The Huntley Hotel

Altitude and Glass: How Santa Monica's Vertical Hotel Found Its Register

Santa Monica's accommodation tier has always split along a clear axis: beachfront properties that trade on sand access, and refined addresses that trade on perspective. The Huntley Hotel, at 1111 Second Street, belongs to the second category. Its position above street level, a short block from Ocean Avenue, gives the building a sightline that most ground-floor competitors on the same stretch cannot replicate. In a coastal neighbourhood where the Pacific is the primary credential, height becomes a design advantage as much as a physical one.

That spatial logic shapes the hotel's entire architectural proposition. Where properties like Hotel Erwin Venice Beach use rooftop terraces to manufacture the refined view experience, the Huntley's building orientation makes it structural rather than supplementary. The glass-forward facade is less an aesthetic choice than a commitment to the view as primary feature, calibrated to the specific light conditions of the Santa Monica coast, where marine layer in the morning gives way to saturated afternoon light and orange-register sunsets.

Where It Sits in the Santa Monica and Westside Field

Santa Monica's hotel stock covers a wide range. At the institutional end, large beach-adjacent properties serve conference groups and leisure travellers in volume. The Huntley occupies a narrower band: independent in character, design-conscious, and positioned for travellers who want coastal access alongside proximity to the Westside's concentrated restaurant and retail infrastructure. It is not the property for guests whose first priority is stepping directly onto sand; it is the property for guests who want the visual dominance of the ocean without forfeiting the walkability and neighbourhood density that Second Street provides.

Within the broader Los Angeles accommodation field, it sits alongside properties such as Hotel Oceana Santa Monica in occupying a mid-scale independent tier that is distinct from the large-footprint resort model. For comparison outside the coastal corridor, Andaz West Hollywood and Hotel Per La serve travellers whose orientation is toward the city's inland neighbourhoods rather than the beach.

Michelin Selection and What It Signals

The Huntley carries a MICHELIN Selected designation in the Michelin Guide's 2025 Hotels and Stays list. Within Michelin's hotel framework, Selected status sits below the starred and key tiers but represents deliberate editorial inclusion, meaning the property has passed criteria around quality, consistency, and experience rather than simply being listed by default. For the Santa Monica coastal tier, that recognition places the Huntley within a specific cohort of properties that Michelin's inspectors considered worth directing travellers toward.

The designation is meaningful context when comparing it to properties that carry no equivalent third-party validation. It does not position the Huntley against properties like The Beverly Hills Hotel, which operates in a different tier and price register entirely, nor does it compare to destination properties such as Meadowood Napa Valley or Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur, where the property itself is the destination. The Huntley's selection signals a competent, considered property in a location where location does significant work.

The Architectural and Spatial Logic of the Building

Building's design follows a logic common to a specific generation of coastal California hotel architecture: maximise glass surface area, orient primary spaces toward the ocean, and keep interior material palettes calm enough not to compete with the exterior panorama. The result is a property where the spatial experience is most legible from rooms and spaces with unobstructed westward exposure. Travellers selecting room categories should prioritise accordingly, since the architecture's argument depends on that sightline.

This contrasts with properties like Freehand Los Angeles, whose design logic is inward-facing and social, or Gold Diggers, which operates as a cultural venue with rooms attached rather than a hotel with amenity spaces. The Huntley's proposition is quieter and more direct: a well-positioned building that uses its altitude and orientation to deliver a coastal experience that remains accessible from within the room, not only from a dedicated communal terrace.

For travellers whose reference points include properties where architecture is used to frame landscape, the Huntley shares that instinct with places like Amangiri in Canyon Point or Sage Lodge in Pray, though at a significantly different scale and in an urban rather than wilderness context.

Location Intelligence: Santa Monica on Foot

Second Street places the hotel within a five-to-ten minute walk of the Santa Monica Pier, the Third Street Promenade retail corridor, and a concentrated cluster of restaurants that represent the Westside's more casual but considered dining register. The Santa Monica Farmers Market, one of the most-supplied in Southern California and a direct sourcing point for many of the area's restaurants, operates on Wednesday and Saturday mornings on Arizona Avenue, close enough to reach before most hotel breakfast services conclude.

Connectivity to the broader Los Angeles area runs primarily via the Expo Line Metro station at Colorado and 4th, which links Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles and the Mid-City corridor. Travellers planning to cover the city's wider geography, from Silver Lake to Culver City, will find the Metro connection more reliable than driving during peak hours. For further coastal exploration, Hotel June Malibu represents the next tier of coastal accommodation heading north up PCH.

The area's dining infrastructure is covered in detail across our full Los Angeles Area restaurants guide, which maps options across Santa Monica, Venice, and the broader Westside.

Planning a Stay: Practical Notes

The Huntley's address, 1111 Second Street, is direct to reach from Los Angeles International Airport via surface roads or rideshare, with the drive running between 20 and 45 minutes depending on time of day. The hotel does not publish rates or booking methods in publicly available editorial data, so prospective guests should verify current availability and pricing directly through the property or their preferred booking platform. Given that Michelin-recognised properties in coastal Santa Monica tend to operate at higher occupancy during summer months, June through August, and over major holiday weekends, earlier planning is advisable for those periods.

Travellers using the Huntley as a base for wider California exploration have natural extensions: SingleThread Farm Inn in Healdsburg to the north, Four Seasons at The Surf Club in Surfside for a transatlantic comparison point, or Little Palm Island Resort and Spa for a radically different coastal register. Within the Hollywood corridor, Hollywood Volume offers a distinct urban alternative for nights oriented toward the city's entertainment geography.