The Empress of Little Rock – a saloon keeper's Gothic mansion, two MICHELIN Keys

On a corner lot in Little Rock's Quapaw Quarter stands a mansion built, it is said, to out-dazzle a rival saloon keeper. James H. Hornibrook, grown rich on liquor, hired architects in the late 1880s to design an opulent residence on what was then the city's southern edge, and the result is still judged Little Rock's largest and most exuberant surviving example of Queen Anne architecture. Completed in 1888, the house went on to serve as a college for women, a boarding house, a nursing home and apartments before a 1990s restoration turned it into The Empress of Little Rock, an eight-room bed and breakfast the MICHELIN Guide lists as The Hornibrook Mansion Empress of Little Rock. The Guide awards it two Keys, the only hotel in Arkansas to carry a MICHELIN distinction. Hornibrook himself barely enjoyed his creation: his body was found at his own front gate within two years of moving in, and he was only 49.

01A saloon keeper's mansion

James H. Hornibrook was born in Toronto in 1840 to English parents and settled in Little Rock after the Civil War, where he and a partner, Miles Q. Townsend, built a saloon and liquor business. By the late 1880s that trade had made him rich enough to commission the mansion that still bears his name. In September 1889 his eldest daughter, Lessie, married Nicholas Peay in the house, an event the Arkansas Gazette described as spacious and elegantly furnished. Hornibrook had little time to enjoy his own success: in 1890 his body was found just inside his front gate, discovered by a delivery boy who raised the household, and he died at 49. He had, by one account, commissioned his own marble death mask years earlier, which still hangs in the house today. His widow Margaret reportedly died of a broken heart within two years.

After the family moved on, the mansion served as a college for women, a boarding house, a nursing home and apartments, passing in 1900 to Colonel Asbury S. Fowler, a U.S. Marshal for Arkansas's Eastern District, who lived there until his death in 1922. It was a rooming house during the Second World War, then a nursing home under Clare Freeman from 1947 into the late 1960s, then a home for disabled and elderly residents run by the Brown family from 1970. Bob Blair and Sharon Welch-Blair began a full restoration in December 1993, reopening the house in 1995 as the Empress of Little Rock Bed & Breakfast. The Blairs sold in 2019 to Antonio Figueroa and Keith Sandridge, and the mansion changed hands again at the end of 2025, bought for 1.55 million dollars by Ben Bledsoe and James Lucas of Revivalist Hotels, who note the Empress remains Arkansas's only MICHELIN-rated hotel.

02Gothic Queen Anne, inside and out

The Empress was designed by architects Max A. Orlopp Jr. and Kasper Kusener, who practised in Little Rock only briefly, from 1886 until the early 1890s, before moving on to Dallas. What they produced is, by scholarly consensus, the city's largest and most exuberant remaining example of Queen Anne design, built for 20,000 dollars using Arkansas materials and later named on the National Register of Historic Places as the state's finest example of the style. The house wears every Queen Anne trick at once: a one-storey wraparound porch, panelled brick chimneys and a restless mix of window shapes and surface textures, crowned by a corner tower that is circular on its lower two storeys and polygonal above, finishing in a pointed roof. Inside, a central circular staircase pivots the whole plan, so every room radiates outward in a similarly curved or octagonal shape, lit in places by a stained-glass skylight and reached, famously, by a divided stairway.

Insider tip

Book ahead for mansion tours and high tea; the Carriage House suites hold the in-room jacuzzis.

03Rooms and suites

Officially the hotel counts eight rooms, four in the main house and four in the restored Carriage House behind it, each named for a character from the region's history and individually furnished, most with a sitting area and some with a jacuzzi or private balcony. The largest, the Chatelaine Suite, occupies what was once the house's nursery and water closet on its north side; it keeps an antique Austrian walnut king bed, red velvet drapes, a double vanity and a claw-foot tub with massage jets beside a tiled walk-in shower.

In the Carriage House, the Hemingway Spa Suite plays a 1940s hand, its vaulted ceiling and rough-hewn beams set against a Gothic window, a king feather bed, a fireplace and a garden balcony, with a jacuzzi, steam shower and footbath in its bathroom; in October 2026 the hotel listed it at 299 dollars a night for two guests. Next door, the Majestic Spa Suite turns to 1930s Hollywood, with a gold crown canopy over its king bed, and is, unusually for the property, pet-friendly.

04Garden, breakfast and high tea

Breakfast is included for every stay, and beyond overnight guests the Empress hosts weddings, elopements, private celebrations, high tea and historic mansion tours, arranged by appointment so as not to disturb paying guests. Outside, specially landscaped gardens, a fountain and a courtyard surround the house, forming what the hotel calls its Secret Garden and a setting local coverage has called one of the city's most memorable for romantic occasions. The mansion's fame has travelled beyond Arkansas: it has featured in National Geographic Traveler and on HGTV, and the hotel's own marketing still cites a ranking as the fourth most romantic bed and breakfast in America.

05The neighbourhood

The Empress stands in the Quapaw Quarter, Little Rock's historic heart, within reach of the Governor's Mansion and the SoMa dining and gallery district, as well as downtown. Atlas Obscura counts it as a rare chance to spend the night in a Gilded Age house and then walk out into the same streets where the city's nineteenth-century elite built their own homes. Inside, guests are shown the mansion's grand staircase, its soaring corner tower and its parlours before ever stepping outside, making the building itself, as much as its address, the main attraction.

06Making the most of a stay

Check-in runs from 3pm to 6pm and check-out is at 11am, with free self-parking on site. New owners Ben Bledsoe and James Lucas, who live on site with their dog, Bernard, are gradually returning rooms used by previous operators to guest service, with further suites planned in addition to the current eight. Private tours of the mansion, aimed at history and architecture enthusiasts as much as overnight guests, can be booked in advance; ask too about the Secret Garden's gazebo and fountain if a wedding or high tea is on the itinerary.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.