King Edward Hotel, Jackson
Near Jackson, Mississippi
The King Edward Hotel opened on Capitol Street in Jackson, Mississippi in nineteen twenty-three as the grandest hotel in the state, a twelve-story Beaux-Arts tower that gave traveling salesmen and politicians a room with an elevator, a dining room with silver service, and the sense that Jackson had arrived as a real city. For decades it was where deals got made in Mississippi, where governors held court and where the segregated power structure of the state gathered for banquets and cotillions. The hotel closed in nineteen sixty-seven as downtown Jackson declined, and for four decades the empty building presided over Capitol Street's long slide.
A major rehabilitation completed in two thousand nine brought it back as a Hilton property, preserving the lobby's ornate plasterwork and the terra-cotta facade while adding modern amenities. It stands today as the anchor of a downtown still working to recover what it lost.
