The Whitney Hotel Boston ★★★★★

A new building in Beacon Hill's own brick

Beacon Hill does not welcome new construction easily, which makes The Whitney a rare thing: a purpose-built luxury hotel at the bottom of Charles Street, opened in 2019 on a corner once owned by Henry Melville Whitney, the industrialist who merged Boston's horse-drawn streetcar companies into the West End Street Railway. Boston architects Hacin + Associates revitalised and extended an existing structure in the red brick and townhouse proportions of the neighbourhood, and the building carries LEED Silver certification. Inside, Ealain Studio worked from the Federal-style houses next door: high ceilings, French oak floors, marble in the halls, and a lounge where a fire burns beneath a large painting, with navy sofas and grey armchairs drawn up around it.

Sixty-five rooms facing the Hill or the river

The 65 rooms and suites come as kings, double queens and suites, several of them adapted for guests with reduced mobility. The palette is restrained, charcoal and cream with dark wood, and the bathrooms are lined in white tile with black-framed walk-in showers, double sinks in the larger rooms and Grown Alchemist products. Tall windows look either onto the rooftops of Beacon Hill or across to the Charles River, so the choice of side is worth stating at booking. Rooms are large by the standards of a neighbourhood of narrow townhouses, with a proper seating area in most categories.

Peregrine and the garden patio

Peregrine occupies the ground floor and is led by executive chef Tatiana Rosana, whose menu takes a coastal Mediterranean line, Sicilian and Sardinian in spirit, through New England seafood: local mussels and clams with tomato, olive oil and mint, oysters, hand-made pastas, and small plates built for the bar. Breakfast is served every morning and brunch on weekends. The bar keeps a wine list drawn from the owner's own cellar. Behind the restaurant, landscape designer Matthew Cunningham planted a hedged garden with a sun-catching terrace, clipped trees and generous borders; on summer evenings the brick courtyard is lit with festoon lights and dinner moves outside.

Charles Street at the door

The hotel stands where Charles Street meets Cambridge Street. Turn right and the antique dealers, bookshops and wine merchants of Charles Street run uphill past gas lamps and cobbled side streets towards Boston Common and the Public Garden, a ten-minute walk. Turn left and a footbridge crosses to the Charles River Esplanade, where the hotel's complimentary bicycles come into their own along the riverside path. Charles/MGH station on the Red Line is a short stroll, TD Garden is close for a Bruins or Celtics game, and Massachusetts General Hospital is next door, which makes the hotel a practical base for visiting families.

Why we selected it

The Whitney is one of the few genuinely boutique luxury addresses on Beacon Hill itself, small enough at 65 rooms to feel like a private house and polished enough to hold an AAA Four Diamond rating and a place in the Michelin Guide's hotel selection. It belongs to the Independent Collection, welcomes dogs, and pairs a serious restaurant with the most atmospheric residential streets in the city. For a first visit to Boston, or a return one built around walking, it is hard to place better.