Middlebury Inn: Nearly Two Centuries of Hospitality on the Village Green

Some hotels have history. The Middlebury Inn has more history than most museums. Standing over the village green at 14 Court Square in the heart of Middlebury, it has welcomed guests continuously since 1827, one of the longest runs of any hotel in the country. An era of hoop skirts once swept its wide hallways, which were built spacious on purpose so ladies could maneuver with grace. Today the rooms mix Federalist architecture with WiFi and robes, and the front porch still looks out on one of Vermont's prettiest town centers.

See the full listing at Middlebury Inn. The inn opened in 1827 as the Vermont Hotel, a brick public house built for stagecoach travelers at the junction of roads to Boston, Montreal, and Troy. It became the Addison House in 1852 and took its current name in 1925. Next door, the stately Porter Mansion, built in 1825, adds rooms with an elegantly curved staircase and intricate moldings. The inn now totals 71 guestrooms across the main building, the mansion, and two annexes. The brick block still shows its Federalist bones: trapezoidal marble lintels, a columned ballroom with a coved ceiling, and layers of history from an 1897 addition to a 1927 Colonial Revival remodeling.

The inn's dining room, Morgan's Tavern, is what the Montreal Gazette once called arguably the town's number one gathering place for locals and visitors, serving New England fare built on Vermont farm ingredients. It serves breakfast, lunch, dinner, and Sunday brunch, with alfresco dining on the veranda in season. The lobby keeps coffee on for early risers, and the original inn dining room, now the Founder's Room, hosts weddings and celebrations. This is a grand hotel that behaves like a village inn, which is exactly why people keep coming back.

Location is the Middlebury Inn's superpower. Step outside and you are on the village green in downtown Middlebury, surrounded by shops, galleries, and more than ten restaurants. The inn sits 35 miles south of Burlington and minutes from Middlebury College, the Mahaney Center for the Arts, the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History, the country's oldest community-based museum, and the falls of Otter Creek. Guests have watched this same green change with the seasons for nearly two hundred years.

The inn is also the natural base camp for the Middlebury College Snow Bowl, the ski area that gives this region its winter pulse. The Snow Bowl sits at 6886 Route 125 in Hancock, 13 miles east of town on the north slope of Worth Mountain near Middlebury Gap, on land willed to the college back in 1915. Its first trails were cut in 1934, making it one of the oldest ski areas in Vermont, and its 1938 log-cabin lodge is said to be the oldest standing base lodge in the nation. A modern lodge, the Neil Starr Shelter, was completed in 1962 and renovated in 2004.

The Snow Bowl is a different animal from the big resorts: 17 trails and 3 lifts across more than 600 acres, with about 200 inches of natural snow a year and a famous ungroomed eastern face locals call the backside. Snowmaking covers nearly half the trails, including most terrain served by the Worth Mountain and Sheehan chairlifts, while the backside runs mainly on natural snow via the Bailey Falls triple. In 2006 it became the first carbon-neutral ski area in the United States. It is college-owned, community-loved, and blissfully free of mega resort sprawl. After skiing, the inn's tavern and Middlebury's restaurants are waiting back in town.

A sample weekend writes itself. Ski the Bowl on Saturday, then tour the Sheldon Museum and the Middlebury College Museum of Art, browse the Vermont Book Shop, which the inn notes was a favorite of Robert Frost, and walk the quiet village green at dusk. In summer, trade the skis for Lake Dunmore and Branbury State Park, the UVM Morgan Horse Farm, and hiking in the Green Mountain National Forest. The Robert Frost Interpretive Trail on Route 125 in Ripton makes a fine companion to a Snow Bowl day trip.

Practical notes: the inn is at 14 Court Square, Middlebury, VT 05753, and the front desk can be reached at 802-388-4961. On-site parking is free, every room includes WiFi and HDTV, and everything downtown is walkable. In ski season, book ahead, since college weekends and holiday weeks fill the town. The Snow Bowl is about 13 miles east on Route 125, an easy morning drive, and Burlington International Airport is about 35 miles and 45 minutes to the north.

The inn's Historic Middlebury Package is a tidy way to do the town properly: it bundles accommodations with two tickets to the Henry Sheldon Museum, a historical walking tour book, and daily breakfast for two at Morgan's Tavern. Note the Sheldon Museum keeps limited hours, Tuesday through Saturday, 10 to 4, so plan accordingly. It is the kind of thoughtfully designed package that turns a quick overnight into a real visit.

After nearly two centuries, the Middlebury Inn remains what it has always been: the front porch of Middlebury. Come for the Snow Bowl's old-school skiing, stay for the village green at dusk, and sleep in a building that has watched two hundred years of Vermont go by outside its windows. Stagecoaches gave way to cars, and skiers followed the students, but the welcome never changed. Some hotels sell rooms. This one sells continuity.