If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD137.70), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Sometimes the past is best left behind, but designers at Hotel Revival have decided to take this cultural stay’s history in stride (and with a dash of art deco flair). Once home to one of the Charm City’s 20th-century artists and the host of the Baltimore Museum of Art’s very first exhibition in 1923, these walls have held many of Mount Vernon’s creative chronicles, and little has changed today. Artwork from local makers embellish brightly hued bedrooms, vast views frame the hotel’s refined rooftop restaurant and a speakeasy bar recalls F Scott Fitzgerald’s lasting Jazz Age legacy. But now, with its coveted locale and sought-after style, we have a feeling all eyes will be firmly on this hip hotel’s future.
11am; check-in is at 4pm. Both are flexible, on request and subject to availability.
Prices
Double rooms from £129.56 ($162), including tax at 17.5 per cent.
More details
Rates don’t include breakfast, but it’s available daily at the Dashery for between $10 and $25.
Also
There’s an accessible entrance to the hotel, all floors are serviced by elevators, and the hotel has seven ADA-approved rooms that have been adapted for guests with limited mobility or hearing.
At the hotel
Laundry service, and free WiFi throughout. In rooms: 49-inch smart TV, Bluetooth alarm clock, tea- and coffee-making kit, minifridge, and Beekman 1802 bath products.
Our favourite rooms
Rooms strikingly blend art deco interiors with local touches (all artwork is made nearby, tea and coffee blends are crafted in the city, and furniture was cut by homegrown artisans) that makes for authentic spaces. But for even more of Baltimore’s charm, secure one of the Monument Kings for their panoramas of the nearby Washington Monument.
Spa
There’s no spa onsite, but staff can arrange treatments at the Art of Balance Wellness Spa, a 10-minute drive away.
Little Smiths are welcome, but there’s no kids’ club or crèche to keep them entertained.
Sustainability efforts
The hotel works closely with a number of independent businesses in Baltimore to help support local communities. All the bamboo toilet paper is provided by Lor Tush, a Black-owned female business founded by sisters Nnadagi and Louisa Isa. Artisan coffee blends are hand-roasted in the Highlandtown district by Black Acres Coffee, and the Weight Tea Company (another sibling-run endeavor) supplies all the hotel’s loose-leaf tea.
Topside is the best for scenic spots; but if you’re here to get loose, head for one of the karaoke rooms that are attached to B-Side Bar.
Dress Code
Bold tones blend best with Mount Vernon’s creative crowd.
Hotel restaurant
Rooftop-restaurant Topside pairs expansive city panoramas with mosaic-lined tiles and a bartop bordered with crimson-coloured stools and apéritif-sipping diners. And though the views certainly impress, the main event is the dinner menu, where head chef Alexis Hernandez has curated a selection of amped-up American dishes that feature caramelized short ribs, Chilean sea-bass served on crispy shrimp rice, and poached lobster pasta. Head to the hotel’s laid-back café, Dashery, on the ground floor for freshly baked pastries, artisan coffees, and grab-and-go lunches.
Hotel bar
There’s a bar at Topside, but if you’re after Hotel Revival’s full speakeasy experience, find the ground floor’s juke box and hit the button to reveal B-Side Bar’s hidden entrance. Bartenders make up cocktails based on the hand-picked playlists that set the tone, and just beyond the flapper-style seats and rich hues, karaoke rooms are primed for no-judgment singing sessions.
Last orders
Topside dishes dinner between 5pm and 10pm, Monday to Wednesday and 3pm to 11pm, Thursday to Saturday. Dashery is open daily from 6.30am (7am at weekends) until 3pm; B-Side pours from 7pm to 11pm (1am on Fridays and Saturdays, closed Monday and Tuesday).a
Hotel Revival is set in Balitmore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood, eight blocks from Penn Station and north of the Patapsco River.
Planes
Most international hubs have direct flights into Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, which is a 20-minute drive from the hotel.
Trains
Penn Station is a 20-minute walk (or 10-minte drive) from the hotel, where you can catch direct and connecting trains along the East Coast to Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York City and Boston.
