To a former train depot once called Terminal Station, a beaux-arts building downtown, which was built in a time when trains were the apex of industry—the smartest, fastest, most high-tech way to move through space—and when stations were elegant ports of call. It has a soaring dome, and the bathrooms are naturally lit through stained glass.

Terminal Station closed in 1970, not quite a year after Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. The building reopened in 1973, four months after the Apollo program ended, as the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel. The new owners put a neon train on the roof, the concourse beneath the freestanding dome became a lobby, and the baggage room became a dining hall. Passenger cars were moored to the rails and refurbished as luxury suites. The iron horse engine became a thing for guests to climb aboard for selfies. The outbuildings and rail yards sprouted a gift shop, a pizza parlor, a comedy club, an indoor jungle-themed swimming pool, and an outdoor doughnut-shaped swimming pool, among other things.