An office building checked back in: what Savannah’s Recess hotel teaches owners about conversions
Savannah got a new hotel this month that is more than 110 years old. Recess Hotel & Club turned a Beaux-Arts office building back into what it was built to be, and the smartest part of the job is not the architecture. It is the room count.
Recess opened in the Historic District inside the Manger Building, which went up as the Hotel Savannah in 1912 and 1913. It became the Manger Hotel in 1954. Hotel use ended in 1977, and the building spent the following decades as offices. New York developer Left Lane, which opened Hotel Bardo across town in 2024, has now brought it back as the flagship of its new Recess brand.
A landmark worth keeping
The Manger was among Savannah’s first skyscrapers, designed by architect W. L. Stoddart with tall arched windows, a decorative cornice and a three-part facade that was unusual for the city when it opened. Left Lane and design firm Atelier Pond kept the bones and the old details, including original mosaic tile floors, antique mirrors and vintage push-button light switches, then layered modern finishes and bright color on top. Twelve stories up, the rooftop bar wraps around what the developer says is the tallest rooftop pool in Savannah.
The room mix is the lesson
The 221 keys break down as 136 standard guest rooms, 23 suites and 62 bunk rooms.
That last number is what owners should study. Old office floors rarely divide cleanly into standard hotel rooms. Window spacing, column grids and deep floor plates leave odd leftover space. Bunk rooms turn awkward interior square footage into sellable keys, and they sell to groups, wedding parties and friends traveling together, demand a downtown Savannah hotel actually gets. More keys from the same building means more revenue against the same land cost and the same historic facade.
Revenue that isn’t a room
Recess also runs a private membership club, a 6,500-square-foot event hall across two floors, a garden-style conservatory and Left Lane’s wellness concept, Saltgrass, in the space that once held the Savannah Health Club. Those spaces sell to locals on weeknights, when tourists are thin.
Why owners should care now
Across the country, older office buildings are worth less than they were five years ago, and a hotel conversion is one of the few uses that can pay for a historic restoration. Texas owners should be watching. Downtown Houston, Dallas and San Antonio all have prewar office stock with the same tall windows and the same trouble finding tenants.
The takeaway: a conversion only works if the building can produce enough keys and enough non-room revenue to cover the restoration budget. Recess did it with bunk rooms and a membership club. Before you buy an old office building for a hotel, count the keys you can actually fit, and find your version of the bunk room.
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