1926 Georgian-style luxury hotel in downtown Chattanooga on the site of the 1847 Crutchfield House, famed for Room 311 and its long-running Annalisa Netherly legend.
107 W M.L.K. Blvd, Chattanooga, TN 37402
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$
Operating luxury hotel; nightly room rates vary. Public lobby and ground-floor restaurant accessible without booking; Room 311 can be requested at booking subject to availability.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Renovated 1926 historic hotel with elevators and ADA-accessible public spaces
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1926 · Site of the 1847 Crutchfield House · Confederate military hospital (1862) · Designed by Holabird & Roche · Al Capone stay (Room 311)
A hotel has stood at this corner of downtown Chattanooga since 1847, when Thomas Crutchfield opened the Crutchfield House on what is now West M.L.K. Boulevard. During the Civil War the original building served as a Confederate military hospital after September 1862, and Union forces occupied Chattanooga from September 1863 onward, making the site part of the broader military activity that surged through the city during the war.
The Crutchfield House burned in 1867 and was rebuilt by Dr. John T. Read, eventually being renamed the Read House. The current building — the third hotel on the site — was designed by the Chicago architectural firm Holabird & Roche in a Georgian style and opened to the public on July 5, 1926. With ten stories and elaborate ground-floor public spaces, it was considered one of the finest hotels in the southeastern United States.
Through the 20th century the hotel hosted multiple notable guests. According to local lore and contemporary newspaper accounts, Al Capone stayed in Room 311 during a 1929 federal trial. Custom iron bars were added to the windows of that room and remain visible today, a physical artifact of the Prohibition-era visit.
The property changed hands several times in the late 20th and early 21st centuries before being acquired by Avocet Hospitality Group of Charleston, South Carolina in August 2016. After a multi-year restoration, the hotel reopened in 2018 as The Read House, with Room 311 kept in period 1920s decor as a tribute to its place in the building's storied past.
Sources
The Room 311 legend, recorded in local press as early as a 2004 Tennessean article cited by CityScope Magazine, centers on a woman named Annalisa Netherly said to have stayed at the hotel in the 1920s. According to Ghost City Tours, two competing versions of the story circulate: in one she was murdered in the bathtub by a jealous lover; in another she died of heartbreak after being abandoned by her suitor. No contemporary newspaper account of either death has been independently corroborated by historians.
Guests who book Room 311 — which the hotel keeps decorated in period 1920s style — report a consistent cluster of phenomena according to Ghost City Tours and the hotel's own promotional material: an uncomfortable sense of being watched, difficulty falling asleep, loud noises at unpredictable hours, and an entity said to particularly dislike male guests who smoke. CityScope Magazine has documented multiple guest accounts of feeling Annalisa's presence and a few who claim to have seen a figure.
The hotel openly markets the room and the legend, and the Read House appears on every major Chattanooga ghost tour itinerary, making it one of the most-visited haunted-hotel destinations in Tennessee.
Notable Entities
Book an overnight stay in the historic 1926 hotel; Room 311 — kept in period 1920s decor and tied to the Annalisa Netherly legend — can be requested at booking subject to availability.
The Read House is a regular stop on Chattanooga's walking ghost tours, which recount the Annalisa Netherly story and the hotel's Civil War and Prohibition-era history from the sidewalk outside.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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