No, the name of the hotel has nothing to do with Anchorage, Alaska. Instead, it is a reference to the Inn’s location near Charleston’s harbor, and the name is also meant to evoke the safe, inviting quality of a quiet anchorage. The Anchorage Inn is small, just seventeen rooms  plus two suites, but with a great deal of style and character. The building itself has a lot of history, having once been a cotton warehouse around eighteen forty, and is decorated in reproduction pieces meant to evoke the elegance of Charleston’s storied past. Some familiar amenities are missing (there’s no pool, for example), but they do have fourteen foot ceilings and a wine and cheese reception every evening.

Other amenities include complimentary hot breakfasts, sherry in the evenings, turn down service, complimentary high speed Internet access, valet laundry service during the week, concierge service, cable TV, and direct dial phones. There’s a business center in the lobby, and an history tour picks up from the front door. There’s no smoking (they’re quite serious about this). And, despite occasional listings to the contrary, they do not accept pets.

Guests like the place—the vast majority of reviews are raves, and the few that are not present no particular pattern. For every one person who complains about the service, for example, there are three or for who specifically praise it. In addition to the friendly service and nice breakfast, the hotel’s location wins a great deal of praise.  If you stay here, you’ll find yourself first in the middle of a cluster of fine restaurants, six within onlt a block or two. These include Slightly North of Broad (the acronym, S.N.O.B., does not appear to be a coincidence, but no actual snobbery would describe itself so boldly), High Cotton, Magnolias, Cypress, McCrady’s, and Husk. A slightly longer walk takes you in range of any number of historical sites, from the proud (the Dock Street Theater, which was the first theater built in America and is actually still used as a theater) to the infamous (the Old Slave Mart Museum actually was once a slave market). Other notable destinations include the Gibbes Museum of Art, which houses over ten thousand pieces, mostly with a local or regional connection, the Confederate Museum, and White Point Gardens, a beautiful little park near the water. On second thought, perhaps you should bring a bike, so you can get to all these places. Charleston is a lovely city for biking, we hear.

The Anchorage Hotel is happy to host events of various kinds, from weddings to meeting, but their website does not go into detail on what services specifically they offer. They do offer two interesting-looking packages. Of course, one of them is a romantic retreat, and of course it does include sparkling wine and chocolate covered strawberries (not that there’s anything boring about chocolate covered strawberries!) but the sixty minute couple’s massage is an unusual and attractive addition, as are the tickets to a group carriage tour. The Taste of History package is broadly similar, but you get two tickets for the Fort Sumter Tour and the “Now and Then” book about Charlestion, instead of strawberries and a couple’s massage. Either way, you get all the amenities of an ordinary stay at the Anchorage Hotel, plus the thematically related extras.

We aren’t sure why a visitor to Charleston might need a “safe harbor” particularly, since Charleston does not seem especially dangerous as cities go, but the Anchorage Inn certainly seems an enjoyable little refuge. It’s not the most elaborate or luxurious hotel on the planet, but it has  the one thing all luxurious hotels should; a distinctive, unpretentious, charm.

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