225 Unique Hotels in USA

The walls at Sacred Sands are packed with straw. Not metaphorically - straw bale construction means compacted bales stacked, framed, and finished in terracotta clay, resulting in walls so thick they function as their own acoustic system, insulation layer, and fire barrier all at once. It is an uncommon way …

The Cold War's most ominous legacy in Arkansas has been transformed into one of the most unusual places you can spend a night in America. The 6,000-pound blast door doesn't budge at first. You pull, and nothing happens, and then you pull harder, and eventually the thing that was built …

Somewhere on a mountaintop above Lake George, tucked behind life-size lion statues and Gothic iron gates, sits a place that's hard to believe exists. Highlands Castle is the kind of property that sounds like a fever dream until you're standing on its terrace watching the light change over the Adirondacks, …

Most airport hotels are functional in the way that airport food is functional - they'll do the job, but nobody is bragging about them at dinner. The Grand Hyatt at SFO is something else entirely. Opened in late 2019 on the grounds of San Francisco International Airport, it is the …

There are 26 pyramid-shaped villas arranged around a thermal lake in Fort Myers, Florida. The water bubbling up from 30 meters below the surface smells faintly of sulfur, changes color with the seasons, and is loaded with magnesium, potassium, calcium, and selenium. And yes, people keep coming back. Pyramids in …

In the heart of Palm Springs, a bright pink motel rises from the desert landscape like a fever dream made real. This is the Trixie Motel, the only drag queen-owned hotel in the United States, and quite possibly the world. It's a seven-room passion project in which every surface, fixture, …

Staying in a hotel that once served as a Union hospital, where faucets allegedly turn on by themselves and children's footsteps echo through halls at night, is delightfully odd. The Marshall House, Savannah's oldest operating hotel, doesn't shy away from its peculiar past. Built in 1851, this Greek Revival landmark …

Sleep in a human-sized nest perched in the trees. Wake to whales breaching offshore from your solar-powered tent. Dine on sushi made with herbs picked minutes earlier from the garden. At Treebones Resort on California's Big Sur coast, the line between camping and luxury blurs into something altogether more interesting …

A neoclassical church with 60-foot vaulted ceilings and patinated copper doors now houses one of Washington DC's most distinctive hotels. The LINE DC transformed a century-old First Church of Science into a boutique property that actually feels like it belongs in its Adams Morgan neighborhood – complete with an in-house …

Four miles up from Santa Fe, where piñon pines and junipers blanket the Sangre de Cristo foothills, sits something that shouldn't really exist: a faithful recreation of a Japanese mountain onsen, complete with cedar-scented hot tubs, sake bars, and guests padding about in yukata robes. You can soak under falling …

A historic bank building in downtown Versailles has been transformed into a 29-room boutique hotel with its own craft distillery, a steakhouse that channels 1950s glamour, and a rooftop bar on the way. The former Woodford Bank and Trust Company now offers clawfoot tubs, equestrian-inspired design, and the kind of …

This 1886 mountaintop hotel in the Ozarks offers ghost tours through a former morgue, a rooftop bar with sunset views, and the kind of dark history most hotels would rather forget. In the 1930s, a con man named Norman Baker ran a fraudulent cancer hospital here, injecting dying patients with …

Standing a mere 20 feet from the Grand Canyon's edge, El Tovar has been perched on this precipice since 1905, when the notion of building a luxury hotel in the middle of nowhere was either visionary or mad. Theodore Roosevelt stayed here. So did Albert Einstein. The dining room still …

On Savannah's historic riverfront, where cobblestones meet the water and tourists queue for trolley tours, sits something entirely unexpected: a chrome-dipped dinosaur skeleton stretching 135 feet across a hotel lobby. The JW Marriott Savannah Plant Riverside District isn't your typical riverfront accommodation. It's part hotel, part museum, part entertainment complex, …

In the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains near Walland, Tennessee, Blackberry Farm occupies 4,200 acres of wilderness where exceptional hospitality, serious food, and genuine Southern warmth converge. This isn't your typical resort where you're shuffled through generic experiences. Here, you'll find 68 accommodations ranging from cozy historic rooms to …

There's a certain magic to staying somewhere without electricity or running water, somewhere a five-minute hike takes you to views of the Colorado River and Lake Powell, and where the night sky is so unmarred by light pollution that the stars seem to multiply the longer you stare at them. …

Many Glacier Hotel sits on the shores of Swiftcurrent Lake in Glacier National Park's northeastern corner, a five-story structure with brown wood siding and Swiss chalet flourishes that has been welcoming visitors since 1915. When a forest fire roared down the mountain in 1936, employees fought flaming debris with fire …

Most hotels promise a good night's sleep and maybe continental breakfast. The Don Q Inn in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, promises you can spend that night in a space capsule, an igloo, or a medieval dungeon. Want to spend the night in a Viking ship? Done. Prefer a prehistoric cave? They've got …

When Barry Sternlicht's 1 Hotels brand finally opened its flagship property on Kauai in early 2023, it marked more than just another luxury resort debut. After decades of family vacations to this stretch of Hawaii's North Shore, the hospitality mogul had transformed what he saw as a property disconnected from …

Some places make you work for them. Kennicott Glacier Lodge is one of those places – eight hours from Anchorage, with the final 60 miles on gravel roads that rental car companies won't let you drive on. But those willing to make the journey find themselves at the center of …