The Grand Old Hotels

The grand old hotels did not become institutions by accident. They became institutions because someone, usually several generations of the same family on both sides of the reservation book, decided that the arrangement was worth maintaining, and kept maintaining it long after a newer building down the road offered softer mattresses and a faster elevator. The porches were built for a reason. The dining rooms were sized for a reason. The reason, in both cases, was that a certain kind of traveler was expected to linger, and that traveler, generation after generation, obliged.

What this issue is about is the returning, which is the thing the grand old hotels were designed for and have, in most cases, been delivering since before the current guests were born. People who love these addresses will tell you that the first visit is almost beside the point, that the place only opens fully on the second trip or the third, when the staff knows what you drink and the corner table is understood to be yours. That is not sentiment. That is the actual product, and it is not available at the hotel that opened last spring. The names in the reservation books are the proof of it, some of them in the same handwriting three decades apart, which on a hotel register counts as the highest possible review.

The pieces collected here cover the addresses that have earned that kind of loyalty, from the long verandas of the Southern coast to the shingled summer palaces of New England, with the mountain lodges and the city institutions that have been holding down their corners for a hundred years or more in between. Come with a reservation and, if the place is the kind that fills the same weeks every year, come with one made far earlier than feels reasonable. The correct approach to any of them is the same: arrive, learn the rhythm, and begin planning the return before you have finished the first stay.