Judge Phelan took a lease in 1869, and shortly after this time built the first house here. He was widower with several daughters, "all of them handsome and young." He called the house The Forks as it was at the fork of Tennessee and University Avenue.
He had been a prominent citizen in Alabama before the Civil War. He was editor of the Huntsville Democrat, circuit judge, member of the Supreme Court, and a candidate for governor. He was the first president of the E.Q.B. Club here. He took paying guests and after he married again in 1873, a Mr. and Mrs. Weir ran the house and call it "The Hotel." Judge Phelan died in 1879.
The University Trustees discussed the necessity for a Hotel in 1880 and in 1883 a company called The University Hotel Company took it over. They enlarged the Phelan residence and moved the Dunbar School house from across the street built up into a two-story house, and placed back of the hotel. Gen. Kirby-Smith and Col. Jones, Treasurer of the University, each invested money in this company and the building was enlarged to three times its original size. The Cotten House, the large two-story house across the street, was used as an annex. It made money for a year or two, and then began to lose. It went into the hands of a receiver and the University bought it for $5,000 in 1892 to use as a dormitory for 65 boys for the Grammar School.
When Quintard was built in 1901, it once more became a hotel and was a center for the summer visitors. Mrs. P.S. Brooks and various people ran it in the summers. Harding Woodall and Bill Weatherly, alumni of 1917, tried it one summer.
Quintard caught fire in 1919. While it did not burn completely and was restored later to its present state, it could not be used for several years and the hotel once more was used to house the S.M.A. students. One day it too caught fire and being a frame building burnt to the ground. After the fire, Douglas Vaughan says he found 10 wells that had been dug under it.
The present building was built for an Inn in 1922 and turned into a dormitory later, now named Elliott Hall to commemorate Bishop Stephen Elliott, one of the founders of the University.
Gailor, C. (1970). Old Sewanee Houses; The First Fifty-Years, 1860-1910. Unpublished manuscript, Sewanee: The University of the South, Sewanee.