Montezuma Hotel

The Montezuma Hotel was a 390 by 180-foot, three-story wood-frame hotel which operated for about twelve years in Bessemer.

The Victorian-styled "Montezuma Building" was originally constructed in late 1884 in New Orleans, Louisiana as the headquarters of Mexico's delegation to that year's World's Industrial and Cotton Exposition. It was built near the Mississippi River in the southeast corner of the exhibition grounds, on what is now part of the Audubon Zoo. It housed Mexico's 8th Regiment and their concert band, which was the primary musical ensemble for the fair's largest events.

Henry DeBardeleben purchased it and the Jamaica Building after the fair closed, and had them disassembled and shipped to his fast-growing new city of Bessemer.

The reconstructed hotel was located on a ten-acre landscaped site bounded by 22nd and 24th Streets and by Carolina and Berkeley Avenues.

In 1898 the hotel closed down and the building re-opened as Montezuma University. It burned down in March 1899.