Stafford's Bay View Inn ★★★

An 1886 House Inside a Landmark Lake Michigan Village

Stafford's Bay View Inn began in 1886 as the Woodland Avenue House, built by John Wesley Howard, and went through two more names, the Howard House and The Roselawn, before becoming the Bay View Inn in 1935. Stafford C. Smith and his wife Janice bought the property around 1961, after Smith lost his job at Petoskey's Perry Hotel, and the family's restoration work over the following decades is what kept the Victorian building intact rather than modernized out of recognition. The inn sits inside Bay View, a cottage community founded in 1876 and designated a National Historic Landmark, where concerts, lectures, and sailing programs still run every summer much as they did a century ago, on streets of gingerbread-trimmed cottages that have changed very little since.

Why It Works

We chose Stafford's Bay View Inn because the history here isn't decorative, it's load-bearing: an 1886 building, a landmarked Victorian community around it, and a family that has run the inn since 1961 rather than a chain that bought the name. The daily social hour in the sunroom and the complimentary bicycles are small gestures, but they come from an inn used to treating returning guests like neighbors, which a newer property can't fake. Few lakefront stays in northern Michigan combine this much documented history with this little pretense, and fewer still can point to a single family's name still on the door after sixty years.

Why This Location

Bay View sits on Little Traverse Bay, a short walk or bike ride from downtown Petoskey's shops and restaurants, with the Association's own private beach, tennis courts, and sailing program available to inn guests without a membership. The wider Little Traverse Bay shoreline is built for slow travel, bicycles, porches, and water views rather than a drive-through resort strip, and the inn's Woodland Avenue address puts guests inside that rhythm instead of looking at it from a highway hotel. Downtown Petoskey's Gaslight District is close enough for dinner without a car, and the bay's Sunset Park is a short walk for travelers who want the lake view without the beach crowd.

Fast Facts

• Prix: €€€

• Vibe: Victorian, historic, lakeside and unhurried

• Chambres: rooms inside the 1886 building, Victorian character throughout

• Best For: history-minded travelers, couples, anyone wanting Lake Michigan without a modern resort

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: the daily social hour in the sunroom, a holdover from the inn's decades as a family-run house

• Dining: full-service restaurant and bar on site

• Amenities: complimentary bicycles, EV charging, access to Bay View Association's private beach and water activities

• Attractions: the Bay View Association's historic cottages and summer programs, downtown Petoskey, Little Traverse Bay

A Family Restoration, Not a Renovation

The inn's current form owes more to six decades of a single family's stewardship than to any single renovation. Stafford C. Smith took on a building that had already cycled through three names and nearly as many identities before he and Janice bought it in 1961, and the restoration work that followed kept the Victorian detailing rather than updating it into a generic inn. The current owners, Jon and Lauren Cotton, continue that approach, running the inn as a working piece of the Bay View Association's National Historic Landmark status rather than an exception to it, down to the porch rockers and the sunroom where the social hour still happens every evening.

What to Know Before You Check In

Bay View's own rules carry over to guests: the Association's private beach and summer programs run on a community calendar, livelier in July and August when concerts and lectures are in full swing, quieter the rest of the year. Access to downtown Petoskey on foot or by bicycle makes a car optional for most of a stay, and the inn's restaurant and bar cover dinner without a drive back into town, which matters once the Bay View gates get quiet after the evening programs end.