Thursday, December 19, 2024

Question: What well-known coffee brand was named after a Nashville hotel?

Answer: Maxwell House Coffee. The coffee brand is named the Maxwell House in Nashville, Tennessee. The hotel was named for Harriet Maxwell, wife of its builder, Colonel John Overton, Jr., and it was thought to be so opulent for a city of only 16,986 that it was popularly known as “Overton’s Folly” when construction began in 1856. Work on the hotel was halted by the Civil War, and Union forces used the unfinished building to house their prisoners.

After the war, the Maxwell House was completed and became one of the best-known hotels in the United States, serving as a social mecca for more than 100 years. Presidents who stayed at the Maxwell House included Rutherford B. Hayes, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. The hotel’s celebrity guest list included countless other notables such as Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Caruso, Sarah Bernhardt, Buffalo Bill, and Tom Thumb.