It was fate that Joseph Lewis and Tony Kuhn would one day own Hotel Pontotoc. The boutique hotel and bar/restaurant The Dame will open mid-August at 69 Pontotoc Avenue.
For years, Lewis and Kuhn, lifelong friends and fellow soccer players, loved the circa 1906 building known as Hotel Pontotoc in Downtown Memphis. They just didn’t know they both loved the same building.
“This building was my favorite building in Memphis,” says Lewis, who also owns The Medicine Factory, an event space housed in a 1916 building. He even told his wife, “Some way, we’re going to own the Pontotoc hotel building.”
“I’ve always loved this building,” says Kuhn, a former Memphian who now is president of Flywheel Group, an urban redevelopment group in Charlotte, North Carolina. “My grandmother was born in Pontotoc, Mississippi. I fell in love with this building the first time I saw it.”
Several years ago, Kuhn told Lewis, “Hey, I’ve got a project for us to do together. This old hotel in Memphis.”
Then, Kuhn added, “This is a historic building Downtown on this street called Pontotoc.”
Lewis responded, “Is this a joke? You know about this building?”
Kuhn responded, “Twenty years ago I put a card on the door and asked them if they were ever willing to sell.”
In 2021, Kuhn discovered that the building, which was owned by Leigh Davis, was for sale. “I found out a contract for it fell through. She might be willing to sell. I started talking to her.”
Other people were interested in the building, but Davis sold it to Lewis and Kuhn in 2022.
They learned it was built in 1906 as a small upscale hotel with Turkish baths. It catered to the riverboat men and railroad workers from nearby Central Station. It had several names, including the Amanda and Belmont, before becoming the Pontotoc in 1916.
In later years the building housed a bordello, which, Lewis believes, was a nicer version of a brothel. The Pontotoc is said to be where Elvis lost his virginity. And it was purportedly the brothel depicted in William Faulkner’s novel The Reivers and the 1969 movie based on the book.
“Then in the ’30s, the Touliatos family bought it. George Sr. And under their ownership they made it back into a family-style hotel. Apparently, it was a pretty big Greek gathering place here in Memphis.”
The Touliatos family also owned the old Front Street Theatre, which was not far away in the basement of the old Hotel King Cotton.
The Pontotoc building was vacant for a while until the Davises bought it as their residence in 1980. They also owned a recording studio which was housed in the basement, where The Dame is now located.
The building was in “very, very bad shape” when they bought it, Lewis says. “It was in far worse shape than we thought.”
They had to remove asbestos and lead paint, raise the basement ceiling, and replace flooring, which was sitting on rotted sill plates that made the floors “all crazy, uneven and buckled.”
Some floors didn’t even have boards. “There were parts of the floor upstairs you wouldn’t have wanted to put a toe on.”
Lewis and Kuhn wanted to keep as much of the original building as possible, like the plaster walls, though architects told them to “strip out everything.”
“That’s not what we wanted to do,” Lewis says, adding, “We tried to keep as much of this building as we possibly could.”
It took them three years to renovate the place. “Almost the first year was putting this thing back together where it was structurally sound enough to get in there,” Kuhn says.
“It was new windows, new floors,” Lewis says. “Putting Humpty Dumpty back together.”
But, he says, “The idea was always to make this into a boutique hotel, bar/restaurant, and a cool outdoor patio.”
The spacious patio area on the west side of the hotel includes room for a stage as well as a grassy area. It also features towering shade trees. “What we call ‘big nature trees.’ You don’t have big trees in an urban setting.”
The hotel had “up to 30 rooms” at one point, but Lewis and Kuhn wanted a more intimate hotel. Hotel Pontotoc now includes seven suites and three studios.
They both knew Ann Parker of Parker Design Studio was going to be Hotel Pontotoc’s designer. All three shared the same vision.
There were “so many layers of visual history” at Hotel Pontotoc, Parker says. “We had already had some conversations about what range of decades we were going to focus on. And how are we going to hone in.”
The wallpaper peeling off the walls was one of the inspirations, she says. “Seeing layers behind it, that kind of spoke to us.”
Each room has a different theme, which is indicated by the room number. For instance, the number “1906” refers to when Hotel Pontotoc was built.
“We were subtle,” Lewis says. But, he adds, “There are a lot of nods to Memphis.”
The wallpaper is purple and orange, which is “a nod to FedEx.” And, he says, “One of the room’s wallpaper has this ivy looking feel to it. And that’s a nod to what the building looked like when we bought it.”
The building was covered with ivy, he says.
They kept a lot of items, including an old organ that may or may not have originally been in the lobby, a pinball machine, a picture of a woman, and a wooden bed that they converted to a chandelier. “A cool conversation piece,” Lewis says.
The new outdoor sign for “The Dame” hangs on an original post from the 1900s. A sign bearing the hotel’s name was originally attached to the post.
They also wanted a bar/restaurant in the basement, where a venue called the Cellar Club was housed in the 1970s. They named their bar/restaurant “The Dame” as a homage to when the Pontotoc was a bordello, Lewis says. “It was kind of an edgy, sexy name. A takeoff of a ‘madam.’ A woman of the night.”
He says, “It is underground so it kind of has this speakeasy feel.” It has a “sexy feel to it.”
All of the Jacobean-colored, sapele mahogany woodwork from the back bar all the way up the stairs was shipped over in a container from Ireland. Their friend, DJ Naylor, owner of Celtic Crossing Irish Pub, Bog & Barley, and Maeve’s Tavern, introduced them to a woodworker from Ireland who was intrigued with the stories about the Pontotoc. He gave then a good deal on the woodwork, Lewis says.
They plan to serve charcuterie boards with “some meats, cheese, nuts, and some twists on popcorn,” but the emphasis will be on the drinks and not the food at The Dame. “There are so many great restaurants around here you can walk to,” Lewis says.
They don’t want to get “too tricky” with the bar menu, Kuhn says. They want “really good standard classics,” like Manhattans and old-fashioneds.
But, under the curatorship of general manager Norbert Mede, The Dame will feature craft cocktails, including “The Hip Shaker” and “(This Is Not) a Bordello.”
Lewis and Kuhn are ready to open Hotel Pontotoc doors to the public. “As a homecoming for everyone who has ties to Memphis,” Kuhn says.
“People are wanting to get inside and see it,” Lewis says, adding, “We feel we’ve done it justice, and given something back to Memphis that we’re proud of. And that Memphis deserves.”
