The Read House Hotel

• 1. Introduction

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  The Read House is a hotel in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the building that carries the name today opened on the 5th of July 1926. The hotel's history under that name actually reaches back further, to 1872. The current structure holds 141 rooms and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for Hamilton County. A separate 100-room wing was added to the rear of the property in 1962, built originally as a motel. A building does not earn a spot on that kind of registry without a few stories worth telling. Nor does it survive a century and a half of Chattanooga's history by accident. Long before the Read House existed, a different hotel stood on the same ground. A future president once delivered a speech there that nearly ended in a duel. Soldiers were later treated in that same building during a war that reshaped the country. What happened to that earlier hotel? How did a family named Read rebuild on the ashes of that history? And why does one particular room number still draw attention from guests today? Those are the questions this documentary follows.

• 2. Before The Read House

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  Thomas Crutchfield Sr. built the first hotel on this site in 1847, naming it the Crutchfield House. He placed it directly across from the Union Depot. Chattanooga's railways brought most of the town's business and imports through that depot, and the steady flow of travelers let Crutchfield's hotel prosper. Crutchfield Sr., who also served as Chattanooga's mayor, died in 1850. His son, Thomas Crutchfield Jr., also a future mayor of the town, took over running the hotel after his father's death.

  Within a decade, the same rail lines that built the hotel's fortune would carry a nation's tensions right through its front door.

• 3. A Speech And Its Fallout

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  Jefferson Davis stopped at the Crutchfield House on the 21st of January 1861. He was traveling home to Mississippi after resigning his seat in the United States Senate. In the hotel's dining room, Davis delivered a speech arguing for secession.

  William Crutchfield, brother of the hotel's owner Thomas Crutchfield Jr., was a future congressman. He answered with a speech of his own, calling Davis a "renegade and a traitor." He warned that Tennessee would not be "hood winked, bamboozled and dragged into your Southern, codfish, aristocratic, tory blooded, South Carolina mobocracy." The confrontation nearly ended in a duel between the two men. Newspapers across the region reported on the argument as tensions rose before the Civil War.

  Within two years, the war those tensions triggered would move from words in a dining room to soldiers occupying the hotel's rooms.

• 4. War Comes To The Hotel

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  In 1862, the Crutchfield House became the headquarters of the local Confederate garrison stationed in Chattanooga. That winter, Confederate General Samuel Jones, who commanded the Department of East Tennessee, had the hotel converted into a military hospital.

  Union forces occupied Chattanooga on the 9th of September 1863. Soldiers of the 92nd Illinois Infantry Regiment raised their regimental colors atop the hotel to mark the town's capture. The building went on to serve as a hospital for Union soldiers wounded at the Battle of Chickamauga.

  The Crutchfield House survived the fighting itself, but a fire destroyed the building in 1867, and the Crutchfield family decided against rebuilding it. The empty lot sat until a Civil War surgeon arrived in town. He had his own history of losing a hotel to flames.

• 5. Rising From The Ashes

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  John T. Read had already lost one hotel to fire before he ever set foot in Chattanooga. That earlier property, in his hometown of McMinnville, Tennessee, was one he ran with his wife Caroline. The couple moved to Chattanooga in 1871 and bought a three-story office building that had gone up on the old Crutchfield House lot. Read converted that structure into a 45-room hotel and opened it as the Read House Hotel on New Year's Day 1872. In 1879, Read sold the hotel to his son, Samuel R. Read, who was only 19 at the time. Samuel expanded the property until it held 202 rooms by 1902.

  In 1925, most of that original structure came down to make way for something larger. The replacement building was designed by the Chicago architectural firm Holabird & Roche in the Georgian style. The George A. Fuller Construction Company of Washington, D.C. built it, at a cost of $2.7 million. The new wing added 280 rooms. The surviving 120 rooms of the older structure stayed open throughout construction, so the hotel never had to close its doors entirely.

  The Read family that had rebuilt the hotel from a burned lot would not hold onto it for many more decades.

• 6. A Century Of New Names

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  Samuel R. Read died in 1942, and the following year the hotel passed to Albert Noe Jr. Noe died four years later, and his son, Albert Noe III, took over managing the property. In 1962, the younger Noe built a six-story wing behind the hotel, complete with an underground garage and an outdoor pool. It was aimed at drivers using the newly built Interstate Highway System. That wing is known today as the Manor.

  Provident Life and Accident Insurance Company bought the hotel from Noe in 1968 and hired the National Hotel Company to run it. A decade later, in 1978, new owners who also ran the nearby Chattanooga Choo-Choo Hotel bought the property. They renamed it the Choo-Choo Read House and added a nightclub on the mezzanine, the Grand Central Station Disco. That club operated until 1980. The hotel then became a Best Western franchise, trading under the name Best Western Choo-Choo Read House. It cycled through seven different owners between 1980 and 2000. Radisson Hotels took over management in 1986, and the property became the Radisson Read House.

  An $11 million renovation in 2004 brought in Sheraton Hotels. The property reopened as the Sheraton Read House on the 18th of November that year. The hotel dropped its Sheraton affiliation in 2015 and operated as The Read House Historic Inn & Suites. Avocet Hospitality Group, based in Charleston, South Carolina, purchased the hotel on the 30th of August 2016. The company put $27 million into a renovation. That work moved the main entrance back to its original spot on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. It also added several dining outlets and refreshed every guest room. The hotel reopened in 2018 simply as The Read House, and in 2022 it marked its 150th anniversary.

  A hotel that changed names this many times still kept one thing constant: a guest list like a who's who of the 20th century.

• 7. Distinguished Guests

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  Seven American presidents have stayed at the Read House over the years. They include Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, Grover Cleveland, Theodore Roosevelt, William McKinley, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan. The guest register also includes Edwin Booth, Gene Autry, Elvis Presley, Oprah Winfrey, and Gary Cooper. Winston Churchill, Bing Crosby, Walt Disney, and Bob Hope also stayed at the hotel.

  Al Capone stayed at the hotel briefly during his federal trial in the early 20th century, and he resided in room 311. Custom iron bars were installed across that room's windows during Capone's stay, and they are still there today.

  Capone was far from the only person associated with that room; long after his stay, a very different story attached itself to 311.

• 8. The Ghost Of Room 311

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  Many people believe the spirit of a woman named Annalisa Netherly still lingers in room 311, according to hotel legend. Accounts differ on who she really was and how her legend began. The most common version holds that Netherly worked as a prostitute in Chattanooga during the 1920s and 1930s. She reportedly lived in room 311 for an extended stretch of time. The details of her death are hazy, but she did die in that room.

  One version of the story has her found in the bathtub with her head nearly severed, likely the work of a jealous lover or husband. A different version says she brought a gentleman to the room, and he later turned his attention to another woman. That betrayal left her heartbroken and suicidal, and she took her own life in the room. Guests who have stayed in 311 describe Netherly as hostile toward men, particularly those who smoke.

  Al Capone made it through his stay in the room without any reported paranormal activity. He is not the only guest to do so; several visitors have spent the night in 311 without incident. Others describe a much heavier presence during their stay. Guests who light up a cigarette in that room, by every account, do so at their own risk.