Vacation in Kingsport! In 1964!

 

Kingsport's 1964 Travel Brochure

The Tourism Situation in 1964

The Kingsport Inn was long gone. Once Kingsport’s crown jewel, a luxury hotel that had opened the same year the city was founded, 1917, the Inn had fallen on hard times in the fifties. By 1957 city sanitarian E. Glenn Smith was threatening to close the Inn down because of a decade-long record of failed health inspections. In 1959 the owners, descendants of John B. Dennis, put the Inn up for sale. It was purchased by Knoxville’s Miller’s department store, which had long had its eye on Kingsport for expansion. But when Miller’s got the chance to buy its chief Knoxville competitor, the Knox Department Store, it abandoned its plans to expand to upper east Tennessee, selling the Inn to the city and a group of downtown merchants. The next year the Inn was razed and a parking lot took its place.

The Kingsport Inn in its glory days

In 1964 A.B. Coleman, head of the Kingsport Chamber of Commerce, decided the city needed a sales pamphlet to boost tourism.

And thus was born “Your Kingsport Host,” a brochure that touted all of Kingsport’s motels, banquet facilities and tourist sites.

“Your Kingsport Host” listed 15 hotels with 497 guest rooms. (For comparison’s sake today the Meadowview Marriott alone has 305 rooms.)

The city offered 13 banquet facilities that began with the Civic Auditorium which could accommodate up to 800 and going all the way to Shoney’s, which at the time could handle 50.

Nearby “Points Of Interest” included five local lakes, Barter Theatre and Andrew Johnson’s Home. 

 

Brickey Motel

Brickey’s is listed first in the brochure even though it had the fewest rooms of any of the motels, only eight. It was first because of alphabetical order but I think it should be first anyway; I think it is the most noteworthy of the group because of one guest.

The first year Brickey’s was open – 1955 - a scraggly bunch of musicians pulled in one afternoon. They were to play at the Civic Auditorium that night. Owner Leonard Brickey’s daughter Jean Harris told me in 2005, “Daddy was reluctant to rent to them they looked so bad.” But he did and that’s where Elvis and his band checked in on the afternoon of September 22, 1955 when they played the Civic Auditorium.

Jean recalled, “Dad was picky. He wouldn’t allow just anyone to stay here. He said these boys drove up in a Cadillac and he just about didn’t rent to them. They had long sideburns and greasy hair. Dad said they came in about 3 p.m. and left about 5. He said they looked all right after they showered.” 

He told Jean this story a couple of days after it happened. “I dug out the registration card and it said, ‘Elvis Presley and party.’” Jean says she doesn’t think they spent the night. “I think they just used the room to clean up before their show.”  She also doesn’t know which of the motel’s eight room they stayed in. The registration card has been lost.

The Downtowner

When the announcement was made in 1959 that a Memphis company was planning a five-story hotel in downtown Kingsport, no one said that The Downtowner was supposed to replace the soon-to-be-demolished Kingsport Inn but it was understood – one downtown hotel for another.

The Downtowner was soon flourishing with civic clubs moving their meetings there and businessmen and women using the restaurant for meetings. But the brief spark of commerce didn’t last. 1973 began a period of changing ownerships and changing names: in ’73 it became the Port-O-Kings, the Kingsport Motor Inn in 1975 and in 1977 the TraveLodge.

When the hotel was sold, yet again, in 1982 a business article in the Kingsport Times called the barely-two-decades-old hotel “a downtown Kingsport eyesore.” The new owners vowed to turn it into a plush hotel with the new name Quality Inn.

Two years later the National Content Liquidators held a public sale – everything must go – with double beds selling for $45 and two drawer chests priced at $20.

The building was demolished just after Christmas 1992.

 

 

Homestead Hotel

The Homestead was built in 1921 as the Grant Leather Corporation Clubhouse for exclusive use of the company’s employees and guests. But two months after opening it was changed to a commercial hotel and renamed The Homestead.

By 1967 my friends and I had nicknamed it The Bumstead, a nod to its clientele.

But when it opened, it was a pretty swell place. The Kingsport Times noted, “The Homestead has ninety guest rooms, and the building is so arranged that all of these are outside rooms. The building is electrically lighted, has shower and tub baths on every floor, and is protected from fire by the sprinkler system. Each guest room has running water, a large wardrobe, and a double window. The furniture in all the rooms is of Flemish gray, and matches the finishing of the walls and woodwork. The cafeteria is said to be one of the most complete and convenient this side of New York. The Homestead and the Kingsport Inn together afford ample hotel accommodations to all guests in the Magic City.” 

 

The Greenwood Motel

The Greenwood opened in 1956 with a unique layout.  The motel fronted on Ft. Henry Drive but it had a back entrance on old Bristol Highway, now Memorial Court, a very steep, narrow one-lane driveway.

In 1959 when my next-door neighbor Darnell Shankel got married, he used that to great advantage.

He didn't want all his friends chasing him and his bride as they left on their honeymoon. So he parked his car in the Greenwood parking lot. Then when they left the church, my father drove the couple with all the groomsmen and bridesmaids chasing in their own cars. My dad went down Bristol Highway then turned into the Greenwood back entrance. Darnell and his now-wife jumped out, raced down the hill to their car and took off. The pursuing wedding party had to sit there and honk. By the time my father let them pass, the bride and groom were long gone and none of the chase party knew which way they went.  

 Tennessee Motor Lodge

The Tennessee Motor Lodge began life in 1959 as a planned Howard Johnson Motel and Restaurant. It took more than two years – and a lawsuit over a driveway entrance (!) – before Howard Johnson’s opened in June 1962 with 63 rooms – significantly fewer than the original plan of 110.

You can be forgiven if you don’t remember a Howard Johnson’s in Kingsport. Because after all that hassle, four years later it was gone, the restaurant replaced by a Shoney’s and the motel rebranded as Tennessee Motor Lodge.

What was once the kid-friendly Howard Johnson’s, with 28 different flavors of ice cream, had by 2000 become the Westside Inn and Hog Wild Saloon, a notorious nightspot that was closed for good in 2018 after a deadly shooting inside. (Over the previous two decades the saloon had made frequent appearances in the police log for everything from stabbings to armed robbery to attempted murder. It was also the object of a prostitution sting!) The building was demolished in 2019.