Historic Hotels

Sleeping in Boston's history

Boston invented much of American hospitality, and some of the evidence still takes reservations. Grand nineteenth-century houses, gilded-age palaces, converted banks and publishing houses: the city's historic hotels are archives with room service. This category tells their stories, the architects, the scandals, the renovations that saved them and the ones that nearly didn't, and assesses them honestly as places to sleep in the present tense.

Because history cuts both ways: original windows can mean draughts, landmark status can freeze a floor plan, and charm can be doing the work a mattress should. We report both sides of the ledger, the romance and the radiator noise.

Choose your century

Historic properties cluster downtown and in Back Bay; our district hotel guides show where the old fabric survives, and the Downtown Boston hotel guide covers the densest concentration. Many of these landmarks appear in the 50 hotels that define the city, and for how heritage rooms are priced against new glass, what a night in Boston really costs follows the numbers month by month.