Built by slave labor in 1859, the Maxwell House Hotel stood on the northeast corner of Fourth Avenue in downtown Nashville and served as the hub of Nashville’s social and political life for years. During the Civil War, the hotel served as both barracks and prison hospital for the occupying Union army. After the war – it became Nashville’s largest hotel with 240 rooms. Seven presidents stayed at the Maxwell House, including Theodore Roosevelt, who commented that the coffee was “good to the last drop” – which launched the advertising slogan to promote the nation’s first blended coffee. The owner of the hotel sold the “recipe” for the blended coffee to General Foods. The hotel burned on Christmas night 1961.
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