Graduate Knoxville

We said we wouldn’t rest until there was a boutique hotel in every sufficiently large American city, and it seems the Graduate Hotels group is on a similar mission when it comes to college and university towns. Knoxville, Tennessee isn’t just a college town, of course, but it is home to the University of Tennessee — which means it’s home to the Graduate Knoxville, a boutique hotel decked out in Volunteers orange and white. And thanks to the fact that Graduate founder and CEO Ben Weprin is a Tennessee alum, it features a partnership with another famous Volunteer: NFL quarterback Peyton Manning.

The rooms and the public spaces are, in typical Graduate style, chock full of UT memorabilia as well as subtler references to the history and the locale. Boutique-hotel comforts include Malin + Goetz bath products and modern electronics. It stops short of luxury-hotel territory, though it’s even further removed from anything resembling student digs.

Like every Graduate, it’s got a Poindexter café, but Graduate Knoxville’s crown jewel is Saloon 16, a Western-style bar and lounge inspired by Peyton “The Sherriff” Manning’s NFL-era nickname. He didn’t just license his name, incidentally — he took an interest in every aspect of the bar’s creation, right down to the songs on the old-fashioned coin-operated jukebox.