The Black Sheep Inn & Spa

The Black Sheep Inn & Spa occupies an 1859 octagonal house on a hillside above Hammondsport, New York, at the south end of Keuka Lake — seven rooms, a small spa, and the particular distinction of being one of the few preserved octagon houses in the country still doing useful work. If the Finger Lakes wine country has a properly eccentric inn, this is it.

The octagon house was a brief mid-nineteenth-century American architectural craze — Orson Squire Fowler argued the eight-sided plan was healthier and more efficient — and the survivors of the trend are now mostly museum pieces. The Black Sheep is a working inn in one of them, run as a wine-country B&B without sanding off the building's strangeness.

The setting

Hammondsport sits at the southern tip of Keuka Lake, the Y-shaped Finger Lake that anchors a smaller and quieter wine region than Cayuga or Seneca. The village square is small, walkable, and has the kind of bookstore-and-coffee-shop infrastructure you'd expect. The Black Sheep is on a rise just outside the village proper, with views down toward the lake.

The Keuka Lake Wine Trail runs from here — Dr. Konstantin Frank, Heron Hill, Bully Hill, and Pleasant Valley are within fifteen minutes. Watkins Glen is forty minutes east; Corning (and the Corning Museum of Glass) is half an hour south; Ithaca is an hour east.

The building

An 1859 octagonal house — eight-sided in plan, with the original cupola intact, set on a stone foundation. The exterior is clapboard with deep eaves and the original window pattern; the interior preserves the unusual radial plan, where rooms wedge out from a central core. Materials are clapboard, plaster, painted millwork, and a velvet-and-vintage decor language that leans theatrical without tipping into camp.

Public spaces include a central parlor, a dining room, a sun porch, and the cupola (worth the climb).

The rooms

Seven guest rooms across the main house, each one shaped by the octagonal plan — meaning every room is a different angled wedge with its own quirks. Beds are four-poster or canopied; bathrooms are private and renovated; decor is bohemian-Victorian without slipping into clutter. The room categories vary; ask for the one with the cupola access or the larger lake-side wedge.

Food & drink

A hot breakfast is included, served in the dining room or on the sun porch. There's a small evening wine reception featuring local Finger Lakes producers. No full dinner restaurant; Hammondsport village has a few decent options and the wineries themselves do longer tasting flights with food.

On the property

A small inn with a spa — the unusual amenity for an inn at this scale.

• Hot breakfast included
• Spa with treatments and small wellness program
• Evening wine reception
• Walking-distance to Hammondsport village square
• Open year-round; the wine and foliage seasons are peak

Who it's for

• Wine-country travelers who want a real inn rather than a chain off Route 17
• Couples doing a Finger Lakes weekend on the quieter Keuka rather than Seneca
• Architecture buffs who collect octagon houses
• Repeat regional visitors who've already done Geneva and Skaneateles

Who it's not for

• Families with small kids in a seven-room antique-furnished historic property
• Travelers who need a full restaurant on premises
• Visitors who find a strong eccentric decor wearing

Nearby

The Keuka Lake Wine Trail starts five minutes from the door — Dr. Konstantin Frank, Heron Hill, and Bully Hill are the obvious starts. Hammondsport's square has the Glenn H. Curtiss Museum (the aviation pioneer was local). Watkins Glen State Park is forty minutes east; Corning Museum of Glass is thirty south. For food in the area: the Bully Hill restaurant, the Switzerland Inn down the lake, and Cafe 86 in the village.