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• Courtesy of Matt Kisiday
• The Gather two-bedroom suite

Until recently, the inn on Willard Street in Burlington was called the Willard Street Inn — rather like the circular church in Richmond is the Old Round Church and the massive museum in Shelburne is, wait for it, the Shelburne Museum.

When Lark Hotels, based in Portsmouth, N.H., bought the inn, it promptly dropped that plodding Vermont habit and renamed the place Blind Tiger. The name comes from a slang term for Prohibition-era speakeasies that dodged the law by charging for an animal attraction and then serving a free alcoholic beverage.

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• Courtesy of Lark Hotels
• Blind Tiger’s west-facing exterior double staircase and polygonal tower

When it opened in May 2023, Blind Tiger Burlington offered a different attraction as a boutique, aesthetic-forward hotel. It aims to provide “an elevated, artful experience,” said Grace Bevelheimer, who comanages the place with Paige Mooradian.

The same goes for its fellow Blind Tigers: The Lark brand includes two in Portland, Maine, and one in Asheville, N.C., all launched in the past five years. Since founding Lark in 2012, Robert Blood has established more than 50 hotels around the country, including four in Stowe: the Tälta, Cady Hill and Field Guide lodges and AWOL.

All four Blind Tigers won a single Michelin Key in 2024, a new rating for the world’s best hotels that the prestigious Michelin Guide added that year to its long-standing star ratings for restaurants.

On a recent sunny morning, Bevelheimer and Mooradian gave Nest a tour of the 1881 mansion’s fully redecorated interior. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the grand former home of a bank executive was designed to show off his wealth, particularly with its giant west-facing exterior double staircase, polygonal tower and 12-foot-high wood-paneled interior ceilings.

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• Courtesy of Matt Kisiday
• The Solarium

We took a seat in the spacious parlor to the right of the entry. The room encapsulates the design aesthetic of Elder & Ash, a firm cofounded by Blood that designs all the Blind Tigers. The palette is neutral, with beiges, browns and blacks in bold patterns and solids. Comfy leather couches and contemporary accent chairs mix with antiques. The ceiling light fixtures are dramatic sculptural statements. Wall art is generous — Bevelheimer described the place as “almost a gallery experience” — and ranges widely from traditional landscapes to contemporary abstracts.

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• Courtesy of Matt Kisiday
• The Diy Bar In The Parlor

The open-plan first floor leads from the parlor past a dark-wood DIY bar stocked with Champagne buckets, glasses of all types, corkscrews — basically, everything you need minus the alcohol — as well as complimentary nonalcoholic drinks. In the pantry opposite the bar, guests can help themselves to canisters of trail mix and chips, pastries baked in-house, and Russell Stover chocolates. (Locally made chocolates are “too expensive,” but frequent Lark visitors do get a Burlington-made NU Chocolat treat, Mooradian said.)

The bar sits where the Willard Street Inn’s front desk used to be: Blind Tiger has none, nor room service. The former breakfast room is a solarium, its checkerboard green-and-white marble floor now populated with living-room furniture groupings in a mix of energetic colors and patterns (a rare departure from the earthy palette). Blind Tiger breakfasts are served buffet-style at a long table in a mostly white and beige room off the solarium.

“It’s more like a guesthouse than a corporate hotel experience. We tell people it’s like an Airbnb,” Bevelheimer said. She and Mooradian lead a staff of three innkeepers, two housekeepers, a maintenance guy and a groundskeeper — a neighbor who stopped by one day and offered to take care of the extensive gardens. The staff leave at 7 p.m., though guests can reach a manager if necessary by calling a dispatching service.

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• Courtesy of Matt Kisiday
• The Coloring Room king bedroom

But Blind Tiger guests are not entirely left on their own. Each room comes with a list of recommendations from an in-the-know Burlingtonian about what to do and where to go in town. Former general manager Shay Langley, now the GM at Tälta, chose these “local hosts” and invited each to stay one night, name the room they stayed in and plan out future guests’ best chances for a fun stay in the city.

Mini Bar is the name Kate Wise, an experienced bartender at Hotel Vermont’s Juniper Bar & Restaurant, gave a spacious below-stairs bedroom and adjacent lounge opening to the west lawn. Her recommendations are a list of seven restaurants and bars in town. Jasmine Parsia, an instructor at Iskra Print Collective, named her east-facing room Current, after her then-new body of work, “Currents.” In addition to restaurants, she recommends people visit BCA Center and Soapbox Gallery.

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• Courtesy of Matt Kisiday
• The Mr. Sun Two-room Suite

Painter Katharine Montstream named hers Coloring Room, after her studio nickname, and handwrote her list, which includes a “best-kept secret”: the hiking trails at Rock Point. Ryan Miller, the lead singer of Guster, wrote an extensively annotated, foldout “All Access Pass” listing museums, shopping and more. He named his room Mr. Sun after one of his songs.

Some host recommendations need updating — Dedalus, the former wine bar and restaurant, was on more than a few lists — but guests can always check with the managers.

“They’ll read that Frankie’s is good [and ask me], ‘Is it?’ And I’ll say, ‘Yes, absolutely,'” Bevelheimer said.

The hotel was about a third full during the tour. Spring is a low season, when the smallest of Blind Tiger’s 14 rooms can go for $200 per night. During high season, which launches with graduation weekends, the largest rooms cost $800 per night. Most have king-size beds, and four have working fireplaces.

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• Courtesy of Matt Kisiday
• The Mini Bar king bedroom

The pattern that emerged after touring many of the rooms was that there is none: Each artwork is unique; no piece of furniture is repeated from room to room; each bath is fitted perfectly to its quirky space. In one, a claw-foot tub clears three surrounding walls by barely an inch. In another, a black bedside table appears to drip dollops of lava. Busy wallpaper patterns are often successfully paired with plaid couches or checked bedspreads, none of them the same.

If guests can’t decide on a room while booking by phone, Mooradian said she asks them a general décor question: “Are you looking for darker or lighter?”

Guests have got it made, whatever the shade.