Holston House in The Mansion (Location)

In eight other Yoknapatawpha fictions, the Holston House is the oldest building in Jefferson, dating back to Jefferson's origins as an Indian agency. The hotel was built by Alexander Holston, one of the county's first settlers, and is still run by his descendants, two maiden sisters. Originally a "log ordinary," the hotel had since become a "modern edifice" whose central feature is a fancy dining room which contains "two long communal tables" (421). It is described first as the place where "drummers" - traveling salesmen - stay and "sit in leather chairs along the sidewalk" (37). The description of it at the other end of the novel, however, suggests a considerably more formal place: it "still clung to the old ways, not desperately nor even gallantly: just with a cold and inflexible indomitability" so that "no man" dined there "without a coat and necktie and no woman with her head covered" (421).