The Hermitage Hotel

About this audio guide

This guide to the Hermitage Hotel in Nashville follows the money behind its marble lobby: the two hundred fifty local bankers, a manufacturer, and a former mayor who bet their own cash on a Beaux-Arts hotel in nineteen ten, and the architect who was also its biggest investor. You will hear how a modest stock subscription ballooned past a million dollars, and who actually collected the rent for the four decades after it opened. Look for the marble Corinthian columns in the lobby, the same ones that greeted the opening-night crowd.