Hauntings on Main St

211 Main Street North,Carthage TN 37030

27 May, 2023

Description

Come join us Mid-Tenn Paranormal at two of Carthage Tn most haunted locations, also be one of the first group of people to investigate The Hotel Walton. Food and drinks will be included with ticket purchase, VIP tickets will be on sale, which will include investigation of both locations and a room for the night at The Walton Hotel if you dare!! Check in will start at 5:00pm central standard time at the Smith County Courthouse.. The historic Hotel Walton, built around 1904, is the namesake of Carthage's first hotel built by Col. William Walton the original land grant owner and founder of Carthage. The original Hotel Walton, a wood frame structure, stood on the east side of the square and was destroyed by fire in 1885 along with every other structure on that side of the square. Less than 10 years later Monroe and Sally Fisher built the present Hotel Walton on Main Street, one block north of the original. The hotel's opening coinciding with a visit to Carthage by Col. Walton's grandson again made the Walton name a logical choice for the Fisher's new hotel. The hotel's grand opening was attended by finely dressed ladies, gentlemen in scissor-tailed tuxedos, fine food, and musical entertainment brought in from Nashville. In its early years, riverboat passengers were frequent visitors at the hotel as well as passengers from the railroad passing through on the south side of the river. Tourist train passengers were brought from the siding in South Carthage, across the river by ferry, to the Walton and Riverside hotels in Carthage. The health resorts in Red Boiling Springs being popular at this time many visitors stayed at the Hotel Walton as they passed through on the way to that destination. Traveling salesmen used the hotel as their working base for as long as a week at a time before moving on. SMITH COUNTY COURTHOUSE: Constructed between 1877 and 1879 in the center of the courthouse square at Carthage, the Smith County Courthouse is one of the finest examples of the Second Empire style in Tennessee. The distinctive building retains original character-defining architectural elements such as a slate-covered mansard roof, a central cupola clock tower, arched windows, and porthole dormers. Carthage, overlooking the Cumberland River, was founded as the seat of Smith County in 1804. In the antebellum era, the town was an important inland river port for shipping timber, livestock, and tobacco to Nashville. During the Reconstruction Era, this ornate two-story courthouse was erected on a 300-foot civic square, one that is, today, peppered with historic markers, monuments, and mature trees framing the main entrance. This building replaced the original brick courthouse built in 1805 at the same site. The grandiose scale of the new courthouse was especially noteworthy since the town’s population was only around 475 people at the time of construction. Though the architect for the courthouse is uncertain, historians have attributed the design to its builders, Edmund P. Turner (1825–1892) and Henry C. Jackson. Indeed, county records in Carthage state that an “E.P. Turner” provided the plans and specifications in January 1876. But Turner was a carpenter and joiner specializing in the construction of staircases, not an architect. The building’s Second Empire sophistication suggests that Turner’s business partner, William R. Gunn (1845–1910), likely designed the courthouse. A native of Canada, Gunn arrived in Nashville before 1872; by 1876 he had partnered with carpenter Turner. Where Gunn received his architectural training is unknown, but between 1875 and 1907 he designed some 100 theaters and opera houses throughout the U.S., including buildings in Macon, Savannah, and Hawkinsville, Georgia; Monticello, Florida; and Chicago, Illinois. In Nashville in 1875, Gunn was responsible for a major renovation of the antebellum Adelphi Theater and for designing the Sulphur Dell Ballpark in 1884. By 1896, Gunn had relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, where he died in 1910. When completed in 1879, the Smith County Courthouse included county offices on the first floor and a courtroom on the second floor. Constructed of brick with a hewn limestone foundation, the symmetrical building exhibits typical Second Empire architectural elements such as a two-tiered central cupola clock tower topped by original iron cresting, straight-edge mansard roofs covered with slate, arched windows with heavily molded hoods, deep eaves with bracketed cornices, porthole dormers, and brick quoins. Projecting entrance pavilions are located in the center of the five-bay elevations at both the front and rear. The courthouse also possesses paired interior brick chimneys, four-over-four wood sash windows, a hewn limestone water table, and protruding brick belt courses. In the mid-twentieth century, metal and glass doors surmounted by a segmental arched fanlight replaced the original wooden doors of the main entrance. The Smith County Courthouse has never been enlarged nor has the exterior been significantly altered, with the exception of the reconfiguration of the main entrance and the replacement of the original purple and green Vermont slate roof with the current gray slate. When additional space was needed in the mid-1960s, instead of adding new wings, the county constructed small detached offices and a public library at the rear. Most of the original black walnut and pine interior woodwork was removed during a renovation in the 1970s.