Every property in our directory earns its place by the same standard: the building has to matter, not just look the part. This page explains what that means in practice. Such as how we define “historical,” how we handle dates, and how we research each property before it’s published.
Relevance Over Age
A hotel is not historic because it is old. It’s historic because the building carries a story worth telling.
We don’t follow a single rigid definition, but the properties featured here generally share at least one of the following: 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 embedded so deeply in its community that the place itself has become part of the local identity.
Age alone doesn’t qualify a property — relevance does. We’re less interested in how long a hotel has been taking reservations and more interested in how long the building itself has stood, and what happened inside it before it ever became a hotel. A converted 1920s bank that opened as a hotel last year belongs here just as much as a property that has run continuously since the year it was built.
Two Dates, Not One
Most hotel guides measure history in years of operation. We track something more specific: when a building was constructed, and, separately, when it began operating as a hotel, inn, lodge, or resort. Those are often not the same year, and collapsing them into one number erases the part of the story we actually care about.
Where we know both dates, we show both. Where a building sat vacant, served another purpose first, or changed hands before welcoming its first guest, that gap is part of the story rather than a detail we smooth over. We’re actively working through our full directory to confirm construction years alongside hotel-opening years — where a construction date isn’t yet confirmed, we say so rather than borrowing the hotel’s opening year to stand in for it.
What Doesn’t Qualify a Property on Its Own
- The word “historic,” “heritage,” or “landmark” appearing in the hotel’s name
- Period-style furniture, decor, or branding designed to evoke an earlier era
- Proximity to a historic district or landmark, without the building itself having a documented past
- A hotel’s own marketing copy, unless corroborated independently
- General impressions from photographs
None of these disqualify a property from being genuinely interesting to write about. But none of them are evidence of the building’s own history, and we try not to let good design or good marketing stand in for it.
How We Research
Each property description starts with the building, not the brand. Our research looks for the structure’s original use, its construction history, its architect where known, and the point at which it became a place to stay. For hotel brands with multiple locations, we start at the brand level, then narrow to the history of the specific building.
We don’t require a formal historic designation to feature a property. Because honestly, plenty of genuinely significant buildings don’t carry one. But we do distinguish between a documented history and an assumed one, and we try to be honest with ourselves about which is which before we publish.
We use AI tools to help structure research and draft efficiently. We don’t use them to invent dates, guess at facts, or fill in gaps the research doesn’t support. Where we can’t confirm something, we leave it out.
Properties with a documented history involving enslaved labor, displacement, or other difficult chapters are flagged for direct editorial review before anything is published. We’d rather take longer on those pages than get them wrong.
An Evolving Standard
This page describes where our methodology stands today, not a finished system. We’re actively building out construction-year data across our full directory of 500+ properties, and as that work progresses, more properties will carry both dates with confidence.
Have a correction — a construction date, an original architect, a use we’ve missed? We want to hear it: evan@stayinginhistory.com.