Historic Hotels & Inns in Massachusetts

Ways in

Themes in Massachusetts

Colonial taverns and early inns

Salem’s Daniels House, a First Period house that state records date to 1667, predates the 1692 witch trials. In Sturbridge, Col. Ebenezer Crafts built the Publick House on the town green on the eve of the Revolution and ran part of it as a roadside inn; its old kitchen is now the Tap Room. Concord’s Colonial Inn grew from three buildings on Monument Square, and one of them was part of the militia storehouse British troops marched to seize on April 19, 1775. In Newburyport, merchant Moses Brown’s Federal house on Brown Square was a boarding house and inn by 1850 and reopened as the Garrison Inn in 1923.

Salem, from sea captains to the witch trials

Salem has seven verified historic stays, more than any other town outside Boston. The Hawthorne Hotel, paid for by a public stock sale, opened beside Salem Common in 1925; across the Common, next door to the Salem Witch Museum, the Stepping Stone Inn has six rooms in an 1846 Greek Revival house. The Merchant fills sea merchant Joshua Ward’s 1785 Federal house, where the hotel says George Washington stayed in 1789. The Salem Inn joins Capt. Nathaniel West’s 1834 house with two later houses, Morning Glory faces the House of the Seven Gables, and The Coach House is sea captain Ephraim Emmerton’s 1879 mansion. The oldest, The Daniels House, reopened in 2019 after a restoration.

The Berkshires and Pioneer Valley

In Stockbridge, The Red Lion Inn traces itself by oral tradition to a 1773 tavern. The present building went up in 1897, and the front desk still runs its 1897 ‘birdcage’ elevator. Historic Hotels of America lists Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin D. Roosevelt among the presidents who stayed. In the Pioneer Valley, brothers Edward and Frederick Everett built the Deerfield Inn in 1884 for visitors to Old Deerfield’s colonial houses, Amherst College alumni opened the Lord Jeffery Inn, now Inn on Boltwood, in 1926, and Lewis Wiggins built Hotel Northampton in 1927 as a faithful ‘Early American Tavern.’

Cape Cod and the islands

All three verified Cape Cod inns sit in the Old King’s Highway Regional Historic District. In Brewster, The Mansion at Ocean Edge is the Nickerson family’s stucco mansion on Cape Cod Bay, a seminary from 1945 and the centerpiece of a resort since the early 1980s, and the Captain Freeman Inn is an 1866 sea captain’s house a walk from Breakwater Beach. In Sandwich, the Belfry Inn serves breakfast in the Abbey, a former church. Edgartown’s Harbor View Hotel opened in 1891 as the town turned from whaling to tourism, and on Nantucket the Jared Coffin House fills a whaling merchant’s 1845 brick mansion.

Road trip

Boston to the Berkshires, inn to inn

Boston

Start with two nights in Boston, at the Omni Parker House on the Freedom Trail or a Back Bay hotel such as the Fairmont Copley Plaza. Pick from our Boston guide.

Concord

Stay on Monument Square at Concord’s Colonial Inn, where Dr. Timothy Minot Jr. treated wounded militiamen after the fighting of April 19, 1775, in what is now the Liberty Room.

Sturbridge

Stop at the Publick House on the Sturbridge town green. Ask for one of the 17 rooms in the 18th-century inn; the rest are in three other buildings, including the Country Motor Lodge.

Stockbridge

Finish at The Red Lion Inn on Main Street, rebuilt in 1897, where the front desk still runs the 1897 ‘birdcage’ elevator and the parking is free.

Context

History and architecture

Massachusetts ratified the Constitution in 1788 as the sixth state, and its historic inns follow its history. The oldest building on our list is Salem’s Daniels House, which state records date to 1667. Taverns and inns grew up along the roads: the Publick House on the Sturbridge green on the eve of the Revolution, a Stockbridge tavern that by tradition dates to 1773 and is now The Red Lion Inn, and Concord’s Colonial Inn, one of whose buildings was part of the militia storehouse the British marched on in 1775. The sea trade paid for merchant houses that are now inns, from Joshua Ward’s 1785 house in Salem to whaling merchant Jared Coffin’s 1845 mansion on Nantucket. Harvey Parker opened Boston’s Parker House in 1855, and grand hotels followed: the Copley Plaza in 1912 and the Parker House’s 14-story tower in 1927. Tourism built the rest: the Deerfield Inn opened in 1885 for visitors to Old Deerfield’s colonial houses, Edgartown’s Harbor View in 1891 as the town turned from whaling, and the Colonial Revival Lord Jeffery Inn in Amherst (1926) and Hotel Northampton (1927).