Every room keeps the store's original windows, nine feet of them, and the plaster ceilings we spent a year putting back. Beds are linen, showers are big, the minibar is priced like a shop, and nothing in the room beeps.
The smallest room and the best value. One tall window over Ninth Street, a queen bed, and a desk that was a haberdashery counter in its first life.
Two walls of windows where Ash meets Ninth. Watch the avenue wake up from a king bed with the curtains open, then go down to breakfast whenever you like.
Courtyard side, so the quietest rooms in the building, with a private terrace off the bedroom big enough for breakfast and a second coffee.
The top floor, under the old rooftop sign. Exposed brick, a clawfoot tub by the window, a sitting room, and the whole avenue laid out below.
Three seasons, four rooms, no surprises at the desk. Rates below are what you pay when you call or write to us. Nobody else sells our rooms for less, because nobody else takes a cut.
| Room | Nov – Mar | Apr – May, Sep – Oct | Jun – Aug | Sleeps |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio | $189 | $215 | $245 | 2 |
| Corner | $245 | $279 | $315 | 2 |
| Terrace | $310 | $345 | $395 | 2 |
| The Loft | $495 | $560 | $640 | 3 |
Call, email, or hold a room with a card over the phone. We pay no commission on a direct booking, so the difference goes to you: ten to fifteen percent under the rate you'll find on the big sites, and a better room when we have one.
Every direct booking includes breakfast at Rowe's, seven to half past ten, for everyone in the room. Bookings made elsewhere can add it for $24 a person, paid at the table.
Free cancellation until 3pm two days before you arrive. After that, we charge the first night. Whole-hotel and event bookings have their own terms, which we send in writing before you commit.
Rowe's takes the ground-floor corner, marble bar and all. Breakfast is eggs, good bread, and coffee from a roaster four blocks away. Dinner is short, seasonal, and cooked in an open kitchen; the bar keeps a deep shelf of vermouth and makes a proper martini.
You don't need a room key. Rowe's is open to the neighborhood, and most nights the neighborhood is here.
Tables: (555) 555-0134. The bar is walk-in, always.
The roof opens the first warm week of May and closes when the plants give up, usually late October. Planters, string lights, a small bar, and the sun going down behind the courthouse dome. Hotel guests have it to themselves from four; the neighborhood is welcome from five.
Sunset hours: four until eleven, Sunday to Thursday. Four until midnight, Friday and Saturday.
Weather permitting, which we decide by noon and post at the front desk. Closed for private events on a handful of evenings a season; the desk always knows which.
We do a handful of weddings a year, on purpose, and we're good at them. Dinners, launches, and reunions fill the rest of the calendar. Rowe's cooks for all of it.
The Mezzanine was the store's tea room, and it still has the balcony rail and the view down onto the lobby. It seats forty at one long table or six round ones, and it holds seventy for drinks with the doors open. For a wedding, the ceremony is on the Rooftop and dinner is on the Mezzanine, and nobody has to move a car.
A whole-hotel buyout gives you all thirty-four rooms, Rowe's, the Mezzanine, and the roof, for a night or a weekend. We'll close the front door and it becomes your house.
Tell us the date, the number, and what kind of night it is. We reply within a day with menus, a floor plan, and an honest number.
Write to events@theaster.exampleSite visits most weekday afternoons. Bring whoever needs convincing.
There is an aster set into the terrazzo at the Ash Street door, the store's flower, worn to a soft grey by fifty-five years of shoppers. We named the hotel after it. The lobby is the old ground floor, columns and ceiling and all; the rooms are where the stock rooms and offices were, which is why the windows are so tall.
The elevator is new, and we're a little sorry about that. Everything you can put a hand on that could be saved was saved, and what couldn't be was remade by people who cared about getting it right.
900 Ash Street, at Ninth
Downtown Halvern
Open in Maps
Two blocks north of Union Station on foot. Twenty-five minutes from the airport by cab, forty on the airport train to Union.
Valet at the Ash Street door, $32 a night, in and out as often as you like.
Or the Ninth Street garage directly across the road, $18 overnight with a ticket stamped at the front desk.
Bikes go in the old loading dock, free, behind a locked door.
Call (555) 555-0134
or write to stay@theaster.example
Check-in from 3pm, check-out by 11. Early and late are usually fine; just ask when you book. The desk is staffed around the clock.