The hotel

Built 1832. Many lives.

The building at 301 Chestnut has done almost every job a Philadelphia address can do. We’re the latest tenant — and we try to act like it.

301 Chestnut façade — the Society Hill Hotel building from the street

The building’s CV

Before it was a hotel, it was several other things.

Originally built as a longshoremen’s house in 1832, the building has spent nearly two centuries changing jobs. Oyster cellar. Recruiting station in the Civil War. Steamship ticket office. Printing press. Bank. Flophouse. And, eventually, a hotel.

A devastating fire closed the hotel in the early 2020s. New ownership acquired the property, rebuilt it room by room, and reopened in the spring of 2024. The building’s bones are older than almost anything around it; the operation is new.

01Oyster cellar
02Civil War recruiting station
03Railroad & steamship ticket office
04Cigar store
05Rubber stamp office
06Printing press
07Bank
08Flophouse

301 Chestnut through time — two 19th-century architectural drawings and a mid-century black-and-white photograph of the building

301 Chestnut, through three centuries — as drawn, as photographed, as it stands.