Silver Sands

Silver Sands is the ur-text for the modernized roadside motel on the East Coast. Beachfront in Greenport, on Long Island's North Fork, with 1,400 feet of private sand on Peconic Bay and a row of low-slung cabins that have been there in some form since the 1950s. The current iteration is a careful update — not a teardown, not a rebrand — and that restraint is most of the point.

A Condé Nast Readers' Choice winner in 2024, which means the photography crowd has found it. But the property still works as a place to actually stay: small, beach-first, and run as a real hotel rather than a content factory. Twenty rooms, a pool, a private bay beach, and a North Fork wine region one ten-minute drive away in any direction.

The setting

Greenport is the last real town on the North Fork before you hit the Orient ferry. Working harbor, oyster bars on the water, a carousel in the village park. Silver Sands is on the bay side rather than the ocean side — calmer water, sunsets, and a different kind of light than the South Fork tradition.

The North Fork itself is the quieter Long Island. Wineries along Route 25 and Sound Avenue, farm stands, no Hamptons traffic, a much shorter ferry hop from New England. The drive from Manhattan is two and a half hours on a bad day; the LIRR runs to Greenport directly if you don't want to drive at all.

The building

The bones are 1950s motor lodge — single-story cabins arranged in a U around a lawn, plus standalone cottages right at the waterline. The redesign keeps the proportions and the original spacing and updates the materials: pine and wool inside, simple white exteriors, sympathetic landscaping, no attempt to pretend the place is anything other than what it is. A lot of mid-century coastal motels in the region have been bulldozed and replaced with something taller and worse. This one was kept.

The rooms

Twenty keys, split between bayfront cottages, beachfront cabin rooms, and a few inland rooms across the road. The cottages are the marquee — your own front door, a porch, sand twenty steps away. Inside: pine paneling, white linens, decent beds, a small fridge, a coffee setup. From-rate sits around $325, with the bayfront cottages climbing meaningfully higher in peak summer. Bathrooms are compact; this is a motel that's been remade, not a luxury suite product.

Food & drink

There's no restaurant on site. Coffee in the morning, an honor pantry, and a short drive or walk into Greenport village for everything else. Greenport is loaded — Noah's, Industry Standard, Little Creek Oysters, the Frisky Oyster — so the absence of a kitchen at the hotel reads as a design choice rather than a gap.

On the property

The 1,400-foot private bay beach is the engine. The water on Peconic Bay is gentler than the ocean, the bay-side sunsets are well-known, and the sand is genuinely the hotel's own — not a public beach with a hotel adjacent.

• 1,400 ft of private bay beach with chairs and umbrellas
• Outdoor pool (seasonal)
• Bikes available; kayaks and SUPs
• No restaurant or bar; pantry only
• Open seasonally — peak May through October

Who it's for

• Couples who prefer the North Fork to the Hamptons.
• Anyone who associates a good vacation with the smell of cedar shingles and sunscreen.
• Photographers and design-minded travelers — the property has a look.
• People who want to drive between three wineries before lunch.

Who it's not for

• Travelers who need a full hotel restaurant on site.
• Families with very young kids in a tight cottage layout (cottages are small).
• Anyone expecting a "luxury resort" in scale or services — this is a 20-key motel-as-art.

Nearby

Greenport village is a 7-minute drive: oyster bars, the carousel, the harbor. The Orient Point ferry to New London is 15 minutes east — useful if you're routing through to Newport or coastal Connecticut. North Fork wine country runs along Route 25 the whole way back toward Riverhead — Macari, Lieb, Paumanok, Bedell Cellars. Shelter Island is a short ferry from Greenport if you want a third island in the trip.