Helms: Chattanooga's early hotels were 'especial'

photo Crutchfield House
photo Stanton House

A staff correspondent for Harper's Monthly Magazine visited Chattanooga in 1857 and described the scene at the Crutchfield House."The hotel swarmed with people arriving and departing with the trains, east, west, north and south, hurrying to and fro with eager and excited looks ... . Chattanooga is a new place, apparently just cut out of the woods. It has lately sprung into importance as a point on the great railway thoroughfare connecting the Mississippi river at Memphis with the Atlantic ocean at Charleston, S.C."

The first railroad arrived in Chattanooga in 1850, when the state of Georgia constructed the Western & Atlantic Railroad. Allen Kennedy and Thomas W. Newman announced in the Chattanooga Gazette that their Chattanooga Hotel on the corner of Market and Fifth streets was "arranged for the especial comfort of their guests ... ." Another hotel with the same name existed earlier, which John G. Glass offered for sale in 1848, declaring, "The present and prospective travel through Chattanooga makes this one of the most desirable Tavern stands in the country."

The Crutchfield House, located across Ninth Street from the Union Depot, opened in 1856.

Owner Thomas Crutchfield contracted with the Western & Atlantic requiring trains to stop at Ninth instead of allowing them to run on the trestles of Railroad Avenue, now Broad Street, to the Tennessee River.

Traveling home to Mississippi in 1861 after resigning from the U.S. Senate, Jefferson Davis stayed at the Crutchfield House. He delivered a brief speech on the sectional crisis, which prompted a heated reply by William Crutchfield, brother of the hotel owner and an "uncompromising Union man." Pistols were drawn and tensions were high, but no duel ensued.

The Crutchfield House was destroyed by fire in 1867. John Read erected and operated a new hotel on the site and named it the Read House.

In 1862, during the Civil War, the Chattanooga Daily Rebel praised the Central House, located on the corner of Market and Fifth streets, as being "par excellence, an institution in Chattanooga," and said the traveling public owed thanks to proprietor Mr. Rawlings.

By 1863 two men from Nashville had purchased this well-known hotel, also known as The Stand. But circumstances were "most unfavorable to a landlord," and in 1863 the Central House was listed for sale. In 1865 Frank Westcott and Madame Sawyer "kept" it, and the Provost Marshal depicted it as "a pretty tough and fast place. It was a favorite resort for the worthless class of enlisted men."

In this era Chattanooga was a rough-and-tumble town. A pistol and knife fight at the National Hotel was described by Henry Wiltse in his column in the Times. J.J. McGlothlin stood in a chair and tried to shoot Dolph Bush. Hotel proprietor A.L. Miller, who built the National in 1866, jerked the pistol, which went off. Another man brandished a big knife and swore he would cut Bush's heart out.

Next George Crickett beat Bush over the head with a pistol. "Mr. Miller ordered him out, but he wouldn't go, and drew the weapon upon Miller, who promptly knocked it out of his hand, and then knocked him over backwards through the outer door." Not surprisingly, George Crickett later was reported in the Times' Police Court section as charged with "assault with brass knuckles and pistol."

Near the Alabama & Chattanooga Railroad Depot, the elegant Stanton House (called the Lookout House during construction) was the talk of the town.

"It is said a city can boast of nothing with so much pride as her hotels. Heretofore this place has not enjoyed this pleasing thought, since the burning down of the old Crutchfield House. Now, however, we have the gratification of telling our readers that Chattanooga has one among the finest and largest edifices of this character in the State," stated Parham's First Annual Directory 1871-2.

The Stanton House was demolished in 1906 and replaced with Terminal Station, now the Chattanooga Choo-Choo Hotel.

By 1880 the Iron, Coal and Manufacturers' Association made the pitch: "Strangers visiting our city will find comfortable quarters at our hotels. Parties going to and returning from Florida will avoid a rapid change of climate by spending a few days or weeks in the city. They will find here the necessary comforts."

Mary Helms is manager of the local history department at the Chattanooga Public Library. For more, visit Chattahistoricalassoc.org or call LaVonne Jolley 423-886-2090.

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