Established in 1883 after William Shepard (W.S.) and Virginia McCraw Moore moved to Hawthorne from Braden, Tennessee, and adapted railroad buildings on Johnson Street, the Moore Hotel became Hawthorne’s first hotel and oldest existing business. A model of Folk Victorian architecture, it featured a two-tiered full-façade wraparound veranda, later additions including a south wing built circa 1900, and a northeast wing that had originally served in the early 1870s as a schoolhouse and Masonic Lodge before being moved across the street by mules and logs; the buildings were linked by walkways and porches with jigsaw-cut balusters and post brackets. In 1923, six-year-old Francis, Moore’s grandson, walked barefoot across a wet cement sidewalk in front of the hotel, leaving impressions that still remain. The hotel was the first in the region to offer bathtubs with running water supplied by a backyard tank and windmill, as well as carbide gas lighting, and its center lobby served for guest registration, socializing, and Saturday night bridge games. Wealthy winter visitors from across the country stayed there, and it was regarded as one of the best hotels in Florida; W.S. Moore and Chester Shell, a local Black man skilled in hunting and training bird dogs, guided guests on hunting excursions, and more than 2,500 game birds were served there in a season. Virginia "Jennie" Moore managed hotel operations, with rooms costing $2 a day or $10 per week. After W.S. Moore died in 1925, Jennie sold the property to a Jacksonville company, which failed to maintain it and defaulted seven years later; she then regained it and rented twenty-three rooms to overnight travelers until her death in 1934. The dining room closed in 1948, after which the family converted most rooms into apartments, later reorganized them into ten spacious units and renamed the property Hawthorne Apartments. In 2000, W.S. Moore’s great-grandson Richard inherited the apartments, continuing four generations of Moore family stewardship that shaped Hawthorne’s history and development for more than a century.