Occupying the same building that housed the Portland Press Herald from 1923 to 2010, the Press Hotel is the first boutique property to open its doors in the city of Portland, Maine. The 110-room hotel, which is part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection, offers guests a contemporary and sophisticated design, reflecting the location’s ink-stained history and incorporating callbacks to Portland’s Old Port district into the smallest details.
Put under contract by real estate developer Jim Brady a few years after the newspaper moved on, the Press Hotel’s transformation was extensive. Working with New York-based architecture and design firm Stonehill & Taylor, Brady and the rest of the Press Hotel team sought to create spaces that reflect the building’s historic origins and offer guests a warm, welcoming environment.
When guests first walk into the lobby, they are greeted by a massive art installation behind the front desk that recalls an old letterpress. The lobby also features herringbone-tiled floors, reclaimed wood columns, and warm natural colors in inky tones with pops of orange. The front desk itself is carved in a ribbed design that echoes the skeleton of a ship, calling upon Portland’s history in the trade.
The main floor also has four lobby lounges, for which Stonehill & Taylor worked closely with current Portland Press Herald editors to incorporate a number of newsy touches. The lounge tables—made by a local metal craftsman—feature Press Herald headlines from the past 150 years. Typewriters act as design accents, and one lounge prominently displays a book press. The carpets in the lobby lounges, as well as in the hotel’s downstairs conference rooms, abstractly represent different components of print production, such as spilled ink. In addition, the Press Hotel’s gym features the original Toledo Scale that was used back in the building’s newspaper days.
The print and writing homage extends beyond the common spaces into the guestrooms. The guestroom hallways boast custom wallpaper that features real Press Herald headlines, such as “Elderly Lobster Set Free.” “We wanted it to feel whimsical, but still ground you in Portland,” Brady explains. The type becomes more cluttered closer to the ground, eventually drawing the eye to the carpet, where a mess of letters seems to litter the floor.
The Press Hotel’s guestrooms are set up to look like a writer’s workspace, featuring large desks and chairs embroidered with “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog,” a phrase that uses all 26 letters of the alphabet. There are also old, fabric-bound books found in every guestroom, as well as all of the hotel’s common spaces. According to Tory Knoph, interior designer with Stonehill & Taylor, all of the books represent the hotel in some way. “Books on writing, books by famous authors, books about Portland, books about sailing—there’s a great variety,” she says.
Beyond the hotel’s newsy feel, Stonehill & Taylor also worked at length with local artists to create a space that is unique to the locale. (See related article: Portland’s Press Hotel Spotlights Maine Artists.) Beyond the works in the lobby, each guestroom and meeting space features the work of Maine artists, and a gallery on the hotel’s lower level showcases original artwork in a number of different mediums.
