Great Architecture Often Tells A Story

This is no typical Key West hotel. The minute you set foot into The Perry Hotel, you know you’ve arrived somewhere different.

Boatyards, Fishing Fleets, and Shrimp Boats 

Imagine the heyday of the Key West shrimp industry, when hundreds of shrimp boats used to visit the docks of Stock Island. The story of this place is a long tradition of working boatyards, busy marinas, and active fishing fleets. Boat builders, shrimpers, and fishermen. Its legacy is as the old industrial fishing harbor of Key West.

Stock Island is a place that can’t help but be authentic because it still bears those marks. The Perry Hotel sits on an active waterfront in the middle of a working harbor. There are fewer shrimp boats, but they’re loading and icing shrimp alongside luxury yachts. Some even say that “Stock Island is the old Key West.” It’s where locals take people to show them the way Key West used to be. Underneath its industrial exterior beats the heart of a passionate community, and The Perry Hotel is bringing it to life. If you haven’t heard of Stock Island you soon will.

A Study in Contrasts

Led by Thomas E. Pope and Gavin Scarborough, local firm Pope-Scarborough Architects kept this history close when they constructed The Perry Hotel. Standing in the lobby you can almost picture the wharf buildings, materials, textures, and craftsmanship of those shrimp boat days. The firm tapped into its broad range of experience in historic renovation, remodeling, and new construction in Key West to bring Stock Island history to life.

The Perry Hotel ’s carefully crafted interior design is an amazing contrast of finishes, blending the sharp, rugged elements of its rustic roots with warm touches inspired by the ocean that surrounds us. Rough concrete walls, steel columns, reclaimed teak floors, metal with a hint of patina, making you wonder if it’s lived a life somewhere in another time, with touches of warm leather, beautiful upholstery, and colorful cushions. Every piece looks like it has a story to tell.

“The magnificent lobby entry really says it all. The oversized rusty steel-framed 12-foot glass entry doors help you see right through the space to the beautiful waterfront directly out the backdoor. A 22-foot tall towering wall of boat propellers truly captures you the second you open the doors.”
— Bradley A. Weiser, Hostmark Hospitality Group

The hotel lobby, restaurants, outdoor lounges, and fire pits, and public spaces were designed by Blaire Weiser from the Denver-based firm Johnson Nathan Strohe (JNS). They are warm, inviting, and comfortable. Exquisite textiles and textures that make you want to reach out touch them, glide your hand along to feel. The Perry Hotel is full of fine details that really make the design sing. Historic, yet contemporary. Rustic, yet elegant. Like a day spent out on the water, then back home to your “Safe Harbor”.

Sleek, simple, and comfortable, the guest rooms were designed by Cesar Conde from Casa Conde & Associates. Wood-paneled headboards and unique flooring reminiscent of colored aged driftwoods. Floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors that bring the outdoors in, opening to spacious private balconies with backdrops of yachts and sailboats in the marina, mangrove-lined waterways, and famous Key West sunsets.

Local Inspiration 

The first thing you’ll notice in the lobby is the soaring ceiling. But then, as you make your way to the front desk, an incredible art installation designed by local artist and sculptor, Daniel Siefert. A cluster of rustic propellers that speak to another time in this same place. Guests are welcomed into rooms by the bold, abstract shapes and vivid, heavily saturated colors, of the Key West-inspired paintings of Leo Gullick, a local artist known for his contemporary style, as well as several photographs of the beautiful Key West waters, islands, and beaches taken by local businessman Al Kennish.

The Next Chapter

The Perry Hotel is so intrinsically linked to the fabric of Stock Island it’s as though the boards, metal, and wood gathered together in an old shrimp yard and reassembled themselves, adding new life into the fabric of historic Stock Island. The design of The Perry Hotel not only reaches into Stock Island ’s past, it pays tribute to it. But firmly stands its ground to carry this special place into the future.