The Palms Hotel

Two Williams Mansions, Joined Into One Hotel

Number 820 and number 822 White Street went up around 1880 as separate houses for the Williams family, built with the kind of budget that shows in the joinery. They spent decades as a boarding house, then as apartments, then as a guesthouse, and became a hotel under the current name in the 1990s. The two buildings now work as one property of thirty-one rooms, verandas front and back, a garden with a pool in it and a bar that opens in the afternoon. The result sits closer to a large guesthouse than to a hotel, which is exactly why people book it.

Why It Works

The building is the argument. Key West has plenty of nineteenth-century houses and not many of them let you sleep inside one at this scale, with a pool and a bar attached. The second reason is the street. White Street is where the island lives rather than where it performs, and staying on it changes the texture of a trip: quieter mornings, a walk to the water at the far end, and the tourist centre still close enough to reach on a bike in minutes. It is the version of Key West that repeat visitors tend to choose.

Why This Location

White Street runs from the old town down to the Atlantic and ends at the White Street Pier, with Higgs Beach and the gardens inside the West Martello Tower beside it. That stretch is a fifteen-minute walk or a five-minute bicycle ride from the hotel, and it is where locals swim. In the other direction, the Key West Cemetery, Duval Street and the Hemingway Home are all within a short ride. The immediate neighbourhood is galleries, small kitchens and clapboard houses rather than bars, which is the trade you are making and, in our view, the right one.

Fast Facts

• Price: €€

• Vibe: Historic, residential, guesthouse-scaled

• Rooms: Thirty-one across the two houses, from Petite Queen up to the Honeymoon Suite, the Palms Villa, the Cottage Suite and a bi-level loft

• Best For: Couples, repeat visitors who know Duval already, travellers with a dog, small families in the suites

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The heated saltwater pool in the garden, open from early morning to late evening

• Dining: No restaurant; a happy hour bar runs through the afternoon, and White Street’s kitchens are the neighbourhood answer for dinner

• Amenities: Heated saltwater pool, afternoon bar, concierge, bicycle rentals, pets welcome

• Attractions: Higgs Beach and the White Street Pier at the end of the street, the West Martello Tower gardens beside them, Key West Cemetery, Duval Street and the Ernest Hemingway Home a short ride west

Eleven Shapes of Room, and They Are Not Equivalent

The two houses produce an unusually long list of categories, from a Petite Queen suited to one person travelling light up to a bi-level loft and the Palms Villa, with a Honeymoon Suite, a Mini Suite and a Cottage Suite in between. Capacity ranges from two to five, which makes the property more flexible for a small family than its guesthouse scale suggests. Second-floor rooms carry the ceiling height and the veranda access. Be specific when you book: in a converted house, the difference between two categories is the difference between two buildings.

The Garden, the Pool and the Afternoon Bar

The garden is the centre of the property. The pool is saltwater and heated, which extends its useful season well past what visitors expect of a Florida winter, and it opens early and closes late. The bar runs a long happy hour in the middle of the afternoon, which is when the hotel feels most like a guesthouse: guests back from the beach, bikes against the fence, nobody in a hurry. There is no restaurant, and none is needed given what is within walking distance.

Before You Book

Take a bicycle. The hotel rents them and the geography of this address only makes sense on two wheels, with the beach one way and the old town the other. Dogs are welcome, worth confirming at reservation. The pool is seasonal in its hours, so check if you are travelling in the cooler months. And if you want the veranda, say so: it is not a category, it is a question of which room in which house.