The King Edward Hotel: Jackson's Deal-Making Palace
Near Jackson, Mississippi
When the Edwards Hotel opened on December twenty-ninth, nineteen twenty-three, Jackson finally had a place worthy of its ambitions. The twelve-story Beaux-Arts tower, designed by New Orleans architect William Nolan, became the immediate center of Mississippi political life. State legislators gathered in its lobbies to make deals they could not discuss in the capitol.
During the blues era, Okeh Records used a room in the hotel to cut some of the most important sessions in Delta blues history, in December of nineteen thirty. The hotel was renamed the King Edward in nineteen fifty-four. It closed in nineteen sixty-seven and sat empty for roughly four decades before a full restoration brought it back as a Hilton property in two thousand and nine.
Listed on the National Register since nineteen seventy-six, it is both a political monument and a monument to Mississippi's musical soul.
