Memphis: Gayoso Hotel (Location Key)

This is one of the real locations that Faulkner uses for the purposes of a fiction, in this case Sanctuary. The original Gayoso House was built on Memphis' Main Street in 1842 as the city's first luxury hotel. Big, elegant and visible from the River, it was a statement about the city's prosperity. When that building burned down in 1899, an even grander hotel was built on the same spot. By the 1920s there were a number of other grand hotels in the downtown area. The second one that Fonzo and Virgil look into could have been the Claridge or the Chisca or the Hotel King Cotton.