12/12/2025
✨Did you know the backstory of the beloved NOEL sign? Each Christmas, it sits proudly atop the white brick building on the corner of Main Street and 5th Avenue North—better known today as Starbucks.
🏨But long before it became a Franklin icon, the NOEL sign crowned the Noel Hotel in downtown Nashville at 200 Fourth Avenue North. Built in 1929, this 12-story luxury hotel was the tallest building in Nashville and welcomed famous guests like Eleanor Roosevelt, Babe Ruth, and Roy Rogers. It was even advertised as “Nashville’s Smartest Hotel.”
Surprisingly, the name had nothing to do with Christmas! The hotel was named for the Noel family, who owned the land where it was built. After decades as a hotel, the building later served as an office tower known as Noel Place—until 2017, when it was beautifully restored and reopened as the boutique .
Back to downtown Franklin’s historic White Building: constructed in 1923 at the iconic Five Points intersection, it originally housed Dr. John White’s medical office and drugstore. The building later became home to Rexall Drug Store and has been a bustling Starbucks since 2001.
🌟Preservationist Karen Cochran, owner of the White Building, played a special role in bringing the NOEL sign to Franklin. Her former husband, John Noel III—grandson of John Noel Sr.—rescued the sign after Nashville’s Noel Hotel closed. For years, the couple displayed it at Franklin Road and Elysian Fields before Karen decided its true home was atop the White Building, where thousands could enjoy it every Christmas.
🎄The NOEL sign stays up all year long, but each Thanksgiving week it’s tilted upward—its official signal that the holiday season has begun in downtown Franklin.
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📍Noel Sign at Five Points
438 Main Street, Franklin, TN 37064
📍Noelle Hotel
200 4th Ave North, Nashville, TN 37219
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