Recess Hotel & Club brings a playful retro-futurist design and a new spot on the Leading Hotels of the World roster to a restored 1912 landmark in the heart of downtown.
Savannah has built its allure around the past. The city’s Historic Landmark District, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966, still follows the ward-based Oglethorpe Plan laid out in 1733, with 22 shaded squares anchoring a grid of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century architecture. Against that backdrop, a hotel built around the idea of the future feels like a genuine departure, and that’s exactly the pitch behind Recess Hotel & Club, opening this September at 7 East Congress Street.
The building itself is very much of Savannah’s old guard. It opened in 1912 as Hotel Savannah, a Beaux Arts structure with grand arched windows, an ornate cornice and a tripartite composition typical of the era. It later operated as The Manger Hotel from 1954 to 1977 before sitting for decades as office space. Developer Left Lane took on the restoration, working with design firm Atelier Pond to reimagine the interior around a concept the team calls retro futurism: vintage analogue details paired with sleeker, more modern finishes, using natural wood, marble and tile to hold the two eras together.
The finished hotel counts 221 keys in total, split across 136 guestrooms, 23 suites and 62 bunk rooms, twenty of which are deliberately built without a television for guests looking for a genuine break from their screens. Room categories range from straightforward queens and kings, including park, city and river view configurations, up to loft, garden and family suites and a Presidential Suite, along with accessible options throughout.
Food and drink lean editorial rather than expected for a hotel restaurant. Le Flâneur is styled as a Parisian all-day brasserie, while a Japanese automat inspired servery covers coffee, pastries and grab-and-go meals for guests moving quickly between the historic district and the riverfront. Kilter Rooftop Bar tops it off, built around what the hotel calls Savannah’s highest rooftop pool, a genuine rarity in a city where height restrictions keep most buildings low and close to the ground.
Wellness gets its own dedicated identity through a Saltgrass branded circuit spa, built around a sound temple, steam rooms, saunas and cold plunges designed to be moved through in sequence rather than booked as a single treatment. It’s a wellness model borrowed more from European spa culture than the typical Southern hotel spa menu, and another sign of how far the retro-futurist concept extends beyond the guestrooms.
Social space is where the hotel’s personality shows up most clearly. Every guest floor has its own “Rumpus Room,” a communal hangout stocked with games, vending and lounge seating meant to pull guests out of their rooms. Club Recess, a members oriented creative space with studios, coworking areas and its own programming, occupies a dedicated footprint within the hotel, and a two-story, roughly 6,500-square-foot event space rounds things out for meetings, weddings and private gatherings.
The opening also marks a notable moment for Leading Hotels of the World, the invitation-only consortium of independent luxury properties. Recess Hotel & Club joins the group’s 2026 openings class alongside new properties debuting from West Palm Beach to Paris, giving Savannah a rare LHW address in a hotel landscape more often defined by carriage houses and historic inns. For a city that has spent centuries protecting its past, it’s a notably forward-looking addition, and one more reason to spend a few extra days exploring Savannah’s squares, museums and riverfront beyond the usual weekend itinerary.