Touted as an upscale, $1 million-plus property in the 1960s, the Admiral Benbow Inn off South Market Street was once a magnet for freeway travelers and conventioneers.
But who was Admiral Benbow, anyway?
Well, college English majors may recall the Admiral Benbow Inn was a setting in Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island,” a coming-of-age tale about pirates and hidden gold.
According to newspaper archives, the Admiral Benbow Inn in the accompanying, undated photo was between East 19th and East 20th streets near South Market Street. The grand opening of the 142-room hotel was in May 1965.
By the mid-1980s, the property was losing money and became a more budget-friendly Days Inn, which charged $25 to $35 a night for rooms, according to a report in The Chattanooga Times. That was about half the price of most downtown hotels at the time, the report noted.