round.
Elvis, Oprah and Bob Hope
The Read House attracted famous guests throughout its storied history thanks to its quality service, beautiful architecture, and central location. Presidential guests include Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had a not-so-nice experience in 1932 while touring the United States on a speaking engagement.
“A reporter snuck up to the room Churchill was staying in. Churchill exploded and slammed the door in the reporter’s face,” Logue said.
Edwin Booth, brother of assassin John Wilkes Booth, stayed there, as well as Gene Autry, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Oprah Winfrey, and Elvis Presley.
While other hotels in downtown Chattanooga have come and gone, the Read House still stands in the 21st century, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“We at the Read House now see ourselves as caretakers of this hotel,” Logue said. “There have always been a few people at the hotel who have loved and honored it and kept her going.”
Guests are attracted to the quality service, stunning architecture, and historical experience often lacking at other hotels.
“I think the hotel has survived because it is unique and has a story,” Bambrey said. “You can stay in a chain hotel anywhere in the country, but there is only one Read House.”