The Best Independent Hotels Within 3 Hours of NYC

Leave the city after work on a Friday, and by dinner you can be somewhere else entirely — a farmhouse in the Catskills, a converted schoolhouse, a nine-room inn with a Michelin Key. The Northeast within a three-hour drive of Manhattan has more good independent hotels per square mile than anywhere in the country. The problem has always been sorting them.

So we ranked them. Every independent hotel within about a three-hour drive of the city, ordered by the Le Hotelist Score — the full list is here, and it updates weekly. This is the top of it, with a few words on each.

Related: see our newer guide on The Quietest Independent Hotels in America.

The ones scoring highest right now

The Henson — Windham, NY (2h30). A 1918 hotel taken to the studs by the team behind Contra and Wildair, reopened in 2024 with a kitchen that earned a Michelin Key in its first year. The highest overall score on our list, from anywhere. Book the restaurant when you book the room.

The Leeway — Mount Tremper, NY (2h20). Cabin-style suites on six acres along the Esopus Creek. Full kitchens, private decks, the water out the back door. The value pick at the top of the list.

Camptown — Leeds, NY (2h20). New-build cabins and lodge rooms from the people who run Rivertown Lodge in Hudson. Michelin Key. One of the highest Design scores in the Catskills.

Granville House — Great Barrington, MA (2h40). Five rooms, a Michelin Key, run by former New York restaurant managers in a house that looks like it's from a movie. Small enough that they know who's in which room.

Doctor Sax House — Lenox, MA (2h30). An 1874 building that was a Prohibition speakeasy, now nine rooms with a café and cocktail bar on the ground floor. The Berkshires pick for people who want a scene without leaving the building.

The Bend — Phoenicia, NY (2h15). Five adults-only micro-suites on the river. The highest Quiet score in the country. Self-check-in, no front desk, nobody to talk to unless you want to.

The published list also runs through the Hudson Valley anchors — Piaule, Inness, Troutbeck, Scribner's, Hotel Kinsley — and the coastal side, the North Fork and the quieter end of the Hamptons.

How to pick

The drive times matter less than they look — anywhere on this list is a Friday-evening trip. What separates them is what you want the weekend to be:

• Dinner is the point: The Henson, Granville House, Camptown — all Michelin Keys within three hours.
• You want to disappear: The Bend, or the quiet list more broadly.
• Design pilgrimage: Piaule, Inness, and the rest.
• Not sure: tell us and we'll match you.

Notes on the season

• Fall books first. Late September through mid-October, the Hudson Valley and Berkshires sell out weeks ahead. Book by August or go on a weekday.
• Winter is quiet and cheap, and the good hotels lean into it — fireplaces, ski access, half the summer rate.
• Spring is the sleeper. May, before the crowds, everything green.

The full ranked list — best hotels within 3 hours of NYC → · Or tell us what you're after →