Gayoso House

Fire is this hotel's real chronicle. The Gayoso House opened in 1842 and burned on July 4, 1899; it was rebuilt to a design by James B. Cook. In 1903 Newton Alonzo Wells painted murals of Hernando de Soto's voyage that are now in the DeSoto County Courthouse in Mississippi. Goldsmith's department store acquired the building in 1948 and expanded into it from next door, and it was later renovated as apartments and offices with a restaurant.

What the plaque says

Gayoso House Opened in 1842, named for the early Spanish governor, this hotel's main entrance was originally here. Capt. William H. Forrest, raiding into Memphis under his famous brother the early morning of Aug. 21, 1864, rode his horse into the lobby, searching for Maj. Gen. Stephen A. Hurlbut, quartered in the hotel, who was then sleeping elsewhere.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Beale Street — 0.3 mi
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.
• National Civil Rights Museum — 0.6 mi
  The Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed on April 4, 1968, kept as a museum of the civil rights movement from the nineteenth century to today.
• 1866 Memphis Massacre Marker at Army Park — 0.6 mi
  A privately funded NAACP marker in a small downtown park, placed in 2016, that names the May 1866 attack on Black South Memphis as a massacre.
• Sun Studio — 1.0 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.

More markers nearby

• WDIA: The Goodwill Station — steps away
• Hooks Brothers Photography Established in 1907 — 0.3 mi
• Danny Thomas — 0.3 mi
• Washburn's Quarters August 21, 1864 — 0.3 mi