The Longfellow Hotel
Portland's first independent, full-service hotel in 20+ years. Uncommon Hospitality × Post Company.
The Longfellow is Portland, Maine's first new full-service independent hotel in more than two decades — a 48-room project from Uncommon Hospitality with interiors by Post Company, the Brooklyn studio responsible for several of the more carefully detailed lodging projects of the last few years. It opened in 2024 in a former mansion-and-addition on the West End, a few blocks from Congress Street and the Old Port.
The combination of operator and designer matters here. Uncommon Hospitality runs hotels with restaurants that aren't afterthoughts; Post Company designs interiors with a serious limewash-and-oak vocabulary. The result reads less like a chain reopening and more like a real architectural project at urban scale.
The setting
Portland's West End is the residential layer that climbs the hill west of downtown — late nineteenth-century brick row houses and mansions, smaller streets, the Western Promenade overlooking Casco Bay. The Longfellow sits on the eastern edge of this neighborhood, walkable to Congress Street's museums and restaurants and a little further to the Old Port.
Cape Elizabeth and Portland Head Light are fifteen minutes south. The Eastern Prom and Munjoy Hill are a longer walk or short cab. Brunswick is half an hour up the coast; Freeport's outlets are twenty minutes north.
The building
A historic West End building — a former mansion — extended sympathetically with new construction to bring the property to a 48-room scale. Post Company's interiors lean into a warm, textural palette: limewash plaster, white-oak millwork, brass and bronze fixtures, dark velvets and wool textiles, period proportions kept where they were and updated where they weren't. Public rooms include the lobby, a restaurant, a bar, and a small spa.
The rooms
Forty-eight rooms and suites across the original building and the addition. Layouts run wider than the typical urban hotel — Post Company tends to design at townhouse rather than business-hotel proportions — with deep tubs, real desks, and the limewash-and-oak finish carried through. Categories range from standard kings up to corner suites with sitting areas.
Food & drink
The hotel's restaurant is a real food project, leaning into Maine's obvious advantages — coastal seafood, dairy, foraged greens — with a wine list that takes both the region and Europe seriously. The bar is a separate room and runs as its own destination. Both take non-guest reservations and do.
On the property
A small urban hotel with a tighter amenity stack than the resort set.
- Restaurant and bar (open to non-guests)
- Small spa with treatments by appointment
- Fitness center
- Concierge for Portland Head Light, Cape Elizabeth, and ferry logistics
- Open year-round
Who it's for
- Design-literate travelers who'd rather sleep in a Post Company interior than a Hilton
- Couples doing a Portland food weekend
- Architects, food writers, and people with opinions about hotel bars
- Repeat Maine visitors who've already done Camden and Kennebunkport
Who it's not for
- Families with small kids needing a pool and a kids' program
- Travelers who specifically want oceanfront — this is downtown, fifteen minutes from the lighthouse
- Anyone allergic to a contemporary design idiom in a historic building
Nearby
Congress Street's Portland Museum of Art is a ten-minute walk. The Old Port — Fore Street, Eventide, Duckfat, Drifters Wife — is fifteen minutes east on foot. Portland Head Light at Fort Williams Park is fifteen minutes south by car. The Eastern Prom is a longer walk and a working harbor view. Freeport is twenty minutes north for L.L. Bean and a few smaller shops worth the trip.
