The Hermitage Hotel

Nashville's only Forbes Five-Star hotel, opened in 1910 in stunning Beaux-Arts style. The hotel has hosted presidents, celebrities, and political intrigue for over a century, along with guests who never checked out.

The Hermitage Hotel has served as the epicenter of Nashville's social and political life since it opened on September 17, 1910, and according to guests and staff, some of its most distinguished visitors have never checked out. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 2020, the hotel's most pivotal moment came in the summer of 1920, when Tennessee became the thirty-sixth and final state needed to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, granting women the right to vote -- and the battle for that vote was fought inside these walls.

Carrie Chapman Catt, the international pro-suffrage leader, stayed in a suite on the third floor for six weeks, establishing the pro-suffrage command post in her room and directing strategy from the hotel. Josephine Pearson, the resolute leader of the anti-suffragists, checked into the Hermitage as well, determined to keep an eye on Tennessee lawmakers and her opponents. On the eighth floor, anti-suffragists enticed legislators with free whiskey and bourbon in a de facto speakeasy that became known as the 'Jack Daniel's Suite.' The hotel also hosted President John F. Kennedy and Johnny Cash among its notable guests over the decades.

The hotel's most persistent haunting centers on Room 912, where guests have reported being awakened in the early morning hours by the ear-piercing sound of a baby crying. According to local accounts, an infant was accidentally dropped from the window of this room during the hotel's heyday. While no official reports documented the tragedy, the infant's cries have been heard by multiple guests across different stays, always in the same room and always in the small hours before dawn.

The most frequently blamed spirit is the Woman in White, believed to be one of the many Edwardian-era ladies who called the Hermitage their home in the 1910s. She is held responsible for a wide range of phenomena throughout the hotel: doors opening and closing on their own, elevators malfunctioning and stopping at floors where no one is waiting, drinks and wine bottles tipping over on the bar without being touched, and chairs relocating across rooms by unseen forces. The most dramatic incident attributed to her involves the large ornate mirror in the lobby, which guests have watched crack spontaneously before their eyes -- but when staff hurry to inspect the damage, the crack is no longer there, the glass perfectly intact.

Other witnesses have reported phantom bellhops and mysterious figures in Victorian clothing roaming the corridors, particularly on the upper floors. Shadowy figures are glimpsed in peripheral vision, only to vanish when observers turn to look directly. Cold spots move through rooms and hallways without explanation, and an atmosphere of restless energy pervades certain areas of the building, as though the passions that once animated the suffrage fight and Nashville's golden age have left a permanent impression.

The Hermitage Hotel continues to operate as a luxury five-star hotel in downtown Nashville at 231 Sixth Avenue North, offering a Suffrage High Tea on Thursday through Sunday afternoons that commemorates the pivotal role the building played in securing women's right to vote. Whether the spirits of those fierce suffragettes and their opponents linger among the guests is a question each visitor is left to answer for themselves.