Luxury Hotels Atlas / Places / United States / Watch Hill / Ocean House
Ocean House
Watch Hill, Rhode Island, United States · Independent · Grand Luxury
George M. Nash built the original Ocean House in 1868, and his father Jonathan had been Watch Hill's lighthouse keeper and the first local to take in seasonal boarders. The Victorian hotel closed in 2003 and was rebuilt as a replica by Centerbrook Architects, reopening in 2010 with 49 rooms. It is now Rhode Island's only Forbes Five-Star and AAA Five Diamond hotel, and its spa and COAST restaurant have each earned Forbes Five-Star recognition.
- 49 rooms
- Opened 1868
- Neighborhood: Westerly
- Rooms from 375 sq ft (35 m²)
- Architect: Centerbrook Architects
About Ocean House
- The original Ocean House was built in 1867-1868 for George M. Nash, whose father had been Watch Hill's lighthouse keeper and the first local to take in seasonal boarders.
- The hotel closed in 2003, and a rebuilt replica designed by Centerbrook Architects reopened in 2010 with 49 guest rooms.
- The resort holds Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star and AAA Five Diamond ratings and appeared on Conde Nast Traveler's Gold List.
- Entry-level rooms start at 375 sq ft (35 m²).
History
The original Ocean House was built for George M. Nash in 1867 and 1868 — Nash's father, Jonathan, had been Watch Hill's lighthouse keeper and the first local to take in seasonal boarders, and the son turned that modest hospitality tradition into something altogether grander. The hotel rose on a bluff at 59 Bluff Avenue in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, a small peninsula at the southwestern corner of the state where Block Island Sound meets the Atlantic, and where wealthy northeasterners had been arriving by steamboat and later by rail to spend their summers since the 1840s. Nash's building was a complexly massed Victorian clapboard structure with mansard roofs and modillion cornices — a design that announced itself as a proper resort hotel rather than a boardinghouse enlarged beyond its ambitions.
The hotel was expanded significantly in 1903, when parallel wings were added together with a Colonial Revival veranda and a bow-front entrance portico with colossal Corinthian columns. By the early years of the twentieth century Ocean House had become the quintessential summer address for families who could afford the luxury of seasonal travel, a gathering place whose warm yellow façade had become a landmark visible to mariners as well as guests arriving by road. In 1916 the hotel achieved a different kind of celebrity when it served as the principal location for American Aristocracy, a silent film starring Douglas Fairbanks — one of the era's biggest attractions — that was shot on the Rhode Island coast and distributed nationally.
For the next several decades Ocean House welcomed guests through the ordinary upheavals of resort life: storms, the occasional hurricane, changes in travel fashion, and the gradual thinning of the grand-hotel economy that had sustained properties like it across New England. Of the nine hotels operating in Watch Hill in 1938, Ocean House was one of two that survived the devastating hurricane of that year. The Miller family owned the property from 1938 forward and kept it operating across the second half of the twentieth century, though by the turn of the millennium the building's condition had deteriorated significantly.
In 2003, with the hotel deemed structurally unsound and in violation of nearly all applicable building and safety codes, Ocean House closed after 135 years of continuous seasonal operation. The site was purchased in 2004 by a developer who intended to demolish the hotel and build five luxury houses on the eleven oceanfront acres — a plan that provoked a preservation campaign among Watch Hill's summer community. The Royce family, led by long-time Watch Hill resident Charles Royce, purchased the property and committed to saving the hotel's character even if not its physical fabric.
Centerbrook Architects was engaged in 2006 and determined that restoration of the original structure was not physically or financially feasible. The decision was made instead to faithfully replicate the building as it had appeared circa 1908, at its architectural apex — demolishing the deteriorated structure but harvesting more than five thousand salvageable artifacts and furnishing elements, including the reception desk, the main lobby fireplace (disassembled stone by stone), the ornamented oak elevator cab, a telephone booth dating to 1886, mahogany balustrades, fan-light doors, and the iconic Ocean House sign. Two new wings replaced a mid-twentieth-century addition of unfortunate proportions, extending the hotel into a full-service year-round resort.
The rebuilt Ocean House reopened in 2010. Its 247 windows occupy the same positions as the originals. The property holds the distinction of being Rhode Island's only Forbes Five-Star and AAA Five Diamond hotel, and its spa and COAST restaurant have each earned Forbes Five-Star recognition independently, making Ocean House one of roughly fourteen resorts in the world to hold a triple Forbes Five-Star designation. The croquet court, the bluff lawn, and the yellow façade visible from the water carry the resort's Victorian lineage forward into the present with a fidelity that the original George Nash, lighthouse-keeper's son turned hotelier, would likely have appreciated.
The setting
5 miles from Route 1. 14 miles from Mystic Seaport.
Restaurants and bars
- Secret Garden Champagne Bar — Bar · Bar
- The Bistro — Restaurant
- Verandah Raw Bar — Restaurant
- Sora - Sushi on Seaside Terrace — Restaurant
- COAST — Restaurant · American
Amenities
- Spa
- Indoor pool
- Sauna
- Hot tub
- Fitness center
- Yoga
- Private beach
- Pet-friendly
Awards
- AAA Five Diamond (2026)
- Forbes Travel Guide Five-Star (2026)
- Condé Nast Traveler Gold List (2023)
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