No doubt that the quaint town of Rosendale, in New York’s Hudson Valley, has been seeing an influx of stylish Brooklyn women living their best cottage-core lives. This is because of the new eleven-room inn, tavern, riverside restaurant, and showroom of sorts for The Six Bells, a cult-y Brooklyn boutique celebrating the revival of traditional crafts and country living (of the idealized European kind).
Both the Brooklyn shop and The Six Bells Countryside Inn are the brainchild of placemaker Audrey Gelman (founder of The Wing) and partner Jeremy Selman, hospitality veteran of the Sydell Group (Freehand, Line, Ace). These are people who know a thing or two about building physical spaces that become cult lifestyle brands.
Along with design firm Greco Deco, the group has gone cuckoo for country house, creating interiors decorated to the hilt with cozy wooden furniture, pine cladding, archival wallpaper, pastoral murals, and colors that, according to the press release, “are somewhere between sweet pastels and melancholia.”
The design is a very big step away from the play-it-safe, millennial-favored schemes (minimal; neutral; mid-century, pink) that have dominated the small hotel landscape for the last decade or more. The Six Bells team leans heavily into a fantasy of their own making, that the inn is located in an invented pastoral town of yesteryear called Barrow’s Green, a town filled with made-up shops and characters and dramas.
Some may deride this as inauthentic, but that’s why it’s called a fantasy. The staff that I spoke with — all of whom live locally, some even on an actual Main Street — are very enthusiastic about this new addition to town and love the performative aspect of placemaking.
Here’s what’s clear: The Six Bells has a story to tell and won’t waste one second getting the message across. Walking off Main Street and in through the front door is akin to waltzing into a year-round Christmas shop in July. It’s a festive, full-on sensorial assault you can only experience in real life.
Book It
The Six Bells Country Inn is two hours by car from New York City. Click here for reservations.
What’s On Site
The most curious thing about the circa 1850s boarding house-turned-modern inn is its location. Before visiting, I imagined the approach to the inn might include a long driveway or surrounding lawn or garden — something that would serve as a buffer between modern reality and historical dreamscape. But, nope, it’s right on the main stretch, down the block from Perry’s Pickles and Guts ‘N Glory Tattoo.
Walking into the boutique hotel means walking into the hotel boutique where nearly everything — from dinnerware to bed sheets — is available for purchase. (We think it’s one of the best hotel boutiques we’ve ever seen.) The front desk is the cashier and vice versa. The interiors are a showcase of creative labor. The lighting is great. The place smells wonderful — it’s like being drawn into the aproned bosom of the milkmaid. On the ceiling is a painting of the fictionalized pastoral town in which the inn’s story takes place. There are a sturdy wooden furnishings, lots of quilts, candlesticks, gingham, rickrack, beautiful flower arrangements, and an impressive dollhouse version of Six Bells.
A small and romantic tavern oozes charm, a tented back deck is made for hosting events, and an old-fashioned playroom for children is stocked with vintage toys and books. The stairwell creaks, and guests get physical keys to open bedroom doors.
While you’ll have to find your entertainment in the surrounding towns for now, that will all change in January when the inn will inaugurate murder mystery weekends featuring fictionalized characters in fictionalized dramas from the inn’s fictionalized town.
Food + Drink
The Feathers tavern serves early American comfy cookery and lots of ruffles. Dinner is a short-term affair — the restaurant is only open between 5:30 and 8:30 p.m. — and during my weeknight stay it was a cozy little scene of cute couples murmuring softly over pretty plates of local trout.
My friend and I had delicious cocktails and dainty snacks at the bar, chatting with the friendly bartender before heading to New Paltz to look for more action. The next day’s country breakfast spread was adorable. The tavern has a private dining room and a very pretty covered patio for larger occasions.
The Rooms
Eleven uniquely designed rooms with olde-timey names — like Lamplight, The Rookery, and Mildred’s Plum —give guests a chance to delve deeper into the storybook fantasy. Some rooms have a writing desk, a hutch, and/or a seating area. Two two-bed suites are great for families. Appropriately enough, I stayed in The Innkeeper’s Suite, which has the highly photographable and extremely cozy box bed kitted out with drapes. All rooms have incredible handmade details, luxe textiles, ornate hand-painted murals, elegant stencils, rattan furniture, and archival wallpaper. I loved it.
What to Do Nearby
The Six Bells Countryside Inn makes a great home base for a weekend with the girls exploring New York’s original state capital (it’s 15 minutes to Kingston) and old Dutch architecture (12 minutes to New Paltz). And, of course, for harvesting New York’s best crop: apples.
You can find 30 or so varieties of the official state symbol at the farm stands and in the orchards throughout the Hudson Valley. Some farms turn into giant amusement parks at this time of year, but we like the non-commercial vibe of Apple Hill Farm in New Paltz because it’s pretty low-key and focused on apples: Pick them yourself, eat them whole, drink them as fresh-pressed cider, taste them as mulled apple cider doughnuts, and take a hayride while checking out the views of the Shawangunk Ridge and Catskill Mountains. Twin Stars Orchard is a cidery where you can also get nice wood-fired pizza and a craft cider after picking up Gala and Honeycrisp varieties. The 200-year-old, seventh-generation Clarke’s Family Farm keeps the old-school traditions going (organic methods, U-pick, tractor rides) and has a pumpkin patch where you can cut yours off the vine.
You could make a weekend of thrifting and antiquing in the various towns. If you only want to go to one location, make it Red Owl Collective, an enormous antique mall in an old bowling alley in Kingston filled with curated collections of homewares, toys, clothes, jewelry, records, and books that you can (and should) peruse for an hour or two.
Nearby Mohonk Preserve is beautiful slice of protected nature with excellent walking, hiking, cycling, and horseback riding trails.
More Upstate New York
Spend a Peak-Perfect Autumn Weekend in the Catskills
Get to Know the Catskills: Kingston, Phoenicia, Tannersville
Wildflower Farms: Can the Hudson Valley Get Any Hipper?