Luxury Hotels Atlas / Places / United States / North Adams / Tourists
Tourists
North Adams, Massachusetts, United States · Independent · High Luxury
Wilco bassist John Stirratt co-founded this 48-room house in 2018 on the bones of the 1962 Redwood Motel, a Route 2 motor lodge at the edge of North Adams. Reed Hilderbrand strung a 220-foot suspension bridge over the Hoosic; MICHELIN Two Keys followed in 2025. The land was mill, tannery, and treatment plant before it was a motel. MASS MoCA is three miles down the river.
- 48 rooms
- Opened 2018
- Neighborhood: Blackinton Historic District
- Architect: Hank Scollard
- Interiors: Julie Pearson
About Tourists
- Tourists in North Adams was built in 2018 on the foundation of the 1962 Redwood Motel, reviving the Route 2 roadside motor-lodge tradition of the postwar Berkshires.
- Co-founded by Wilco bassist John Stirratt, the 48-room hotel features a 220-foot suspension bridge over the Hoosic River designed by landscape firm Reed Hilderbrand.
- Tourists earned MICHELIN Two Keys recognition in 2025, an unusual distinction for a hotel built on a former industrial mill and tannery site.
History
The site where Tourists stands along Route 2 at the edge of North Adams has a layered industrial history that predates the postwar roadside motel that became its most recent structure before the current hotel. The land overlooking the Hoosic River was once the site of intense manufacturing activity: a hydro-powered textile mill drew on the river's current, followed by a leather tannery, factory and storage buildings, and eventually a sewer water treatment plant. North Adams itself was a manufacturing center through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, its mills and factories drawing workers from across New England and beyond before the postwar decline of American industrial production left the city economically diminished.
The postwar roadside motor lodge was itself a product of the Route 2 tourist culture that developed as automobile travel opened the Berkshires to visitors from Boston and New York. The lodge sat between the town and the surrounding forest, flanked by the Hoosic River, in a position that was both accessible and genuinely removed from urban noise.
Tourists was conceived by partners Eric Bahn and John Stirratt, who acquired the former motel property and undertook a complete transformation in collaboration with landscape firm Reed Hilderbrand, whose design approach honors the site's layered history while orienting the 48-room hotel firmly toward the cultural landscape that now defines North Adams: Mass MoCA, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, opened in 1999 in a vast former factory complex nearby and transformed the city into one of the country's most visited contemporary art destinations. The Clark Art Institute sits three miles to the south in Williamstown. Tourists occupies the geographical and cultural corridor between these two institutions, with a warm restaurant serving meals from seasonal and foraged ingredients, a saltwater outdoor pool in a courtyard flanked by forest, and rooms with forest-view decks and one celebrated example with an open-air shower. The MICHELIN Guide awarded Tourists Two Keys in 2025.
Restaurants and bars
- The Airport Rooms — Restaurant
- Lodge — Restaurant
Experiences
- Sing for Your Slumber — Signature live music series on property. All are welcome.
- Hikes, yoga, crafts and more on the 80-acre forest campus — Hikes, yoga, crafts and more on our 80-acre forest campus.
Amenities
- Pool
- Pet-friendly
Awards
- MICHELIN Two Keys (2026)
Open Tourists in the atlas for live weekend rates, photos, and the full folio.