Washington School House Hotel

One room at the Washington School House still has the sixteen-foot ceiling the schoolhouse was built with in 1889. It was one of Park City's three original schools, in hammered limestone that came through the Great Fire of 1898. The crash of 1929 thinned the pupils out. From 1936 the Veterans of Foreign Wars held their dances in it, and from 1984 it served breakfast instead. In 2011 it was gutted to the studs and reopened as twelve rooms. The tall one is the 16 Foot Ceiling King, a corner room with nine-foot sash windows and a crystal chandelier a century old. Elsewhere white tongue-and-groove runs up the walls and over the sloping ceilings, and French antiques stand on reclaimed oak barn wood. The bathrooms are ice-white marble with heated floors, which in a ski town is the detail that counts.

Recommended for couples skiing Park City who want the old town's evenings as much as the mountain. The ski valet sees guests out to the Quit 'n Time run, which climbs to the Town Lift about five minutes away on foot; Deer Valley, 3.7 miles off, is the shuttle's job. Main Street is a block downhill. Behind the building, the heated pool is terraced into the hillside among aspens and boulders. Breakfast is included, and the hotel calls it legendary. In the bar nook a portrait of a bewigged gentleman in a red coat hangs over the marble counter, which in a building named after George Washington takes some nerve.