Rebirth of the
Brown County Inn
~ by Jeff Tryon photos by Geoff Thompson
Twenty years ago, when Courtney Gosser was spending idyllic summers at Brown County’ s Camp Palawopec, she never guessed that she would one day be leading one of Nashville’ s most well-known hotels through a process of renovation and rebirth.
The Brown County Inn has reopened after closing the entire month of January for the first phase of a complete makeover.
“ The layout of the building is staying the same, and we’ re trying to keep the same feeling, but we’ re pretty much touching every room,” said Gosser.
“ We’ re replacing all the carpets. The Town Hall space is getting gutted, repainted, and carpeted. All the rooms are being re-done. We’ re taking out all the old furniture and getting new furniture.”
During the shutdown, the pool was drained and totally refurbished. Extensive changes were made in the kitchen.
The rooms’ wood paneling is being repurposed as headboards in the guest rooms and around the hotel on the salad bar and as partitions in the dining room.
“ That wood paneling helped create that rustic, Brown County feel,” said Gosser.“ We
Courtney Gosser
still want that, but we want it to be a little more modernized. There’ s stuff that is staying, but is just being re-purposed and re-imagined.”
Also being reimagined is the menu in the Harvest Dining Room. There won’ t be wholesale change, but a push toward fresher, more locally sourced ingredients.
“ We’ re not completely changing the style of food we’ re serving, but we are changing the quality of everything we make,” Gosser said.“ So now, for instance, we’ re hand-cutting all of our fries, we’ re making a lot of our own dressings, and we’ ve extended the salad bar.
“ Fried chicken— we can never change that because we’ d get too much of a pushback, but we
20 Our Brown County March / April 2016