Automobiles
Unless you’re planning on leaving the city, there’s little need for a car. If you do decide to pick up a set of wheels, there are rental booths at the airport and the hotel offers valet parking for $49 a night.
Worth getting out of bed for
Leafy Mount Vernon, formerly home to George Washington, is Baltimore’s cultural epicenter and luckily for us, Hotel Revival puts us right in the middle of its storied locale. There are plenty of places to learn more about the city’s past and the Maryland Center for History and Culture is a great place to start, as its hallowed halls brim with 19th-century artefacts that pay homage to the state’s heritage. The Washington Monument (built before its perhaps better-known DC counterpart) stands tall on the intersection of Washington Place and Mount Vernon Place, with 227 steps that lead to impressive city panoramas. Just across the road, the Walters Art Museum hosts exhibitions showcasing international artists; C Grimaldis Gallery is the Charm City’s oldest contemporary gallery, and the Baltimore Museum of Modern Art has ever-changing art collections (and a locally loved onsite crab-cake restaurant, Gertrude’s Chesapeake Kitchen, that’s well worth a pitstop). To learn more about America’s great chroniclers, the homes of Gertrude Stein and F Scott Fitzgerald (where he famously finished Tender Is the Night) are both open to the public, or if you prefer watching over reading, the Lyric Baltimore and Center Stage have rotating rosters of Broadway-worthy plays.
Now you’re an expert on all things Baltimore, head where the locals hang and watch a baseball game at the Oriole Park at Camden Yards or huddle into the M&T Bank Stadium for a touch of American football. The clue’s in the name, but beer-lovers will do well over on Brewers Hill – where craft breweries line almost every street corner – and foodies can seek out samples from local vendors at Lexington Market. And if you’ve accompanying little Smiths, the Maryland Zoo, National Aquarium and Maryland Science Center all make for engaging days out.
Local restaurants
The streets surrounding Hotel Revival are filled with artistic eateries, and Allora sits proud among them for its Italian-inspired cuisine and warm, homey welcome. Vegetarians may want to look away – but the rest of you, be sure to stop by family-owned Restaurante Tío Pepe on East Franklin Street that’s been serving the finest of Spanish cuts since the 1960s. For something lighter, head to Café Fili for Mediterranean, falafel-focused dishes and fresh brews.
Local cafés
Rich roasted coffees and vinyls exist in harmony at Baby’s on Fire, and along North Howard Street, the Black- and female-owned Couples Tea House is shining a light on the best of Baltimore’s local loose-leaf blends.
Local bars
Maryland may have been the only state not to ban alcohol during the 1920s, but that hasn’t stopped Baltimore’s bars seeking inspiration from the country's notorious speakeasies. Just down East Chase Street, the Owl Bar draws Prohibition-style designs into its moody setting and serves crafted concoctions over its historic dark-stained bartop. ‘Shaken, and not stirred’ – as Bond would say – is a perfectly reasonable request at Sugarvale, where menus are split between the two cocktail-making methods and served in an intimate 35-seat setting (we’d just suggest booking in advance).
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this creative crashpad in Mount Vernon and unpacked their crab mallets and batch of baked goods from Aunt Kelly’s Cookies, a full account of their charming break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Hotel Revival in Baltimore…
In Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood, Hotel Revival is taking its creative roots seriously. It may have been renovated from the bones of an old artist’s 20th-century mansion, but new interiors have rewritten the forgotten building’s future without stripping its past: locally made artwork represents up-and-coming talent while still paying homage to the hotel’s origins, beds – which were also crafted by Baltimore-based artisans – are dressed in blankets embroidered with maps of Chesapeake Bay, and ground-floor wallpapers draw inspiration from the 1840s Baltimore Album Quilts. Historical homages continue underground, where the hotel’s elusive speakeasy bar brings back the age of flappers and philosophers. And, a short lift ride will whizz you into the 21st century at rooftop restaurant Topside, which replaces fringed furnishings with refined fabrics, and serves upscale American cuisine to bon vivants gazing over sweeping cityscapes.
