The 21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati doubles as a modern art museum.

LAKESIDE, Ohio – Hotel Lakeside celebrated its 150th birthday this month, with cake and ice cream overlooking the Lake Erie shore about 80 miles west of Cleveland.

The celebration almost didn’t happen.

Hotel Lakeside celebrated its 150th birthday this month.

The hotel, in a state of disrepair in the 1970s, was nearly razed in place of a more contemporary version. Instead, a group of motivated preservationists stepped in to help save the structure.

Fast forward 50 years to downtown Cleveland’s newest hotel, the Fidelity, which opened earlier this year in the century-old Baker Building on East 6th Street, a stunning remake of a former office building.

Hotel Breakers on the Cedar Point Beach.

Ohio is home to dozens of historic hotels – in large cities, small towns, even rural areas.

Some were built as hotels, others were created from buildings designed for other purposes. Some offer luxurious getaways, others are geared to families.

The oldest of the bunch is the Golden Lamb, which opened in 1803 in Lebanon. The youngest: Punderson Manor, a state park lodge in Geauga County, which was built starting in 1925 but wasn’t finished until 1948.

True, some of the guest rooms may be a little oddly shaped. But that’s why we love these spaces – a surprise detail around every corner.

These places are dissimilar in many ways, but they’re alike in this one: They all offer a history all their own.

Here are 22 of the most historic and impressive, starting in Cleveland and traveling south.

Punderson Manor Lodge in Geauga County.

Note: We’ve omitted bed and breakfast inns from the list, as there are simply too many in historic homes to include.

One of two ballrooms at Cleveland's Tudor Arms Hotel.

The Fidelity opened in January in the downtown entertainment district once known as the Short Vincent, at Vincent Avenue between East 6th and East 9th. The hotel features 97 rooms, including 11 suites, plus the Club Room restaurant, a lobby decked out like a comfortable living room and lots of local artwork.

The Mariemont Inn in downtown Mariemont, east of Cincinnati.

The grand dame of Cleveland’s historic hotels, Hotel Cleveland opened in 1918 on downtown’s Public Square with 1,000 rooms. Fast forward more than 100 years and what’s old is new again. After an $80 million renovation, the former Cleveland Renaissance Hotel was renamed Hotel Cleveland in 2024, with 491 renovated rooms, plus two restaurants, a lobby bar and 60,000 square feet of meeting space.

Built in 1931, Cleveland's Board of Education Building was converted into a Drury hotel in 2016.

The Kimpton Schofield Hotel in downtown Cleveland.

In 2001, Hyatt opened its 293-room Hyatt Cleveland Regency at the Arcade inside the city’s stunning Victorian-era Arcade, which connects Superior and Euclid avenues downtown.

Many of the rooms here overlook the historic, five-story arcade, built in 1890 and financed by John D. Rockefeller. It was the city’s first building listed on the National Register of Historic Places, in 1975.

The Schofield, named after Cleveland architect Levi Scofield, opened in 2016 at the busy corner of East 9th Street and Euclid Avenue. The hotel, with 122 rooms, is located in a century-old, 14-story former office building – with a gorgeous brick and terra cotta exterior that had been covered up by a steel façade since the late 1960s.

The Drury Plaza offers an education in historic preservation. The 189-room hotel opened in 2016 inside the former Cleveland Board of Education Building, built in 1931.

Designed by the prominent architecture firm Walker and Weeks, the building was part of the city’s original Group Plan, the early 20th-century downtown development that included the Mall, Cleveland City Hall, Public Auditorium and other public buildings.

The renovation retained many historic details, including Depression-era murals on the walls, old school display cases and more.

The Tudor Arms, a magnificent 12-story Gothic Revival structure east of downtown Cleveland, opened in 1933 as the swanky Cleveland Club. It’s had several incarnations since then – as a hotel, college dorms, a government job-training center.

In 2011, it was transformed into a high-end hotel again – with gorgeous public spaces, including two stunning ballrooms. It’s located at 10660 Carnegie Ave., in the heart of the Cleveland Clinic campus.

The Glidden House was built in 1909 as a home for the family of Francis K. Glidden, president of the Glidden Paint Co. and son of company founder Francis H. Glidden. In 1953, it was sold to nearby Case Western Reserve University, and it was used by both the psychology department and the law school.

Hyatt Regency at the Arcade in downtown Cleveland.

In 1989, it opened as a 60-room boutique hotel in the heart of Cleveland’s University Circle cultural district. It’s a favorite wedding location for CWRU grads — and many others.

Punderson, an Ohio State Park lodge, is another grand mansion that is open to the public for overnight stays. The Tudor-style home was built starting in 1925 by Detroit businessman Karl Long, who lost his fortune the Great Depression. The property, in Geauga County, was bought by the state in 1948 and opened as a small hotel eight years later.

One of the first things you see in Maker restaurant is the dramatic bar with its emerald crystal chandelier.

Today, Punderson features 31 well-appointed rooms, surrounded by 740 acres of state parkland, including a golf course, hiking trails, boating, a swimming lake and more.

