Historic, nearly 200-year-old Alabama hotel opens its doors to guests once again
The only surviving pre-Civil War hotel in the southeast U.S. will soon open its doors to guests once again.
The historic St. James Hotel, located overlooking the Alabama River on Water Avenue in downtown Selma, is set to re-open to guests beginning May 1 after being closed to the public for two months, according to the post shared on the hotel’s Facebook page.
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“We’re quietly reopening the doors to The St. James Hotel,” the social media posts reads. “This soft reopening marks a thoughtful return—an opportunity to focus on what matters most: warm hospitality, simple comforts, and meaningful connections.”
In March, The St. James Hotel announced it would be temporarily shutting down to allow for new management, Spire Hospitality, to re-train staff and offer the hotel a reset to ensure the hotel offers its guests adequate service.
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“We just felt it was a good time to just kind of re-position the hotel,” said Mike Hogan, Spire Hospitality’s area general manager. “We noticed there was some underlying details that needed some attention so we took that as our opportunity to really go back and dot our I’s and cross our T’s and make sure that the service standards were going to be on the forefront.”
The historic St. James Hotel is located overlooking the Alabama River on Water Avenue, one block from the Edmund Pettus Bridge, in downtown Selma, Ala.(Photo courtesy of Spire Hospitality)
Hogan said guests staying at the St. James, which was previously a Hilton Tapestry property, can ultimately expect the same amenities to be available, though the Sterling Restaurant inside the hotel will only be serving breakfast at first before re-introducing dinner service in June.
The St. James Hotel originally opened in 1837, but was known as the Brantley Hotel at the time, and played a significant role in the area’s history. It served as the Union Army’s headquarters after the Battle of Selma in 1865 and once housed infamous outlaw Jesse James and his brother Frank in the 1880s.
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In 1892, the hotel closed its doors for a hundred years before being restored beginning in 1991 and reopening in 1997. It closed again in 2015, but was reopened after being fully renovated in 2021.