Historic Hotels & Inns in New Jersey

Ways in

Themes in New Jersey

Cape May’s Victorian resort

The whole city of Cape May is a National Historic Landmark district (National Register 1970, NHL 1976), and all 16 of its inns we list are inside it. The Chalfonte opened in 1876 and stood beyond the reach of the Great Fire of 1878; after the fire, Congress Hall was rebuilt in brick in 1879, and on Jackson Street, rebuilt over the next decade, the 1879 Ebbitt House is now The Virginia Hotel. The City credits entrepreneurs who restored Victorian houses as B&Bs with the town’s late-20th-century revival, and The Mainstay Inn opened in 1977 in Jackson’s Clubhouse, an 1872 gambling club.

Ocean Grove and the rest of the Shore

Methodist ministers founded Ocean Grove as a camp meeting in 1869, and the whole town is a National Register historic district; its five inns include the Lillagaard (1871) near the boardwalk and The Quaker Inn on Main Avenue. In Bay Head, the historic district’s National Register nomination calls The Grenville the last of the town’s great late-19th-century hotels. In Ocean City, the Flanders opened on the boardwalk in 1923 and the Scarborough Inn dates itself to 1895, and in Wildwood Crest the Caribbean Motel is a 1957 Doo Wop motel, listed on the National Register in 2005.

The Delaware River towns

Capt. John Lambert built Lambertville House as a stone tavern and inn in 1812, while a bridge to New Hope was going up, and in 1814 it took in the village post office. In Stockton, The Woolverton Inn is John Prall Jr.’s 1792 farmhouse, enlarged into a manor in the mid-1800s, where Julia and Paul Child married in 1946. In Frenchtown, The National Hotel was rebuilt in 1850, when the railroad arrived, on the site of an 1833 inn.

Colonial and Revolutionary-era houses

Princeton’s Peacock Inn is a colonial-era house once owned by Jonathan Deare, a member of the Continental Congress who lodged fellow congressmen there; it was moved to Bayard Lane in 1875 and became an inn in 1911. In Hope, Moravian settlers finished their stone grist mill in 1770, the National Register nomination says, and the restored mill now houses rooms and a tavern of The Inn at Millrace Pond. In Chesterfield, The Inn at Fernbrook Farms fills John Newbold’s farmhouse, which the National Register dates to about 1761 and the inn to the 1740s.

Road trip

The Delaware to Cape May, inn to inn

Lambertville and Stockton

Start on the Delaware at Lambertville House, the 1812 stone tavern by the river bridge, or at The Woolverton Inn’s 1792 manor in Stockton.

Princeton

Stay at the Nassau Inn on Palmer Square, where Norman Rockwell painted the mural over the bar of the Yankee Doodle Tap Room in 1939, or at the Peacock Inn on Bayard Lane, where Albert Einstein stayed in 1933.

Ocean Grove

On the Shore, spend a night in the camp-meeting town, where the 1894 Great Auditorium seats 6,250. Pick an inn on Ocean Pathway or Main Avenue from our Ocean Grove guide.

Cape May

Finish at Exit 0 of the Garden State Parkway and give Cape May two nights. Choose a hotel on Beach Avenue or a B&B near the Washington Street Mall from our Cape May guide.

Context

History and architecture

New Jersey became the third state to ratify the Constitution in 1787, and its oldest inns are older still. The Nassau Inn began in Princeton in 1769, in a house where members of the Continental Congress stayed in 1783, and Moravian settlers who founded Hope in 1769 finished their stone grist mill a year later. On the Delaware, a post office opened in 1814 inside Capt. John Lambert’s 1812 tavern, and Frenchtown’s National Hotel was rebuilt in 1850, when the railroad reached town. At the Shore, Thomas Hughes opened a Cape May boarding house in 1816 that became Congress Hall; after the Great Fire of 1878 it was rebuilt in brick, and in 1970 the National Register listed the whole city as a historic district. Methodist ministers founded Ocean Grove in 1869, and the 20th century added the Flanders on Ocean City’s boardwalk in 1923 and Wildwood Crest’s Caribbean Motel in 1957.