Foxfire vs The Maker: Two Takes on Upscale Bohemian
Foxfire Mountain House and The Maker are often mentioned in the same sentence, and for reasonable reasons. Both are maximalist rather than minimalist, which makes them outliers in an era of Scandi-restrained design hotels. Both are obsessively photographed. Both have a strong theatrical streak. Both attract a similar demographic — couples on a third or fourth anniversary, design-industry travelers, people who treat a hotel room as a set piece rather than a place to sleep.
But they're genuinely different hotels. Here's the comparison.
Related: see our newer guide on Urban Cowboy Catskills vs Foxfire Mountain House.
The one-sentence version
Foxfire is a lived-in forest inn that wants you to stay in. The Maker is a theatrical townhouse complex that wants you to go out.
The settings
Foxfire Mountain House sits on eleven acres in Mount Tremper, deep in the Catskill forest. The approach is a dirt drive through woods. The property is one main house plus outbuildings, a restaurant in a converted barn, a proper outdoor space. There is no town you'd walk to — Mount Tremper is a crossroads, not a destination. You are, functionally, at a country compound.
The Maker is three restored townhouses in the middle of Hudson, on Warren Street at the most commercial part of the strip. The front doors open onto a sidewalk with boutiques and restaurants. You are in a city — a small one, but a city. The hotel itself is eleven rooms; the downstairs bar (Black Bar) is one of Hudson's best rooms; the cafe across the street (Moto) is also theirs.
The design language
Both are layered-maximalist, but the layers come from different universes.
Foxfire is American-country-bohemian: wood, ironwork, vintage textiles, heavy drapes, mounted antlers (real and aesthetic), animal-skin rugs, a palette that runs through bottle green, oxblood, ochre, and cream. The Foxfire reference points are Teddy Roosevelt's Sagamore, an English country house that's been in the family for a century, and a slightly glamorized version of Adirondack camp design.
The Maker is European-continental-theatrical: velvet, silk, gilded frames, layered wallpapers, mirrored walls, a room that looks like a Paris salon, another that looks like a Victorian library, another that looks like a Moroccan riad. Reference points: the Liberal Club in Paris, a Wes Anderson fever dream, every Tony Duquette interior.
If you've been to the Gramercy Park Hotel in its Schrager-era moment, the Maker is in that lineage. Foxfire is not.
The rooms
Foxfire has 11 rooms across the main lodge plus a couple of smaller cabins. Each room is distinct but consistent in palette. Bathtubs are a feature. Rooms run roughly $350–$650 depending on season.
The Maker has 11 rooms across three townhouses. Rooms are strikingly different from each other — the Writer (Victorian library), the Maker (layered salon), the Architect (structural, restrained by Maker standards). The Maker's rooms are the more dramatic objects. Also roughly $400–$700 per night, with anniversary-level suites higher.
The restaurants
Foxfire's restaurant is one of the region's better dinner rooms — the kind of menu that takes seasonality seriously without making a thing of it. The dining room is the social heart of the hotel. Breakfast is strong. If you're staying at Foxfire, you're probably eating most meals there.
The Maker's ground-floor bar (Black Bar) is the food-and-drink center of gravity, but the Maker's real food scene is the entire Warren Street corridor. You'll eat one meal at Black Bar, and two at Kitty's, Le Perche, Lil' Deb's, Fish & Game, Back Bar, or any of the ten serious restaurants within a five-minute walk.
The vibe
Foxfire is inward-turned. You check in, you do not leave. A Foxfire weekend is coming and going from one building, occasionally walking the trails, spending long evenings by the fire, drinking before dinner in the library, reading in your room, doing not very much on purpose.
The Maker is outward-turned. You check in, change clothes, and go walk Warren Street. You come back for a drink at Black Bar, go out to dinner at Kitty's, come back for a nightcap. The hotel is a base for a weekend that happens mostly outside it.
Which is better?
Neither. They serve different weekends.
Pick Foxfire if:
- You want genuine isolation and forest.
- You love staying in rather than going out.
- A hotel restaurant being your primary dinner plan sounds good, not disappointing.
- You prefer warmer, woodsier interiors.
Pick the Maker if:
- You want a walkable downtown.
- You love restaurants and want many options.
- You're doing Hudson as a cultural destination (shops, galleries, Basilica programming).
- You prefer more theatrical, more urban interiors.
The honest tiebreaker
For a first visit to the Hudson Valley, we'd tilt slightly toward the Maker, because Warren Street alone is a weekend's worth of activity and you'll want to actually explore Hudson.
For a fourth or fifth Hudson Valley weekend — you've already done Hudson, you've walked Warren Street, you've eaten at Fish & Game, you want something quieter — Foxfire is the natural progression. It's the hotel you graduate to after you know the region.
How they compare to the other Hudson Valley/Catskills hotels
- Piaule Catskill — another forest hotel, but minimalist rather than maximalist. Foxfire's opposite. Some travelers who find Piaule austere love Foxfire for the warmth. Some who find Foxfire fussy love Piaule for the clarity.
- Rivertown Lodge — the restrained Hudson hotel, on Warren Street three blocks from the Maker. Rivertown is the Maker's quieter, more Shaker-palette neighbor.
- Troutbeck — another forest compound, warmer and more literary than Foxfire, less theatrical than the Maker. A third-way option if you love both but want something a degree more serious.
- Urban Cowboy Catskills — Nashville-in-the-Catskills maximalism; a kind of rowdier cousin to Foxfire.