Maxwell House - Nashville, Tennessee
Posted by: 
BruceS
N 36° 09.820 W 086° 46.765
16S E 519839 N 4002124
Site of historic hotel in downtown Nashville, Tennessee.
Waymark Code: WMGJ25
Location: Tennessee, United States
Date Posted: 03/10/2013
Views: 3
The MAXWELL HOUSE, NW. corner 4th Ave. N. and Church St., a four-story brick hotel, was designed by Francis W. Strickland and built by Col. John Overton. The building, started in 1859 and completed ten years later, was named Maxwell House for the colonel's wife, Mary Maxwell Overton.
According to tradition, one day when Colonel Overton was riding along Church Street, he noticed a crowd in a roadside field, gathered around a red-faced auctioneer in a beaver hat who was standing on a stump "making a mighty gobbling miration." To the colonel, who had just left the taproom of the Nashville Inn, the auctioneer's gestures seemed to indicate a cow tethered near the stump. Mellowly noting that the cow as a heavy milker, Overton called out a bid of $15 and rode on. The next day he was notified that his bid was high; he hand bought, not a cow, but the lot upon which he later built the Maxwell house.
The hotel was so out of proportion to the town that it was call "Overton's Folly." Service quarters on each floor were in the center of the building, and all rooms were on the outer side. The facade on 4th Avenue was adorned by a colonnaded portico two stories high with a balcony used as a reviewing stand. For years every parade in the city passed by this entrance.
During the War between the States the unfinished building was used by Confederate and Federal troops as barracks and prison.. In the spring of 1867, at a Ku Klux Klan convention held in the hotel, plans for the Klan's operation were laid under the very noses of the carpetbag administration. A constitution was written and Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest was made Grand Wizard, the chief officer.
A nationally known brand of coffee, originally manufactured in Nashville, was named for this hostelry- Tennessee: A Guide to the State, Nashville section , pg. 193.
The Maxwell House was destroyed by fire on Christmas Day, 1961. An modern office building was constructed on the site.