Heritage House Lodging & Events

On a quiet residential block just off downtown Opelika, a neoclassical mansion with Ashlar stone foundations and a Spanish-tile roof has spent more than a century watching the town grow up around it. Heritage House Lodging & Events occupies that 1913 home at 714 2nd Avenue, a short walk from the shops, restaurants, and railroad-front storefronts of Opelika’s revitalized downtown. Where the property once housed an antiques business and later sat vacant and slated for demolition, it now operates as a five-suite bed and breakfast, one of the few independently owned overnight stays inside Opelika’s city limits.

The house was built in 1912 and 1913 by W.E. Davis and his wife Annie Cole Davis, on land given to them by her family, the Prestons. It stayed in Davis hands until 1971, when sisters Ruth Crook and Virginia Magee bought it, moved their antiques business into the front rooms, and gave the property the name it still carries. After the sisters retired in the late 1980s, the house fell into disrepair and a developer floated plans to tear it down for a fast-food restaurant. Barbara Patton and her son Richard bought the mansion in 1993, restored it, and opened Opelika’s first bed and breakfast there in 1994. Ownership passed through a few more hands over the following decades, including a stretch as a private residence, before Leif Espelund and Dani Nelson took over in January 2020. The couple moved from Seattle to Opelika to run the inn, reopening it to guests that June, and they have continued to operate it as innkeepers ever since.

Each of the five guest suites, the Carriage Suite, Garden Suite, Clubhouse, Seaside, and Traveler, has its own footprint and personality but shares a common set of comforts: a private bathroom, a king bed on a Stearns & Foster mattress, a 55-inch smart television, and twelve-foot ceilings that carry over from the home’s original construction. The Carriage Suite, on the ground floor with its own private entrance, is the only room that accepts pets, up to two well-behaved dogs or cats for a one-time fee, with a leash-and-cleanup policy that keeps the historic grounds tidy for every guest.

The Garden Suite, often booked for anniversaries and other occasions, opens onto a large, light-filled room with a clawfoot soaking tub set beneath tall windows. The Clubhouse and Seaside rooms share balcony access and lean into themed decor, one built around the outdoors and the other around a coastal palette, while the compact Traveler room mixes worldly, eclectic touches into the smallest of the five footprints. Groups and families can also book the entire 5,500-square-foot house, which sleeps up to ten across all five king suites and five and a half bathrooms, a common arrangement for weddings and reunions given the property’s history as an events venue as much as an inn.

A homemade breakfast is served daily between 8 and 9:30 in the morning, and rooms come stocked with coffee, snacks, sodas, and an ice bucket alongside bath amenities, robes, and a hair dryer. Wi-Fi and onsite parking are included, and the inn’s location in the Northside and Downtown Historic Districts puts guests within walking distance of Opelika’s restaurant row and the South Railroad Avenue storefronts, as well as an easy drive from Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium and the Robert Trent Jones Grand National golf courses on Lake Saugahatchee.

Heritage House keeps the guest list adults-only, with a minimum age of 13 for standard room bookings, though full-house rentals can accommodate families and larger groups. Standard reservations require a $25 per-room deposit and seven days’ notice for cancellation, while events and full-house bookings carry different deposit and notice terms. As one of Opelika’s few small, independently run lodging options, and the only bed and breakfast operating inside the city itself, Heritage House gives visitors a way to stay inside a piece of the town’s architectural history rather than along the interstate exits where most of the area’s hotel rooms are found.