Thomas Crutchfield, after conferring with the directors of the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad who agreed to erect the Chattanooga Union Station across 9th Street, built the Crutchfield House on this site in 1847-48. Shortly after the Civil War, the Crutchfield House was razed to provide space for a three-story office building. Dr. Read purchased the incomplete structure and had the plans changed enough to convert the office building into a hotel. The first Read House opened its doors on January 1, 1872. With the addition of a three-story frame wing the hotel occupied nearly the entire block. The second, and present Read House (see in the photograph above), was designed by Martin Roche of Holabird and Roche, a Chicago architectural firm. The ten-story, brick Georgian Revival hotel, which occupies half of the block bounded by 9th, Chestnut, Broad, and 8th Streets, was built at a cost of $2,500,000 and opened on July 4, 1926.
Together with Chicago architects Louis Sullivan, John Wellborn Root, and Major William LeBaron Jenny, William Holabird and Roche wrestled with the knotty aesthetic question of the 1880's:
'how may multi-story buildings should be designed, using nineteenth-century materials and technology, which are sound, useful, and beautiful? During the eighteen-eighties & nineties Holabird and Roche designed buildings which employed columns & large windows to convey the concept of lightness without sacrificing structural integrity; the design stressed utility over beauty. Root and Sullivan successfully combined both of these elements in their work. The Read House is the only known building designed by Holabird and Roche in Tennessee. The architectural style of the Read House is also transitional as well as one which characterizes its era. While not so effusively ornamented as buildings designed according to the tenets of L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, neither does it appear so decoratively subdued as the Modernistic-styled edifices of a somewhat later period. A compromise between the horizontality of the earlier style and the verticality of later designs, the Read House contains elements of both in the use of quoins and double window surrounds to emphasize height and by employing the two-story frontispiece and connecting terraces to stress width. Some of the ornamentation assists in defining the sections of the building, and the use of projections and setbacks, which were typical of the nineteen-twenties, further conveys this concept.
The fifty-year-old Read House (at the time of its listing on the National Register of Historic Places [NRHP]) had reached a precarious time in its history. Hotels built in the nineteen-twenties & thirties are closing their doors in other southern cities and eventually falling prey to the wrecking crews. At that time, many travelers preferred the convenience and economy of the aluminum, glass, and plastic motels, and conventions were being held in contemporary-styled motels which appeal to the tastes and cater to the lifestyles of the 1970's. So, it was indeed significant that the Read House, with its sumptuous Green Room, elegant lobby, and opulent Silver Ball Room, continued to operate in burgeoning Chattanooga, the fourth largest city in the state, through not only this time period but right up to today.
The Read House was added to the NRHP on December 23, 1976 and all the information above was found on the original documents submitted for listing consideration. These can be viewed here:
npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/AssetDetail/822addd4-b13c-40b2-95b...
Three bracketed photos were taken with a handheld Nikon D7200 and combined with Photomatix Pro to create this HDR image. Additional adjustments were made in Photoshop CS6.
"For I know the plans I have for you", declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~Jeremiah 29:11
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