Cedar Point’s Hotel Breakers, steps from Lake Erie, first opened in 1905, when most guests arrived by boat.

The car is the preferred mode of transportation to the resort these days, with 669 guests rooms and several nostalgic public spaces. But the best part of this resort is still its terrific location – on a mile-long stretch of sandy beach and adjacent to one of the world’s best amusement parks.

The hotel, celebrating its 150th birthday in 2025, was one of the first structures built in Lakeside, a Chautauqua community founded in 1873. The lakefront hotel has been enlarged, restored and updated over the years, but retains its old-fashioned charm and its signature screened front porch, overlooking the lake. It closes for the season in early September.

Built in 1812, the Buxton Inn has operated as a tavern and inn almost continuously for more than 200 years. Its 25 overnight rooms are spread across the main house and four adjacent historic homes. The Buxton Inn is also known for its paranormal activity.

The Granville Inn, around the corner from the Buxton Inn, was built in 1924 on the site of the old Granville Female College; local sandstone was quarried for its construction. The 39-room inn was purchased in 2013 by nearby Denison University.

The Lafayette, at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers in lovely Marietta, was built in 1918 and named after Marquis de Lafayette, who made a visit to the city in 1825. The hotel features 77 rooms, many with river views. The Lafayette, too, is reportedly haunted.

The Golden Lamb, Ohio’s oldest continually operating business, dates back to 1803, when Lebanon was a popular stagecoach stop halfway between Cincinnati and the National Road (U.S. 40).

Twelve presidents have stayed here, as did Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and plenty of others. You can too: The inn offers 18 overnight rooms, with antique furnishings combined with modern amenities. The Golden Lamb Restaurant is worth a stop, too.

The 188-room Westin Columbus was originally called the Great Southern Fireproof Hotel and Opera House, built in 1897, with nonflammable materials, after a series of high-profile hotel fires in town. The stately, all-brick structure also is home to the historic Southern Theatre.

The hotel, at the corner of High and Main streets in downtown Columbus, fell on hard times in the 1960s and 1970s, when there was talk of turning it into an apartment complex. It became a Westin in 1996.

The 149-room Hotel LeVeque occupies 10 floors in the LeVeque Tower, built in 1927 in downtown Columbus during the golden era of the skyscraper. It opened in 2017, after a years-long restoration. The hotel has embraced a celestial theme, with stars shooting across the lobby ceiling every the evening and a telescopes in the guest rooms.

This cool space in downtown Cincinnati is a combination hotel and art museum. The hotel’s first two floors double as a gallery of contemporary art (21c stands for 21st century). Built in 1912 as the Metropole Hotel, the building was converted to low-income apartments in the 1970s. After a top-to-bottom renovation, the hotel opened in 2012.

The Mariemont Inn was originally intended as the private guesthouse for Mary Emery, founder of the village of Mariemont, one of Ohio’s first planned communities. In 1929, it opened as the Mariemont Inn, a centerpiece of the village, just east of Cincinnati. The entire village was named a National Historic Landmark in 2006.

The Tudor-style inn features 45 guestrooms and operates under the Best Western flag.

The Queen City’s grand dame of historic hotels, the Netherland Plaza opened in 1931, part of Carew Tower, with high-speed elevators, seven restaurants and 800 modern rooms.

Today, the room number is down to 561, although original Art Deco elegance remains: in the Hall of Mirrors, modeled after the Palace of Versailles; The 1931, a fine-dining restaurant; and throughout the public spaces.

The Netherland Plaza is a charter member of Historic Hotels of America.

Opened in 1882, the Cincinnatian, originally called the Palace Hotel, was designed in the style of a grand hotel of the19th century by architect Samuel Hannaford, who also designed Cincinnati’s Music Hall.

The 146-room hotel – which became the Cincinnatian in the 1950s — fell into disrepair in the 1960s and 1970s and was slated to be torn down and turned into a parking garage. Instead, it was saved, closed for several years of renovation, and reopened in 1987.

The 323-room Renaissance is housed in the former Union Savings Bank and Trust, built in 1901 and designed by famed Chicago architect Daniel Burnham. When it opened, the building was Ohio’s tallest, at 239 feet high. The office building, vacant for several years, was purchased out of foreclosure in 2013 and reopened two years later as the elegant Renaissance.

The Lytle Park Hotel in Cincinnati was named the top hotel in Ohio this year by U.S. News and World Report. The 106-room hotel, in the former 1909-era Anna Louise Inn, features a four-season rooftop bar offering views of downtown Cincinnati and the Ohio River. It’s located across the street from the Taft Museum of Art and within walking distance of numerous downtown attractions.

Also noteworthy: Blu-Tique Hotel, Akron; Ariel Broadway Hotel, Lorain; St. Paul Hotel, Wooster; Hotel Millersburg, Millersburg; Residence Inn and Holiday Inn Express, both in downtown Cleveland; Residence Inn, Columbus; Residence Inn, Cincinnati; Symphony Hotel, Cincinnati; Kinley Cincinnati Downtown.