Andrew Johnson Hotel
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South facade of the Andrew Johnson Building, viewed from the Gay Street Bridge
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Location | 912 S. Gay St. Knoxville, Tennessee |
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Coordinates | 35°57′41″N 83°54′56″W / 35.96139°N 83.91556°WCoordinates: 35°57′41″N 83°54′56″W / 35.96139°N 83.91556°W |
Area | .35 acres (0.14 ha) |
Built | 1926–1930 |
Architect | Baumann & Baumann |
Architectural style | Second Renaissance Revival |
NRHP reference # | 80003840 |
Added to NRHP | July 9, 1980 |
The Andrew Johnson Building is a high-rise office building in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Completed in 1930, the 203-foot (62 m) structure was Knoxville's tallest building for nearly a half-century. The building was originally home to the Andrew Johnson Hotel, and is now used for office space by Knox County. In 1980, the Andrew Johnson Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Named for President Andrew Johnson, the Andrew Johnson Hotel was Knoxville's premier hotel from the time of its completion through the 1960s. In its early years, the hotel was popular with foreign dignitaries visiting Knoxville to inquire about the newly created Tennessee Valley Authority, as well as with tourists en route to the newly created Great Smoky Mountains National Park.Country music singer Hank Williams spent the last night of his life at the hotel in 1952. The studios of WNOX, which played a role in the early development of country music, were located in the Andrew Johnson in the late 1930s, and musicians such as Roy Acuff became regional stars broadcasting from the building.
The Andrew Johnson Building stands at the southwest corner of Gay Street's 900-block, and shares a central courtyard with the adjacent Riverview Tower. The building's eighteen stories consist of fifteen floors, a mezzanine, and a two-story penthouse. The building is rectangular in shape, with a recess running up the middle of the west facade. The ground floor extends out beyond the rest of the building to provide a base for the unique second story, which includes an open-air pavilion. While most of the building's exterior consists of brick, the ground floor's Gay Street facade is sheathed in concrete cast to appear as rusticated stone.