Haunted Capital Hotel, Little Rock: Room 444 and the Fourth Floor

The Capital Hotel on West Markham Street is the hotel that calls itself the front porch of Little Rock. It began as the Denckla Block, a commercial building with a cast-iron front bolted together on site in 1872 and 1873, and became a hotel after a rival burned in December 1876. Presidents, governors and legislators have stayed here, and a famous legend says Ulysses S. Grant rode his horse into the oversized elevator, a story the Encyclopedia of Arkansas says is false.

Its ghost stories are low-key. The hotel does not tell them, and most come from former staff: a young woman who fell to her death, a quiet laborer, a hazy fourth floor and a Room 444 that housekeepers would not clean alone. Here is what has been said, and the long history of the building. For the rest of the state, see our guide to haunted hotels in Arkansas.

The ghosts of Capital Hotel

The young woman who fell

The best-known story is of a young woman who fell to her death from one of the upper floors. Nobody has put a name or date to her, and we found no record of the fall in the hotel’s published histories. In the stories she is heard wailing or screaming in different parts of the building, appears in guest rooms and moves guests’ luggage around.

The quiet laborer

The second spirit is a laborer who, in the usual telling, keeps himself to himself. The building has been rebuilt several times, with a fourth floor added in the 19th century, the interior remade in 1908, and major restorations in the early 1980s and again from 2005 to 2007, so there have been plenty of workmen through its doors.

Room 444

In a 2016 post on HauntedPlaces.org, a former employee wrote that housekeepers would not clean Room 444 alone. The reasons given were flickering lights, a radio that switched itself on and off and played a station it was not set to, vacuum cleaners that kept unplugging themselves, whispering, and a man seen walking into the bathroom who was not there when they looked. It is one person’s account, but a specific one.

Big band music from above

The detail people remember is the noise complaint. Guests in that part of the hotel are said to have complained about big band music playing above them at night. The fourth floor is the top floor. The same former employee also described the fourth-floor corridors as often hazy, as if with smoke.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 444: The fourth-floor room at the center of the staff stories. It is not sold by name; ask, and be relaxed if it is not available.
• Fourth-floor rooms: The top floor, added in the 19th century, where the haze and the music are reported.
• The lobby: George Mann’s 1908 two-story lobby, with a stained-glass skylight, a mezzanine and scagliola columns, is worth a look at night.
• The Capital Bar: The hotel’s bar is a Little Rock meeting place and a good spot to ask staff, gently, about the stories.

History of Capital Hotel

In spring 1872 William P. Denckla, a New York railroad investor, began a three-story building for offices, shops and bachelor quarters at Markham and Louisiana streets, on land bought from Justice George C. Watkins. Its cast-iron front, made by A.T. Merchant of New York, was bolted to the building piece by piece. Watkins died as it neared completion, and Denckla sold the block back to the judge’s heirs before it opened in 1873.

On December 14, 1876, a fire destroyed the Metropolitan Hotel, the city’s only upscale hotel. Its manager, Col. A.G. DeShon, and Maj. John D. Adams leased the Denckla Block and turned it into a hotel. A Mrs. Morehead Wright suggested the name, calling it a capital enterprise in a capital building, and it opened in January 1877 with gas lighting and indoor plumbing. A masonry fourth floor followed soon after.

Ulysses S. Grant stayed here, and the story goes that the unusually large elevator was built so he could take his horse up to his suite. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas says that is false: the big elevator was added in the 1980s. In 1908 owner Henry Franklin Auten paid for a $250,000 renovation by George R. Mann, chief architect of the Arkansas State Capitol and later of the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs. Mann kept the cast-iron front and created the two-story lobby with its stained-glass skylight.

Downtown declined in the 1960s and 1970s and so did the hotel. Architect Ed Cromwell and a group of investors restored it, and it reopened at Christmas 1983. A second restoration closed it for two years, and it reopened in November 2007. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, won four stars from Forbes Travel Guide in 2013, and is a member of Historic Hotels of America.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for a fourth-floor room when you book, and accept whatever you get gracefully.
• Look up at the lobby skylight and walk the mezzanine late in the evening.
• The Old State House Museum is next door, and the Clinton Presidential Library is a short drive east.
• Treat the ghost stories as former staff lore; the hotel does not promote them.
• Pair it with the Empress of Little Rock in the Quapaw Quarter for a two-night haunted Little Rock trip.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Empress of Little Rock: an 1888 mansion inn in the Quapaw Quarter
• Arlington Hotel, Hot Springs: about an hour southwest, designed by the same architect, George Mann
• Crescent Hotel, Eureka Springs: the state’s most famous haunted hotel, with nightly ghost tours
• Haunted hotels in Arkansas

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• Capital Hotel (official site)
• CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas: Capital Hotel
• Historic Hotels of America: Capital Hotel history
• Wikipedia: Capital Hotel (Little Rock)
• HauntedPlaces.org: Capital Hotel

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