There are hotel suites designed to impress at first glance, and then there are those that make you want to stay awhile. The new Vantage Penthouse Suite at Delamar Greenwich Harbor belongs firmly to the latter category. Set high above the water, with the harbor unfolding beyond its windows and terrace, it has the scale and polish of a grand hotel accommodation but the ease of a beautifully considered home.
That distinction was central to the vision of Delamar founder Charles Mallory and to the work of Bunny Williams and Elizabeth Lawrence, partners in the celebrated design firm Williams Lawrence. The Vantage Penthouse is their first major hotel project together, yet it draws naturally on a body of work devoted to rooms that are elegant without becoming precious and comfortable without losing their sense of occasion.
“The vision for the project by Charles Mallory and his team was to create a chic, modern living experience for anyone staying in the suite,” Williams says. “It was to feel comfortable and elegant, which is what we are known for and also residential. He wanted it to feel like home.”
Home, in this case, occupies more than 1,600 square feet indoors, with two bedrooms and a private rooftop terrace of more than 1,100 square feet. The terrace includes lounge and dining areas for as many as 12 guests, turning the penthouse into something rare: an intimate retreat that can also become the setting for a long lunch, sunset cocktails, or dinner above the harbor. The numbers convey its generosity, but not its mood. That comes from imagining how the rooms will actually be lived in.
Williams pictures a guest returning at the end of the day, pouring a glass of wine at the bar, and settling into the living room or stepping outside to the terrace. Later, dinner might arrive at the round table in front of the window. “Everything was designed for comfortable, elegant living,” she says. It is a simple scene, but it reveals the designers’ priorities: ritual before spectacle, pleasure before performance.
The suite’s name is especially apt. Vantage describes the extraordinary outlook, but it also suggests a point of view.
The harbor is not treated as scenery added at the end; it is the element around which the experience is organized.
“We were always thinking about the harbor view, the light, and the sense of place,” Lawrence says. “We wanted it to feel special and elevated, while still being warm and comfortable, particularly for someone who might be staying for an extended period of time.”
“Everything was designed for comfortable, elegant living.” – Bunny Williams
That sense of place carries more history than the calm water first reveals. Greenwich was settled in 1640, and its shoreline has long shaped the town’s identity. Just farther along Steamboat Road, Indian Harbor Yacht Club was founded in 1889 and became an important center of American sailing; its members and boats have figured prominently in the Newport Bermuda Race and America’s Cup history. Offshore, the first lighthouse on Great Captain Island was completed in 1829. Greenwich Harbor has always been both a threshold and a destination - a place of arrivals, departures, and life organized around the water.
The penthouse responds to that layered setting without resorting to a literal nautical theme. Instead, Williams and Lawrence looked to Greenwich itself: established but energetic, polished but never overly formal. “I think of Greenwich as not only historical, but new and exciting and forward-thinking,” Williams says. “The design combines pieces from the past with contemporary elements.” That tension gives the rooms their character. Nothing feels locked into a single period, and the presence of older pieces prevents the newness of the suite from feeling anonymous.
This is the quiet art of a room that appears to have evolved over time. Furniture and objects from Bunny Williams Home mingle with discoveries from Kenny Ball Antiques, The Antique and Artisan Gallery, Westport Carpets and Rugs, and Schumacher.
Williams and project team member Mallory Hatcher searched the High Point antique market as well as local shops for pieces with the right scale, spirit, and individuality. The result is intended to reward attention: a shape glimpsed across the room, a textile that changes in the afternoon light, an object that seems to carry a story of its own.
Williams and Lawrence have a long history themselves.
Lawrence joined Williams’s firm early in her career, became a partner in 2017, and in 2023 the practice took the name Williams Lawrence. Their collaboration is built on years of shared projects and travel, including stays in hotels around the world. “There is a certain rhythm to our creativity,” Lawrence says, describing the natural back-and-forth between them. In the Vantage Penthouse, that rhythm can be felt in the meeting of generations and sensibilities: Williams’s instinct for patina, proportion, and livability joined with Lawrence’s fresh eye and assured clarity.
The opening also marks a natural next chapter for Delamar Greenwich Harbor. The 82-room hotel has recently refreshed its guestrooms and was named one of the country’s best waterfront hotels in USA Today’s 2026 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards. Its appeal has always been tied to its position at the water’s edge, from the terraces of l’escale to the balconies and fireplaces found throughout the property. The Vantage Penthouse takes that relationship with the harbor to its fullest expression.
Asked where she would spend an uninterrupted evening in the finished suite, Lawrence returns not to its grandest gesture but to a deeply personal one. She would sit at the dining table in the living room, have a quiet meal, and take in the colors of the space against the harbor view. After considering every detail, she says, the pleasure would be in simply watching it all come together and imagining how future guests might live there.
That may be the penthouse’s greatest luxury. It offers scale, privacy, service, and a remarkable terrace, but its real achievement is emotional: it makes room for the unhurried evening. Above a harbor that has welcomed travelers for generations, Vantage offers a new way to arrive - and a very compelling reason not to leave.
“We were always thinking about the harbor view, the light, and the sense of place.” – Elizabeth Lawrence
