Nashville Inn

The inn stood beside the original Market House of 1801 and is described as the city's very first hotel, in a frontier town with few places for travelers to sleep. William Lewis established it, and it opened as Winn's Inn in 1806 before taking the name Nashville Inn. When it burned in 1856, Andrew Johnson, then Tennessee's governor, was staying there and escaped without injury. Johnson went on to become Lincoln's vice president and, after the assassination, president.

What the plaque says

Nashville Inn First hostelry on this spot was established by Maj. William T. Lewis, 1796. It became Winn's Inn in 1808, the Nashville Inn a few years later. Among its many distinguished guests were the three sons of the Duke of Orleans. Andrew Johnson, then governor, was living here when the inn was destroyed by fire in 1856.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tennessee State Capitol — 0.4 mi
  William Strickland's Greek Revival capitol on Nashville's Capitol Hill, finished in 1859 and built from the bottom up with the labor of enslaved men.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 0.4 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.
• Ryman Auditorium — 0.5 mi
  The 1892 brick tabernacle in downtown Nashville that was the Grand Ole Opry's home from 1943 to 1974, now a National Historic Landmark and working concert hall.
• National Museum of African American Music — 0.5 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.

More markers nearby

• Morris Memorial Building — steps away
• The Nashville Slave Market — steps away
• Maxwell House Hotel — 0.3 mi
• First Masonic Hall — 0.3 mi