The Stricklin Hotel

Tucked into the upper floors of the Historic Stricklin Building on North Court Street, The Stricklin Hotel gives downtown Florence a boutique lodging option with a strong sense of place. The three-story, 23,373-square-foot structure was built in 1946 as a standard commercial building in the heart of the city, and a 2017 renovation turned it into a mixed-use property that now houses the hotel on its second and third floors, with a well-known breakfast restaurant on the ground level.

The Stricklin’s 24 guest rooms are split across four categories: Deluxe King, Standard King, Select King, and a Mobility Accessible King room designed with an accessible shower for guests who need it. Deluxe rooms are notable for their beautifully restored original windows, which look out over Court Street and toward Wilson Park, one of downtown Florence’s central green spaces, while the Select King rooms are intentionally windowless for added privacy. The design throughout leans contemporary and understated, with concrete-topped bathroom counters, gold fixtures, white subway tile, and Brizo rainfall showerheads paired against exposed architectural bones from the building’s commercial past.

Every room includes keyless entry, an in-room safe, complimentary Wi-Fi, a smart TV, a Keurig coffee maker, and a mini fridge, the kind of practical amenities that make a short downtown stay easy without adding unnecessary frills. Guests can also order breakfast delivered to the room, since Big Bad Breakfast, the ground-floor restaurant from James Beard Award-winning chef John Currence, operates seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. directly below the guest floors.

Beyond guest rooms, the building includes two distinct event spaces available for private bookings. The Belk Hudson is a smaller meeting room built for business gatherings, holding up to 15 people around an executive conference table with a lounge area and a Smart TV, available for a two-hour minimum rental. The Stricklin Social is a larger venue that can hold up to 125 guests, featuring a built-in bar, lounge seating, a Smart TV, a video projector, and sprawling windows framed by the building’s exposed brick walls and original redwood columns, an event backdrop the hotel describes as blending southern elegance with modern design.

Below street level, the hotel’s basement holds The Boiler Room, an unconventional common space built around four vintage bowling lanes and a run of classic arcade games, including foosball, skeeball, shuffleboard, darts, and Golden Tee. It is an unusual amenity for a hotel this size and gives guests, along with the general public, a reason to linger in the building beyond checking in and out; the space is also available to book for private events and children’s birthday parties.

Location is arguably the property’s biggest asset. From the front door, guests are two blocks from Wilson Park and the Billy Reid flagship store, and about four blocks from the campus of the University of North Alabama, the state’s oldest four-year public university, making a car largely unnecessary once checked in. Within walking distance, guests can also find Alabama Chanin, a boutique known for hand-sewn womenswear and accessories, the W.C. Handy Museum and Festival honoring the Florence-born “Father of the Blues,” Pope’s Tavern, a Civil War-era museum and former stagecoach inn, and the Indian Mound and Museum, home to a 43-foot earthen mound built by the region’s earliest inhabitants. Guests have compared the experience to the small, character-driven inns found in cities like Charleston, South Carolina, citing the combination of historic architecture, walkable surroundings, and attentive service as the draw rather than any single standout feature.

The building’s history as a working commercial structure is still visible in its bones, from the tall original windows to the exposed structural elements left in place during the renovation. Rather than smoothing those details away, the hotel’s design keeps them as a backdrop for the more modern furnishings and finishes layered on top, giving the rooms a sense of continuity with the surrounding historic downtown district.

For visitors coming to Florence for a University of North Alabama event, a weekend exploring the Shoals music history at FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, a stop at the Rosenbaum House (the only Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in Alabama, listed on the National Register of Historic Places), or simply a night in a walkable downtown, The Stricklin offers an independent alternative to the chain hotels clustered along the highway corridors outside the city center. Its combination of restored architecture, curated amenities, and immediate access to downtown Florence make it one of the more distinctive places to spend the night in the city.