Some trips change the way you travel forever. Ours happened in Charleston.
We booked the John Rutledge House Inn on a whim. Last-minute trip, no research, just a listing that looked interesting. Shortly after we arrived, our concierge mentioned almost in passing that our room had been struck by a cannonball during the Civil War. Then he produced documentation to prove it.
We spent the rest of that stay differently than we’d spent any trip before. Not just because of the cannonball, but because of what it represented: a place so authentically woven into the history of its city that staying there felt like participating in something. By checkout, Charleston hadn’t just shown us its past. It had made us feel it.
A year later, Evan proposed to Shannon on that inn’s second floor. A year after that, we spent our honeymoon there.
That one booking rewired how we travel. And eventually, it became this.
Age alone doesn’t get you in. Relevance does. We’re less interested in how old a building is and more interested in whether staying there teaches you something about where you are.
What This Site Is
Staying in History is where we think out loud about historic hotels: what makes them worth seeking out, why they matter, and what it actually feels like to stay in them. We cover all kinds of historic properties — hotels, inns, lodges, motels, resorts. If it has a story embedded in its walls, we’re interested.
We’re not a booking engine or a review aggregator. We’re two people with strong opinions about where to sleep, and a conviction that the right hotel can make a trip, not just frame it.
The directory is built through our own research and reader submissions. But the part we care about most is the writing: the stays we’ve made, the details that caught us off guard, the places we’d go back to without hesitation and the ones we’d steer you away from.
What Qualifies as “Historical”
We don’t follow a single rigid definition. The properties we feature generally share at least one of these: a meaningful connection to a significant local or national event, architecture that reflects the character of its era, recognition by a preservation organization, or a story so embedded in its community that the place has become part of the local identity.
Who We Are
We’re Evan and Shannon Nickel, based in Milwaukee. We’ve been chasing historic properties together since Charleston, and we don’t expect to stop.
Spends his 9-5 in brand strategy helping companies figure out what they actually stand for. He applies the same lens to historic hotels: less interested in the amenities list, more interested in what a place means and why it matters.
A creative director who’s built her career shaping how brands look, feel, and communicate. She’s the one who notices the typography on the old room key, the way the light hits the lobby at 6am, the details that make a property feel considered rather than just preserved.
This site is our shared project. The opinions here are ours, the recommendations are ones we’d stand behind, and when we say we’d go back, we mean it.
Organizations We Admire
No formal affiliation, but we’re grateful for the work they do championing historic places of lodging:
- National Trust for Historic Preservation (USA)
- Historic Hotels of America
- Historic Hotels Worldwide®
- National Register of Historic Places (USA)
- Historic Hotels of Europe
A Note on Links
This site may contain affiliate links to booking platforms. If you book through one, we may earn a small commission at no cost to you. Affiliate relationships have no influence on what’s in our directory.
Get in Touch
Have a property that belongs here? Use our submission form to add it for consideration. For everything else, reach us at evan@stayinginhistory.com.