Society Hill Hotel will reopen this month as a boutique hotel, restaurant, and whiskey bar

When Mike Cangi and Brian Linton set out to remake the Society Hill Hotel, they knew they wanted to honor its history.

After all, the old hotel in the heart of the historic district had so many different lives in its nearly 200 years. It had been everything from an oyster cellar to a Civil War recruiting station to a funky flophouse for longshoremen. But when Cangi and Linton bought the charming 192-year-old brick building at Third and Chestnut Streets early last year, it sat shuttered and fire-damaged. And many of its original touches had long ago been stripped away or plastered over.

So when the best friends and cofounders of United By Blue, the eco-friendly apparel line and coffee retailer they launched in Old City in 2010 and turned into a national brand before selling it in 2022, began renovations in September, they searched for what secrets the old hotel could still conceal.

The bygone details they uncovered, including scraps of ancient wallpaper from the hotel’s rowdy oyster cellar days, and long-hidden subterranean tunnel running under Third Street, hearkened back to the hotel’s colorful past, and shaped their vision.

“We honored what was there,” Cangi said.

On Tuesday, Cangi and Linton said that the hotel was ready to start its latest life. Opening May 31, with 15 rooms, a cafe, whiskey bar, and restaurant, the old-world hotel now gleams with art deco style.

“The concept was always to capture and restore as much of the history of the building as we could and then add our own design influence,” Cangi said.

Leaning into the history, Cangi and Linton took pains to restore the hotel’s most-recognizable features. They had the original neon gas sign rebuilt in its original framing, with all new neon. Though to match the building’s new accents, it will now burn bright gold, instead of faded green. The towering oak bar, built in 1979, has been sanded and stained to shine. The large barroom windows, which once overlooked sidewalks where Founding Fathers strode, remain (even if one had to be temporarily removed so a new 4,000-pound pizza oven could be squeezed inside).

At every step, Cangi said they tried to recreate the building’s charms. Like early on, when prying away splintered and crumbling walls in the basement, they discovered layers of centuries-old wallpapering, including a faded floral pattern they believe adorned the walls when the hotel first opened as an oyster cellar in 1832.

Finding a designer who could exactly recreate it, Cangi and Linton papered the vintage pattern throughout the hotel.

“We leaned heavily into it from a design perspective,” Cangi said.

While demoing the basement, they also discovered a underground passage leading about 15 yards out under Third Street. Though numerous theories persist on its origin, Cangi and Linton say it most likely predates the hotel as part of network of underground tunnels once used to ferry goods to the waterfront. Covering the narrow entrance with glass, they created a porthole for guests to peer into the darkness.

“We made it into a sort of installation,” Cangi said.

The upstairs rooms, where sailors once crashed on the cheap, offer record players, coffee makers, and heated floors. The bunk beds in the family suite are a nod to the longshoremen who bunked in the hotel when it was a flophouse in the 1950s.

Cangi and Linton are confident others share their excitement. Finding Brotherly Love, the Instagram account they launched in September, offering a behind-the-scenes look at the project, has grown to have nearly 140,000 followers, with posts ranging from key design decisions to Cangi and Linton’s battle with Philly’s electrical union.

A community formed around the story of the effort to bring new life to an old hotel, Cangi said.

“We could have done this and been quiet about it and not documented anything,” he said. “But now there’s personality to it.”

Bookings for the Society Hill Hotel can be made through the hotel’s website, societyhillhotel.com, starting May 15. Society Hill Hotel, 301 Chestnut St. Philadelphia, PA 19106.