English Countryside Whimsy Lands in New York State: Hudson Valley Innkeepers Fall for the Cracks in Old Houses

The floors creak, and there are gaps between the planks—as long as no one actually falls through, it's fine. That was the rule innkeeper Dorian Greenspan set for herself while renovating Maison Monna in Old Chatham, New York. Just 40 minutes from New York City, this three-bedroom wooden house is Greek Revival in style, but its bones date back to the Quaker era, built in 1796. Greenspan initially furnished it with antiques she'd collected over the years, but the effect came out "a bit too monastic." Her fix, as she describes it, was to "add a touch of English whimsy."

So what does that English whimsy actually look like? Custom textiles, fabrics from Merchant & Mills and Notting Hill's Cloth Shop, DeVol sconces, and a ruffle-skirted valance detail on the kitchen cabinetry. None of these elements is new on its own, but pieced together, they create a home texture that deliberately holds onto imperfection rather than chasing that brand-new feeling.

New York designer Adam Greco is another key driver of this trend, having worked on projects like The Ned in London and Sommerro in Oslo. Greco describes English eccentricity as a romantic fantasy filtered through Sherlock Holmes and Mary Poppins—though he's quick to point out that this aesthetic is often surprisingly absent from actual inns in England. He recalls his first visit to a grand hotel on London's Regent Street: "It looked like some banquet hall in Cincinnati inside, which was such a letdown." By contrast, he believes places like Three Horseshoes near Batcombe outside Bath and the Fort Road Hotel in Margate, Kent, have gotten the blend of antiques, art collections, and luxurious textiles just right in recent years.

The Six Bells Countryside Inn in Rosendale, in the Hudson Valley, which Greco designed, is another variation on this vocabulary. This three-story building from the 1850s was reimagined for entrepreneur Audrey Gelman and now holds 11 rooms. Greco says the point wasn't to replicate England, but to channel Gelman's fascination with "late-20th-century American mail-order catalogs"—Vermont Country Store, Lillian Vernon-style plaids, Laura Ashley-esque prints, ruffled baskets—all ultimately folded into a design language that reads as unmistakably English. Greco's favorite spot is the Innkeeper's Suite, which features a hand-painted alcove bed frame, a detail commonly found in English country manors.

Another 40 minutes into the Catskills, The Henson in Hensonville offers the softest version of this aesthetic yet, and it's a 2025 Hot List award winner. Across its 16 rooms, natural light along with linen and raw wood textures create a lived-in feel; the family portraits hanging on the living room walls aren't decorative props, but heirlooms passed down from co-owner Ely Franko's grandparents, once displayed in their home in Turkey. The floral-print bedspreads in the rooms carry similarly personal memories, while the rest of the antiques scattered throughout the inn were sourced by experts from The Somerset House in New York. The Henson is co-owned by Ely and his wife Danielle Franko, along with chefs Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske Valtierra—and while there's no direct reference to England here at all, it speaks the same unpolished, lived-in logic.

Bigger plans are also underway: Soho Farmhouse is set to open a location in Rhinebeck, New York next year, and the team behind England's Cotswolds property Estelle Manor is reportedly scouting locations near the Hudson Valley and the Catskills. These new outposts are targeting New York's affluent set, already bored with the Hamptons—as Greenspan, a former magazine editor turned innkeeper, puts it, what she wants to offer is something that "feels genuinely rural, not rural transplanted from somewhere else."

Each of these inns draws from different sources, yet they share the same instinct: resisting that brand-new sheen, curating clutter into landscape, paying tribute to the past through old objects. This language once spoke with a distinctly English accent—now, in the Hudson Valley, it's becoming fluent in its own right.