Ballastone Inn ★★★★

An 1838 House That Never Stopped Being a House

The Ballastone was built in 1838 and enlarged in the 1880s, and the two campaigns are still legible in the plan: high ceilinged rooms at the front, a deeper wing behind, a courtyard garden where the service yard would once have been. What matters is that it has never been gutted to make a hotel out of it. You arrive into a hall rather than a lobby, the staircase is the one the original family used, and the sixteen rooms are distributed across the floors as bedrooms rather than as a corridor of identical doors.

Why It Works

Savannah has plenty of period buildings with hotel interiors dropped inside them. The Ballastone went the other way and kept the house intact, then added the services a luxury traveller expects: spa treatments, a bar, a full cooked breakfast and a daily high tea. The adults only policy is the second half of the equation, and it is what makes the drawing rooms usable at six in the evening. Sixteen rooms is small enough that the staff know which one you are in by the second morning.

Why This Location

Oglethorpe Avenue runs east to west across the top of the Historic District, and the inn sits on it a few steps from Bull Street, the spine that threads the squares together. The Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace is the building next door, which tells you how central this is without needing a map. Walk south on Bull and the squares arrive one after another until Forsyth Park opens up at the end. Walk north and you reach the river and City Market. The inn is on the quiet side of all of it, which is the part that is hard to buy.

Fast Facts

• Price: Luxury

• Vibe: Antebellum, hushed, unmistakably residential

• Rooms: 16, individually decorated with period antiques, including named suites such as Mulberry Tulips and Scarlett’s Retreat

• Best For: Couples, honeymoons and anniversaries, travellers who would rather stay in a house than a hotel

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: High tea at four, served on antique silver with scones and smoked salmon sandwiches, in a house that has been doing it long enough to make it look effortless

• Dining: Full Southern breakfast in the dining room or the courtyard garden, afternoon high tea, port and sherry at the bar in the evening

• Amenities: Courtyard garden, spa treatments, bar, adults only

• Attractions: Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace next door, Bull Street and its squares at the corner, Forsyth Park at the southern end of the walk

Sixteen Rooms, No Two Alike

Rooms are furnished with period antiques and reproductions rather than a single hotel scheme, so they differ in size, in outlook and in character. The named suites are the ones with the drama, and they are worth the step up if the stay is short and the occasion is the point. Ask what the room looks onto before you choose: in a house of this age the difference between a street front room and one over the courtyard garden is a real one, and both have their advocates.

The Rituals

Three of them, and they are the reason people come back. Breakfast is a full Southern one, taken inside or in the courtyard. High tea lands at four, on sterling silver and fine china, with homemade pastries and finger sandwiches. Port and sherry follow in the evening at the bar. None of this is presented as a package, and that is the charm: it is simply what the house does at those hours, and guests fall into it within a day.

Before You Book

This is an adults only inn, so it is not the address for a family trip. Parking is a consideration in this part of the Historic District and worth settling when you reserve. Check in is from mid afternoon and check out late in the morning. Book a named suite for a celebration, a smaller room for a longer stay, and plan to be back in the house by four at least once.