Historic Hotels & Inns in Ohio

Ways in

Themes in Ohio

Cincinnati’s Gilded Age and Art Deco hotels

The Cincinnatian opened in 1882 as the Palace Hotel at Sixth and Vine, then the city’s tallest building, and the Hotel Metropole followed on Walnut Street in 1912; it is now 21c Museum Hotel. In 1931 John J. Emery finished Carew Tower with the Netherland Plaza inside, and its French Art Deco interiors, Rookwood fountain and Hall of Mirrors survive in what is now a National Historic Landmark. Office buildings have joined them: the 1901 Union Trust Building is a Renaissance, and the Enquirer’s former headquarters on Vine Street holds a Hampton Inn and a Homewood Suites. Just outside the city, the Mariemont Inn anchors the planned village Mary Emery founded in the 1920s.

Cleveland’s Euclid Avenue arcades and banks

Cleveland turned its commercial landmarks into hotels. The 1890 Arcade, financed by John D. Rockefeller, Marcus Hanna and others and now a National Historic Landmark, has held a Hyatt Regency since 2001; the 1898 Colonial Hotel above the Colonial Arcade is a Residence Inn; and at Euclid and East 9th, the 1902 Schofield Building and Marcel Breuer’s 1971 Cleveland Trust tower face each other as the Kimpton Schofield and the Metropolitan at The 9. Hotel Cleveland, opened on Public Square in 1918, took back its original name in 2024, and in University Circle the Tudor Arms fills the 1930 Cleveland Club and Glidden House a 1910 Glidden family mansion.

Early-1800s stagecoach inns

Ohio’s oldest stays are in its small towns. In Lebanon, the Warren County court licensed a tavern in 1803, and Ichabod Corwin built the brick Golden Lamb in 1815; twelve presidents and Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe have visited. In Granville, Orrin Granger opened the Buxton Inn in 1812 as a stagecoach stop that was also the village post office, and the Granville Inn stands across East Broadway. Hotel Millersburg went up in 1847 on the site of an 1824 stagecoach tavern, and in Chillicothe, The Willis-James fills a house that Nathaniel Willis, publisher of the Scioto Gazette, built in 1805.

Lake Erie, industrial cities and the Ohio River

On Lake Erie, the Ariel Broadway Hotel fills Lorain’s 1925 Broadway Building, built as stores and offices when Lorain was a steel and port city, with rooftop views of the lake and the Lorain lighthouse. In Youngstown, Albert Kahn’s 1907 Stambaugh Building, built for Youngstown Sheet and Tube, is now a DoubleTree, and Dayton’s 1925 Harries Building reopened in 2025 as Hotel Ardent. On the Ohio River in Marietta, The Lafayette Hotel is named for the Marquis de Lafayette, who landed near the site in 1825.

Road trip

Cincinnati to Cleveland, inn to inn

Cincinnati

Start with two nights downtown: the Netherland Plaza’s 1931 Art Deco interiors, The Cincinnatian’s 1882 Palace Hotel, or The Symphony Hotel’s nine rooms across from Music Hall. Pick one from our Cincinnati guide.

Lebanon

Stay at The Golden Lamb, the 1815 inn where twelve presidents have visited; its 17 rooms are on the second to fourth floors, with no elevator.

Granville

Book the Buxton Inn, Orrin Granger’s 1812 tavern, which reopened in September 2026 (ask for the Main House for the 1812 rooms), or the Granville Inn across East Broadway, below the Denison University campus.

Cleveland

Finish on Public Square at Hotel Cleveland, in the 1890 Arcade at the Hyatt Regency, or in University Circle at Glidden House. Pick one from our Cleveland guide.

Context

History and architecture

Ohio’s historic hotels follow its roads and then its industries. Taverns came first: in 1803, the year Ohio became a state, the Warren County court licensed the Lebanon tavern that became The Golden Lamb, and stagecoach inns followed in Granville in 1812 and in Millersburg, where a tavern stood from 1824. The cities built their hotels from the 1880s on: Cincinnati, settled in 1788 as Losantiville, opened the Palace Hotel in 1882, Columbus the Great Southern in 1897, and Cleveland, where Moses Cleaveland’s survey party arrived in 1796, the Colonial Hotel in 1898 and the 1,000-room Hotel Cleveland in 1918. Towers followed: the American Insurance Union Citadel in Columbus in 1927, now home to Hotel LeVeque, and Carew Tower in Cincinnati, with the Netherland Plaza inside, in 1931. Since 2000, many of the state’s arcades, banks and office buildings, from Cleveland’s 1890 Arcade to Youngstown’s Stambaugh Building and Dayton’s Harries Building, have been converted into hotels.