The Trust Building Learns to Sleep

Madison Avenue downtown still knows it is a banker’s street. The Beaux-Arts Tennessee Trust building became the Madison Hotel and then, after a multimillion-dollar refresh, Hu.—named for Hugh “Hu” Brinkley, grandson of city founder John Overton, the man who built a Lyceum when Memphis wanted a theatre. Blues and grays. Stained oak. Brass and copper. White Carrara. One hundred ten rooms. A rooftop that looks at the river and the Mighty Lights on the bridges. A gym that inherited the old vault. Drive time from city center is a walk. Beale is ten minutes on foot. Rendezvous is closer than that.

The charm is contemporary finish in a historic shell. You are downtown without the convention carpet. Eighty3 cooks downstairs. The Twilight Sky Terrace is the hidden hour: fire, skyline, the river doing what it has always done after dark. Rooms hold wet bars in the better suites, rainfall showers, the turndown a city hotel still owes. Valet costs. The location does not. This is the professional stay—close to the awarded dinners, close to the Lobby Bar if you wanted the Peabody’s glass without the Peabody’s night.

Nearby: AutoZone Park, the Orpheum, Main Street trolley, South Main a longer walk, Harbor Town a short ride if the island calls in the morning.

The grace is downtown luxury with a roof. The graceful limitation is the downtown that comes with it—parking fees, nightlife noise on the wrong night, a building that is a hotel of a hundred keys rather than a house of five. Come for the roof at dusk. Choose the River Inn if you wanted breakfast and the water at the sill. Choose Hu. if you wanted to close a downtown evening by taking the elevator instead of a car.

Citywide Spotlight awards Hu. the contemporary Rest Diamond because the modern professional night needed a finished address that was not a flag and not a palace. The Peabody is ceremony. James Lee is the nineteenth century. This roof is the city, lit, and then the door closes. That is the amenity of 79 Madison.