A bedroom, two-room suite, or the equivalent of a three-room apartment – all are possible from the same space downstairs at 215 Washington.
215 Washington is a next-gen inn that is housed in the same 1899 Victorian house that once housed the Territorial Inn and, more recently, the offices of the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts.
Owners Dennis and Patricia Price acquired the historic downtown property in November 2018. Since then, they’ve upgraded the seven-room Airbnb short-term rental building with touches of ‘branch and traditional’.
One Room has a portrait-sized version of the iconic photo of Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney sitting opposite each other on a train, and hollow-style utility sinks in the bathrooms evoke the age of the house.
They haven’t quite decided whether to treat 215 Washington as suites, apartments, or residences yet. The sign in front calls them vacation rentals.
They started taking reservations this week at 215washington.com for an opening scheduled for March 15, “but we’re hoping long before that, maybe by the end of January,” Dennis Price said.
“We are targeting a Four Seasons clientele but with the vibe of a residence, like a house,” he said. “It used to be an office, but it was clearly a house.”
Room rates will likely range from $ 150 to $ 400.
A kitchen / living room area near the main entrance to 215 Washington.
Half a century ago, the house was owned by mystery writer Dorothy Hughes and her husband, Levi Allen Hughes Jr., whose father was Wool Baron Levi Allen Hughes Sr., who co-founded Santa Fe Builders Supply Co., or Sanbusco. The poet DH Lawrence stayed there a century ago on his way to Taos.
More recently, the building was given the Territorial Inn name by Lela and Mark McFerrin, who operated the Inn from 1989 to 2008, the last time the building operated as an Inn.
There is no lobby, no registration desk, no concierge, barely a staff presence, but son Michael Price will be the general manager. The Awards build on the concept of an “invisible service hotel” that began to gain traction in the 2010s. They used the Lokal Hotel in Philadelphia, near where the Prices live, as a model, and a son lives near Lokal.
The last four digits of a customer’s cell phone number are the code to unlock the main door and room at 215 Washington. Instructions at the main door will guide guests to their rooms, each named after one of the seven Prize granddaughters. A voice-activated Google Nest is installed to control the music or the temperature.
Customers can brew coffee in three ways: press, drip, and automatic.
“Coffee is important to us,” said Dennis Price.
Four units have full kitchens with Summit stove and oven and oak counters.
A room at 215 Washington.
A kitchen / living room is located just to the right of the main entrance. Three bedrooms have access to this kitchen and can be rented as a three-room apartment. But two of these bedrooms have separate doors and can be rented individually without access to the kitchen.
There is a washer and dryer for guests.
“It’s the idea of coming as you are,” Price said. “You don’t need three trucks of clothes.”
As in Victorian homes, each of the seven rooms has different, if not original, floor plans with walls that aren’t necessarily straight as arrows. Some rooms are smaller, others larger.
The bedding is from Brooklinen. Built Design in Santa Fe handled the interior design details.
Dennis Price is an emergency physician who worked at the University of New Mexico and lived in Santa Fe in the late 1970s. He has spent most of his career at Princeton University. The Prices still live in Princeton, but Price is now on staff at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.
At the same time, the Prices managed 20 Airbnb properties in Philadelphia, which they no longer do, but they still own three Airbnb properties in Philadelphia and one in Long Beach Island, NJ.
They have visited Santa Fe on and off for the past 40 years. They walked by the Territorial Inn in 2018 and saw that the property was for sale. Familiar with the concept of invisible service, Dennis Price found the property to be an ideal addition to their Airbnb collection.
He said he bought the property for $ 1.3 million and invested over $ 700,000 to create the 215 Washington frame.
Son Michael is ready to welcome overnight visitors, but Patricia Price considers 215 Washington more of a “destination.”
“I think it would be a great way to see Santa Fe and the surrounding area for a week or two,” she said.
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