The Beach Avenue oceanfront hotel built in 1894 as the Colonial Hotel and doubled by 1905, a five-storey Second Empire frame with the city's most photographed facade, seventy-odd rooms each laid out differently inside the original L-plan envelope.
"The facade is the picture on every Cape May postcard. The rooms are odd, no two alike, and that is the right reason to stay here, the boardwalk is across Beach Avenue and the front porch faces the Atlantic at the most central point on the strand."
The Inn of Cape May was built between 1894 and 1895 by the Church Brothers, a local development partnership, as the Colonial Hotel, the second wave of post-1878-fire Cape May hotel building. The original section was a modest cottage-style boarding house, rectangular in plan, with the central entry hall and double-loaded room layout that still survives. By 1905 the Church Brothers had effectively doubled the building with a wing projecting south along Ocean Street, producing the present L-shaped footprint that wraps around the large front lawn fronting Beach Avenue. The architecture is fundamentally Second Empire (the mansard roof, the dormer windows, the heavy bracketed cornice), with details borrowed from several adjacent styles, the Carpenter Gothic veranda details and the Italianate window proportions, which is itself characteristic of the Cape May high-Victorian moment.
The Inn of Cape May is a key contributing structure in the Cape May National Historic Landmark District, the only U.S. city with that full designation, and is on both the New Jersey and the National Register of Historic Places independently of the district listing. The five-storey scale, the location at the foot of Ocean Street directly opposite the boardwalk, and the L-plan that creates the front lawn are the property's three defining features and the reasons the facade appears on essentially every published Cape May postcard from the 1900s through the present day.
Inside, the seventy-plus rooms are the historic Cape May puzzle: every room is a slightly different shape, every room a slightly different size, every room a slightly different view. The original 1894 rooms in the main block are larger and run to traditional double-height ceilings; the 1905 wing rooms are more compact but in many cases have the better ocean angle; the top-floor rooms under the mansard catch the longest views (across the boardwalk, the beach, and out to the Atlantic) but the lowest ceilings. All rooms are air-conditioned, all have private bathrooms, all have premium linens and the period furniture the property has invested in over three rounds of restoration. The hotel runs Aleathea's Restaurant on the ground floor as its dining room, with a long front porch open to non-guests for afternoon drinks and the city's best position to watch the boardwalk traffic pass.
The position is the Inn's central proposition. The address is the foot of Ocean Street, the centre of the Cape May strand, the boardwalk is twenty paces from the front porch, the beach is one short hop further, and the Washington Street Mall is three blocks inland. Congress Hall is one block west; the Marquis de Lafayette is two blocks east; the Cape May Lighthouse is a twelve-minute drive south and the ferry terminal is twelve minutes north. For families who want the historic-district experience but want to walk barefoot to the beach in the morning and the Mall in the afternoon, the Inn of Cape May is the right answer.
For a Cape May family week the Inn is the operational answer: the beach is across Beach Avenue, the boardwalk is across the front lawn, the pool is on the property, the connecting room configurations on the upper floors handle three- and four-person groups, and Aleathea's covers the family-friendly meals without the need to leave the building. Book the larger 1894 main-block rooms for groups of four.
An Inn of Cape May anniversary booking is a specific request: the top-floor mansard rooms with the longest Atlantic view, with dinner at Aleathea's and the after-dinner drinks on the front porch as the boardwalk lights come on. The hotel will hold a porch table on request for arriving couples and the position at the foot of Ocean Street puts the entire historic district within a five-minute walk.
Cape May honeymoons that want the oceanfront option rather than the inland B&B option run through the Inn first. The combination of the photogenic facade, the boardwalk-at-the-door position, the top-floor ocean-view rooms, and the lower price point versus the Boardwalk's larger competitors makes it the most flexible romantic option in the historic district. The corner mansard rooms (ask for the south or southeast exposures) are the honeymoon booking.
7 Ocean Street at Beach Avenue
Cape May, NJ 08204
United States
Directly opposite the boardwalk; one block to Washington Street Mall; centre of the historic district strand
70+ rooms (no two alike)
Standard rooms from $245/night
Ocean-angle rooms from $389/night
Top-floor mansard rooms from $469/night
Suites from $595/night
Check-in: 4:00 PM
Check-out: 11:00 AM
Built 1894-1905
National Historic Landmark District
Aleathea's Restaurant & Front Porch Bar
Outdoor pool
Oceanfront on Beach Avenue
Direct boardwalk access
Free WiFi throughout
Pet-friendly (select rooms)
Bicycle rentals on site
From $245/night. Ocean-view rooms book three to four months ahead for July and August weekends, with peak Independence Day and Labor Day weekends often gone six months out.
Book This Hotel →The 1816 grand hotel facing the ocean, the founding piece of Cape May, fully restored after the 1995 closure.
Twenty-four rooms above the Ebbitt Room, the most adult of Cape May's historic-district small hotels.
Thirty-three rooms across four restored Victorian houses, the largest serious B&B in the historic district.