Carthage's Restored Hotel Walton Is Really a Main Street Kitchen
October 22, 2026
October 22, 2026
"It was projected to be about a six month renovation. And here we are in 2026 and we're finally open as of, as of yesterday."
General Manager Rick Clark said that in early September on the Smith County Chamber Corner podcast, recorded inside the Hotel Walton on Carthage's Main Street. The episode was published September 3, 2026, which puts the reopening at about September 2. Clark said former Vice President Al Gore bought the property in July 2023. After his team got into the walls of a building that was then 120 years old, the job became a rebuild from the inside out. It included a new elevator and kept as much of the historic facade and footprint as possible.
Most of the coverage stops there, with a landmark saved. For people who live in Smith County, the more useful comparison is between the size of the hotel and the size of its kitchen.
The restored hotel has 10 individually designed rooms. That is a small inn. Most locals will never need a bed there.
The restaurant is a different scale. Hull sits just off the lobby and is open Sunday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. That adds up to 72 hours a week of lunch and supper on Main Street, every day of the week, including Sundays. A hotel with ten rooms can't fill a dining room open that many hours on overnight guests alone, so Hull's schedule assumes local diners.
Clark said the same in the Chamber interview. He described the project as Gore's effort to bring "some life and some and, you know, jobs and, you know, energy into Main street of, of his hometown of Carthage, Tennessee." He also said the hotel takes walk-ins as well as reservations. Tables at Hull can be booked through Resy.
The building has hosted travelers in Carthage for a long time. The hotel's own history page dates it to 1904 and says it was named for Colonel William Walton, the town's founder. An earlier Hotel Walton burned in 1885. The new business model is what's different. The restaurant carries the reopening, and the rooms are the smaller part of it.
The kitchen's schedule depends on a steady supply, and that supply is local. Hull is named for Cordell Hull, the Tennessee statesman, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and longtime U.S. Secretary of State. The restaurant describes its cooking as chef-driven Southern fare built around a partnership with Caney Fork Farms, a regenerative farm. On the podcast, Clark said the restaurant is trying to get "as much protein as possible" from Caney Fork Farms, along with a large share of its vegetables, and that he expects to get many fresh herbs from the farm too. He described the farm as "a eight minute drive down the road."
The October menus show what that looks like on the plate:
Caney Fork Farms was on the square before the hotel reopened. In the same episode, the host pointed out that the farm's community-supported agriculture members pick up from a table at Rokabilly Coffee, and Clark said the Caney Fork crew stops there every week. Rokabilly has been part of downtown since its grand opening in August 2021. The farm's weekly pickup already brought people to the square, and Hull now serves the same farm's beef a few doors away, seven days a week.
The next phase is planned for the building beside the hotel. Clark said the old Ree Brothers Pharmacy building next door is planned to become "an old style general store," with a bakery in the basement. The host noted on the podcast that the space was "not ready now," and no name or opening date has been announced.
The bakery plan explains the purpose of the whole block. In the podcast, Clark said the bakery will supply fresh bread to Hull. It may also sell goods through the general store and serve the Caney Fork Farms CSA. Launch Hospitality, which manages the hotel and runs restaurants in Sevierville and Maryville, has hired a baker who comes from a Michelin-starred bakery. For now she bakes in East Tennessee and ships bread west to Carthage. Clark said he hopes she will be working in Carthage "early next year." From a September 2026 interview, that means early 2027. Once she moves, the bread will ship east from Carthage instead.
The plan, then, has three parts. Caney Fork Farms grows the food, Hull cooks it, and the bakery and general store under the old pharmacy sign would turn the corner into a place to buy bread and farm goods during the day. Hull opened first, and the bakery and general store are still plans.
The renovation across Main Street is moving on its own timeline. The historic Smith County Courthouse has been under a separate, publicly funded renovation. In December 2025, the Carthage Courier reported that energy-efficient windows were being installed in 76 openings, with HVAC upgrades and an elevator replacement planned next. Funding included a $1.8 million state grant, $200,000 from the county for the windows and up to $1 million more from the county commission.
The next stage reached the bidding phase this summer. A public notice in the Courier's legal notices for the week of July 23, 2026 sought general-contractor bids, due August 13, for interior renovations covering the basement through the third floor. Bouton Engineering is listed as the designer. A 2024 plan described in the Courier put county offices and citizen services on the first floor and a commission and meeting space on the second, with free Wi-Fi. No contractor award or completion date has been announced, so for now the courthouse is a work in progress facing a finished hotel.
On the podcast, the Chamber host linked the two projects. He said the courthouse renovation "sort of goes along with this" and that downtown had been improving over the last ten or so years. Clark added that Main Street had seen "a lot of exciting young business owners" come in during his three years in town.
Hull's weekend hours line up with downtown's busiest evenings through the end of the year. The weeks between Halloween and Christmas are a good time to see the change for yourself:
After each of the Main Street events this season, the 122-year-old hotel lobby is open for supper at Hull, with the courthouse renovation across the street and a planned bakery next door.
If you've stopped in at Hull this fall and started thinking about how changes like these affect home values around downtown Carthage, I'd be glad to talk it through. Stacey Long has followed Middle Tennessee's small-town Main Streets for more than two decades. Let's Connect.
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