Hermitage Hotel

You are now at the Hermitage Hotel—the epicenter of the fight for and against suffrage. This was the headquarters for both the suffragists and “antis” in the summer of 1920 when the Tennessee General Assembly debated ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. The 8-story Beaux Arts hotel was completed in 1910, designed by J. Edwin Carpenter of NYC. Ironically, for many years, women were not allowed to enter the hotel from the main entrance and had to access the building from a side door—still located on the Union Street side of the hotel. 

The suffragists, led by Carrie Chapman Catt and Nashville native Anne Dallas Dudley, set up offices with a view of the capitol building. Anne Dallas Dudley led the Tennessee suffrage movement and was vice-president of the national organization. When told women should not vote because they did not serve in the military, she replied, “Men bear arms, women bear armies.” In 2017, the one-block street running from the back of the hotel, by the Votes for Women historic marker, was renamed Anne Dallas Dudley Boulevard. The suffragists argued that women deserved a representative voice in shaping the forces that governed them and that the Constitution’s Fourteen Amendment had failed to secure their equal protection under the law. Hotel folklore recalls that the pro-suffrage women could be a rowdy bunch with their eighth-floor guestrooms referred to as the “Jack Daniels suite” for the volume of whiskey delivered despite the statewide prohibition of alcohol.

Josephine Pearson, the leader of the “Antis,” checked into the hotel and asked for the cheapest room available. She kept her accommodations simple but paid to reserve the assembly rooms on the mezzanine and first floor where she set up the Tennessee branch of the Women’s Rejection League. The Antis argued that giving women the right to vote would disrupt the family, enter women into the “dirty” world of politics, and allow black women to vote—thus threatening the racial order so important to white southern culture. Pearson’s efforts to prevent the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment were closely allied with the liquor interests in the state that blamed women for prohibition, as well as the manufacturers who operated textile mills across Tennessee that employed large numbers of women and children. Both manufacturers and alcohol producers feared that if women could vote, it would further harm their industries.

The Hermitage Hotel was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. Renovated and restored, it remains a 5-star luxury hotel. For more, check out our many other tours that feature the Hermitage Hotel. 

Turn LEFT as you exit the main entrance of the Hermitage Hotel. As you walk up Union Street, be sure to find the historic marker, “Votes for Women” on the corner of Union and Anne Dallas Dudley Blvd. Cross Union Street at the crosswalk and walk up onto the Legislative Plaza. Go to your left to see the first of two statues sculpted by Belle Kinney.