Nashville's Hermitage Hotel Goes Green
Only Five-Star Hotel in Tennessee Celebrates 100th Birthday
Jul 13, 2009
The Hermitage Hotel, named after President Andrew Jackson’s nearby home, opened its doors in 1910 as Tennessee’s first million dollar hotel. Built of the finest materials, including Italian marble, its downstairs Grille and Oak Bar were the finest the growing Southern town had to offer. It is now on the National Register of Historic Places and is within walking distance of downtown Nashville sights and a short drive from the Parthenon.
Minnesota Fats Called Famous Tennessee Hotel Home
Over the years, the elegant Hermitage attracted visitors ranging from Greta Garbo to Gene Autrey, who brought his famous horse into the lobby. Only steps from the Tennessee state Capitol, political operatives made it a headquarters and powerful national politicians, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon, visited, according to a history of the hotel on the Hermitage Hotel Web site.
Famous pool shark Minnesota Fats also lived at the Hermitage for eight years in the 1980s and early 1990s, and had a special pool table on the mezzanine where he’d take on all comers.
AAA Rates Hermitage Hotel Best Hotel in Tennessee
For decades the ballrooms and dining room of the Hermitage were a haven for Nashville’s social elite, but by the 1990s the hotel, Tennessee’s only remaining Beaux Arts building, had lost some of its luster. In 2000, it was purchased by current owner, Historic Hotels Nashville, Inc. A $20 million renovation, completed on Valentine’s Day 2003, restored the grand hotel to its former magnificence. For six consecutive years AAA has given the Hermitage Hotel its highest rating of Five Stars, the only five-star hotel in Tennessee or five of its contiguous states.
Even its bathrooms have won awards. In 2008, the Hermitage’s Art Deco lobby bathrooms were voted the finest in America in the 7th annual “America’s Best Restroom” contest presented by Cincinnati-based Cintas Corp., a leading provider of restroom hygiene products and services.
Hermitage Hotel's Capitol Grille Gets Four Diamonds
The Hermitage Hotel's Capitol Grille is an AAA Four-Diamond restaurant. Originally designed as a rathskeller, it was built by German craftsmen brought to Nashville specifically for the project. Now it offers upscale dining featuring new Southern cuisine.
The adjacent Oak Bar is an intimate spot, long the haunt of politicians and journalists who would step across the street from the state Capitol every night for drinks. The Oak Bar has also been restored and the blue haze of tobacco smoke is gone.
Hermitage Hotel Launches Green Initiative
In 2008 the hotel instituted a program that allows guests to contribute $2 each night of their stay for land preservation in Tennessee. The hotel’s management expects the program will raise $50,000 a year for The Land Trust to protect about 500 acres a year.
“Based on our typical occupancy, we look forward to donating half a million dollars in a decade. This is enough to preserve an area twice the size of Nashville’s Warner Parks, which is one of the largest urban parks in the country," Greg Sligh, managing director of The Hermitage Hotel, said in a news release announcing the program.
Rates at the 122-room hotel range from $220 to more than $1500 a night for the 2000-square-foot Presidential Suite. The Hermitage Hotel is located at 231 Sixth Avenue North, Nashville, TN 37219.
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