A 17,000-square-foot Queen Anne mansion built in 1885 as Emily Baker's summer home — restored, opened to overnight guests, and turned into a five-room boutique with a beloved lakefront restaurant on Wrigley Drive.
"The Queen Anne summer mansion that the Gilded Age would have called restrained — five turret bedrooms, a lakefront verandah, and an evening dining room that does most of the heavy lifting in this part of the lake."
Baker House 1885 stands directly on Wrigley Drive, the lakefront promenade that runs along the southern shore of Geneva Lake at the centre of downtown Lake Geneva. The 17,000-square-foot Queen Anne mansion was built in 1885 by Robert Hall Baker — the founder of what became the Baker Manufacturing Company in Evansville, Wisconsin — as a summer house for his wife Emily, after whom the family and the present hotel still refer to the building. The Bakers used the property as a private summer residence into the early twentieth century, after which it passed through several hands and was used variously as a private home and an event venue. The current restoration as a boutique hotel and restaurant began in 2009, retaining every meaningful original feature — the Queen Anne turret, the wraparound verandah, the period woodwork, the parquet floors, the principal staircase.
There are five overnight rooms on the second floor, each with a private en-suite bathroom and each individually appointed around its position in the original house. The named rooms — Versailles, Bordeaux, the Turret Room — vary in size and configuration; the corner units with the turret bays are the obvious bookings, with lake views directly down Wrigley Drive and out across Geneva Lake. Bed linens are right, the period antiques are the real ones (not reproduction), and the bathrooms have been brought to a contemporary standard while preserving the historic vocabulary. Flat-screen televisions, refrigerators, and complimentary WiFi are universal. The room rate is full breakfast included; the breakfast is served in the main dining room overlooking the lake.
The restaurant is the property's central social proposition. The Baker House restaurant — open to non-resident diners through the week — serves contemporary American with Wisconsin product, around a menu that rotates seasonally and a bar list that includes the property's own house-named bourbons. The verandah dining is the summer headline; the indoor dining room is the year-round version; the bar is the gathering point. The lakefront setting — directly opposite the Riviera ballroom and the Lake Geneva Cruise Line piers — means that an after-dinner walk along Wrigley Drive, the public boardwalk, and around the Riviera handles the rest of the evening without leaving the lakefront.
The Baker House works because of the inversion of scale it represents: most Lake Geneva hotels are large-format resorts (Grand Geneva, The Abbey, the Geneva Inn), and the only directly-on-the-lakefront-in-the-village option at boutique scale. For couples weekends, milestone anniversaries, proposals, and the post-wedding Sunday-brunch crowd, this is the most distinctive small hotel on Geneva Lake — and one of a small number of historically intact Queen Anne mansions of this scale anywhere in the upper Midwest still operating as a hotel. The on-site restaurant and the walk to the Riviera handle the evening; the lake itself handles the morning. Five rooms means it books out for the high-season weekends well in advance.
The most romantic small-hotel booking on Geneva Lake. The Turret Room or the Versailles is the standard anniversary upgrade; dinner on the verandah is the headline meal; an evening on the Lake Geneva Cruise Line schooner (which leaves from the pier opposite the hotel) is the surprise. The five-room scale means service is genuinely personal — a recommendation note appears in the bar list rather than an industrialised welcome.
For proposals the Baker House handles two of the variants comfortably: the verandah dinner (private corner table, lakefront), or the late evening on the pier after a sunset cruise. The hotel accommodates the choreography on request — flowers, ring storage, photography arrangement, the dinner setup. The Turret Room with its bay window is the booking for the night.
A short Midwest honeymoon or honeymoon weekend at the Baker House works for couples who would rather stay in a five-room mansion than a 358-room resort. Pair two or three nights here with a day on the lake, a tee time at Grand Geneva down the road, and a Wrigley Drive dinner; book the Turret Room for the long weekend.
327 Wrigley Drive
Lake Geneva, WI 53147
United States
Chicago O'Hare 90 minutes; Milwaukee 50 minutes; directly opposite the Lake Geneva Cruise Line piers and Riviera ballroom on the lakefront.
5 rooms total (all on 2nd floor)
Standard from USD 320/night
Lake View / Turret rooms from USD 420
Breakfast included
2-night minimum on summer weekends
Check-in: 4:00 PM
Check-out: 11:00 AM
Mansion built 1885
Restored as hotel 2009; ongoing refurbishment
Baker House restaurant + bar
Wraparound lakefront verandah
Queen Anne turret + period interiors
Free WiFi; flat-screen TVs
Walk to Riviera + cruise piers
Pet-friendly with notice
From USD 320/night. With only five rooms, summer Saturdays book five to six months ahead; the Turret Room books first. October weekends are the value window with the lakefront colour intact and the restaurant still on summer hours.
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