Hotel Bethlehem named Best Historic Hotel for 5th Straight Year

August 15th, 2025

After completing a “grand slam” last season, what could Hotel Bethlehem do for an encore? How about win a fifth consecutive title as Best Historic Hotel/Resort in America by USA Today?

A crowd of employees, management and local dignitaries filled the 1741 Terrace as Farrald Lee, who is retiring as the hotel’s director of facilities, opened an envelope with the ranking at noon Wednesday.

“We’re No. 4!” Lee said with a grin, drawing a surprised “my gosh, really?” from Hotel Bethlehem Managing Partner Bruce Haines.

“No, actually it’s No. 1,” Lee said, setting off a celebration that included a champagne toast.

Haines said the hotel was built to be the community center of Bethlehem when it opened in 1922. It anchors the city’s Main Street area, which was named the top Main Street by USA Today this year, along with the neighboring historic Moravian sites that were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site last year.

“The original owners of this hotel were people that lived on Market Street and Church Street and Center Street and on the South Side,” Haines said, “because you could buy a share for $50 and you’d be an owner of the hotel. So how cool was that? The whole community invested in this hotel and so it was a community hotel that you walked in the front door, to the newspaper stand and downstairs was a salon and a barber shop.

“It remains that today,” he said. “That was our vision when we bought the hotel 26 years ago, to bring it back to what it was.”

The hotel was ranked higher than other iconic historic hotels such as The Peabody in Memphis, Tennessee; the Grand Hotel Resort in Point Clear, Alabama; The Omni Homestead Resort, in Hot Springs, Virginia; The Hotel Hershey, in Hershey, Dauphin County; The Davenport Hotel in Seattle; Congress Hall in Cape May, New Jersey; The Willard in Washington; The Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee; and the Mohonk Mountain Home in New Paltz, New York, which made up the rest of the Top 10.

No other hotel has won the honors more than Hotel Bethlehem, which first took the top spot in 2021 after finishing second in 2020 and third in 2019. The Peabody won the award for three straight years from 2018 through 2020.

USA Today added the historic hotel category to its 10 Best contest in 2015. A panel of industry experts and editors at the news organization chooses the nominees and then readers vote for their favorite.

Haines said travel writers who visited Hotel Bethlehem after it achieved the earlier No. 1 rankings were shown around the rest of the downtown area, which helped bring home the top Main Street award. He said Bethlehem offers “authentic” colonial history, which is a reason why it received the UNESCO World Heritage Site recognition.

The hotel is in the midst of several historic sites, including the newly reopened Grist Miller’s House, which will house the Ralph G. Schwarz Center for Colonial Industries, named for one of the founders of the museums who spearheaded several restoration efforts of the early Moravian settlers’ landmarks.

“We’re very fortunate as a community to have had history be a part of the place we have all come to enjoy and love, the sense of place that’s now recognized globally throughout the world,” said LoriAnn Wukitsch, president of Historic Bethlehem Museums and Sites.

All the winning hotels are affiliated with Historic Hotels of America, which is a collection of more than 300 properties under the auspices of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Read the article and see additional photos on the Morning Call website.

Share This