About Roundhouse Suites

A Unique Stay

Historic Architecture Meets Modern Living

Our History

The Roundhouse was built between 1868 and 1873 by the Roxbury Gas Light Company as a gasholder house — a storage tank for the coal gas that lit Boston's street lamps and homes. In 1905, Roxbury Gas Light merged into Boston Consolidated Gas Company, gasholder operations ceased, and the surrounding gasworks was demolished the following year, with the building converted to office space. Over the next century, the resilient round building took on a series of new lives — a motion picture exhibition space in the 1920s, a light manufacturing plant in the 1930s, and an industrial warehouse into the 1980s — before sitting vacant through the 1990s. In 2001, the landmark was reborn as an all-suite hotel, and today it stands as one of only two surviving gasholder houses in Boston.

Why Round?

Inside these brick walls once floated a giant iron tank, open at the bottom and resting in a pool of water like an upside-down glass. Coal gas was pumped underneath, and the water sealed it in — as gas flowed in, the tank rose; as Boston drew gas to light its lamps each evening, it gently sank. The tank's own weight pressed the gas through mains across the city, no pumps required. The tank had to be round to float and slide freely, and the building was built round around it to keep the water seal from freezing in New England winters. Our hotel's distinctive shape isn't an architectural flourish — it's the fossil of the machine that once lived inside. Step inside today and you'll find spacious suites where industry once hummed — a one-of-a-kind place to stay in a city full of history.