The Pelican Inn

An 1858 beachfront cottage on Pawleys Island — eight rooms, a long rocking-chair porch, no TVs, and the original wide-plank floors that creak the way old beach-house floors are supposed to. The Pelican Inn is older than most things on the South Carolina coast, and almost no one has tried to modernize it past the point of being a beach house.

That's the value. The Grand Strand is otherwise mostly chain hotels and condo towers. This is what was here before any of that.

The setting

Pawleys Island is a four-mile barrier island between Charleston and Myrtle Beach — narrow, mostly residential, the kind of place where the houses have names and the road dead-ends at the marsh. The Pelican sits directly on the ocean side, mid-island, on a stretch of beach that's quiet enough to be loud about how quiet it is.

The mainland-side Pawleys area has a few shops, a couple of restaurants, and the salt-marsh side of Pawleys Creek. Brookgreen Gardens is fifteen minutes south. Charleston is a seventy-minute drive; Georgetown's harbor is twenty.

The building

Built in 1858 as a private summer cottage and operated as an inn for over a century since. The building is on the National Register and looks the part — clapboard, deep porches on multiple sides, a tin roof, the kind of front door that swells in humidity and sticks. Public rooms are small and old-house: heart pine floors, beadboard ceilings, a fireplace that does decorative duty in shoulder seasons.

The bones haven't been over-restored. Floors slope. Doors are original. The plumbing has been updated. The aesthetic is the aesthetic.

The rooms

Eight rooms, configured as the original cottage was — bed sizes from queen to king, most with porch access, all with private baths that were retrofitted into the house. There are no televisions in the rooms. Air conditioning is present; it has to be. Rates start around $295, which on this stretch of South Carolina beach is well below the resort and condo-tower standard.

Food & drink

Breakfast is included and served on the porch or in the dining room — Lowcountry-leaning, plated, real cooking. There's no public-facing dinner program at the inn; Pawleys' mainland side has a small set of restaurants — Frank's Outback, the Sea View Inn dining room, and the Hammock Coast standards a short drive in either direction. The inn's bar program is similarly modest and oriented around the porch.

On the property

The amenity set is short, on purpose.

• Direct beachfront access on Pawleys Island
• Wraparound porches with rocking chairs
• Plated breakfast included
• No televisions in rooms
• Pet-friendly with a fee
• Open year-round; quieter October through April

Who it's for

• Repeat Lowcountry visitors who've worn out the Charleston rotation and want a beach week
• Couples and small families who want a real beach cottage rather than a hotel-style resort
• Travelers who've stayed at Sea View Inn and would rather try something even smaller
• Readers — the porches are the entire point

Who it's not for

• Travelers who want a pool, spa, or fitness center on site
• Anyone who needs televisions in the rooms
• Spring-break and bachelor-party crowds who'd rather be in Myrtle

Nearby

Brookgreen Gardens — sculpture garden, low-country zoo, the largest collection of figurative American sculpture outside of New York — is fifteen minutes south. Huntington Beach State Park is across the highway from Brookgreen. Pawleys' creek-side has kayak launches and a few seafood markets. Georgetown's harbor — restaurants, a small history museum, and Hobcaw Barony — is twenty minutes south. Charleston is the ninety-minute day-trip option. Frank's and Frank's Outback in the Pawleys mainland village are the dinner default.