Historic Inns & Hotels in Rhode Island

Ways in

Themes in Rhode Island

Colonial Newport and the Gilded Age cottages

Newport’s colonial seaport is a National Historic Landmark district with nearly 300 surviving 17th- and 18th-century buildings. Stay in merchant Francis Malbone’s Georgian house of about 1758 on Thames Street, which the British used to store looted gold during the Revolution, or the Jailhouse Inn, the colonial jail that was Newport’s police headquarters until 1986. Up the hill, the 1926 Hotel Viking stands at the head of Bellevue Avenue, and where the Cliff Walk begins, The Chanler fills Cliff Lawn, John Winthrop Chanler’s summer cottage.

Block Island’s Victorian summer hotels

Old Harbor became one of the country’s leading coastal resorts after the federal government built its breakwaters in the 1870s. The Spring House, built in 1852 and enlarged in the early 1870s, calls itself the island’s oldest hotel, and the National Register calls it the best-preserved; Hotel Manisses was rebuilt with a central tower and pagoda cupola in 1882, and The National has stood across Water Street from the ferry landing since 1888. Most close from mid-October to spring, though The 1661 Inn stays open year-round.

Providence, from the Biltmore to the Masonic Temple

Warren & Wetmore, architects of Grand Central Terminal, designed the Providence Biltmore, which opened on Kennedy Plaza in 1922 and is now the Graduate. Hotel Providence fills the 1897 Lederer Building, long home to tailors, dressmakers and milliners, and Neptune fills a former Episcopal rescue mission on Fountain Street. Opposite the State House, the Freemasons began a temple in 1927 and stopped in 1929; the shell stood empty until it opened as the Renaissance in 2007.

The shore and the 1938 hurricane

The 1938 hurricane reshaped the shore’s inns. In Watch Hill, the inn says the Narragansett House, built around 1845 and now the Watch Hill Inn, was among the last original hotels left standing; the Buffum family rebuilt the Weekapaug Inn on Quonochontaug Pond in 1939, and the Toppa family’s Newport Beach Hotel in Middletown dates to 1940. The storm took the cupola off David Sisson’s 1854 Stone House in Little Compton, and in Matunuck, George and Etta Champlin’s 1898 Admiral Dewey Inn survives as a rare seaside boarding-house hotel.

Road trip

Providence to Watch Hill, inn to inn

Providence

Start downtown at the Graduate, the 1922 Providence Biltmore on Kennedy Plaza, and plan a night around WaterFire. More in our Providence guide.

Newport

Give Newport two nights: Francis Malbone’s colonial house on Thames Street, the Hotel Viking on Historic Hill or The Chanler where the Cliff Walk begins. Pick one from our Newport guide.

Block Island

Drive to Point Judith, leave the car in a lot ($10–$20 a day) and take the ferry: 55 minutes on the traditional boat or 30 on the seasonal high-speed. Most hotels close from mid-October to spring, so check our Block Island guide first.

Watch Hill

Back on the mainland, finish in Westerly at the Watch Hill Inn on Bay Street, built around 1845 as the Narragansett House, or the Weekapaug Inn on Quonochontaug Pond.

Context

History and architecture

Rhode Island ratified the Constitution in 1790, the last of the original thirteen states, but its oldest inns are older. Newport, founded in 1639, kept its colonial seaport: Francis Malbone’s merchant house of about 1758 and the colonial jail, now the Jailhouse Inn, stand among nearly 300 17th- and 18th-century buildings. Newport’s summer houses of 1830 to 1910 date from its years as America’s leading summer resort, and after federal breakwaters went up at Block Island’s Old Harbor in the 1870s, the Spring House added an annex and the Manisses was rebuilt in 1882. Providence’s hotels fill downtown landmarks: the Lederer Building of 1897, the Biltmore of 1922 and a Masonic Temple begun in 1927 and abandoned in 1929. The 1938 hurricane then reshaped the shore, and the Weekapaug Inn and the Newport Beach Hotel went up after it, in 1939 and 1940.