Nantucket’s Newest Boutique Hotel Is a Delightful Mix of Vintage and Botanical Details

It’s a delicate process to remake a piece of history. It’s often more challenging to restore an old structure than to build anew, and to replicate the aura that comes with a building that’s welcomed visitors for nearly 200 years—like the recently opened boutique hotel Life House Nantucket.

Life House is the newest chapter of the island’s oldest continually operating hotel, an 1830s mansion that has been carefully revamped to "celebrate the coastal Federal-style architecture and pay homage to the island flora," says Rami Zeidan, founder and CEO of Life House. 

"Historic buildings have a lot of nuances," notes Zeidan. "In this particular house, every room is different. You can’t just design one thing and replicate it across every room. Each room has its own unique qualities."

But that varied, historic character is part of the attraction for Life House, which currently has three other locations in Miami, the first of which opened in the Little Havana neighborhood in 2019. These buildings come with stories, and Life House aims to honor them.

In Nantucket, the landscape plays a significant role in the design, in part because of the island’s rich history of conservation, but also because native flora has been part of the building’s character for decades. The previous innkeepers, who ran the hotel for 35 years, named each of the guest rooms after local foliage and flowers—black dahlia, white narcissus, sweet pea, and thistle, to name a few. The original brass room name plates are now used in the custom key cabinet used at check-in.