Around 1890, the Central Hotel opened on Sevierville's public square as a white clapboard building with a large double-stacked front porch. It included a sample room where traveling salesmen, commonly called drummers, displayed their wares, and it served seasonally as a home for milliners who visited local stores to make custom hats for women. The hotel had no running water, and rooms were heated by coal-burning grates. In 1923, fire engulfed the hotel on the southwest corner of the Public Square, and one spectator and frequent salesman guest remarked that surely room number 33 was warm for the first time. The owners chose to build a modern brick replacement on the same site, using plans Sanders L. Atchley sketched on the back of a postcard and Burden Brothers Construction Company used as a blueprint. In 1951, the hotel was sold at public auction and renamed Hotel Sevier. It was the site of many Sevierville firsts, including the first television broadcast, the first color television viewed, the first long-distance telephone call, and the first successful beauty salon. The hotel was dismantled in 1968 to make way for Sevier County Bank. In 2018, Michael and Sherry Johnson acquired the historic corner, and in 2020 they opened the new Centrai Hotel with an architectural design that nodded to the nineteenth century in tribute to the original 1890 structure.