A 1915 mansion turned 30-room lakeside inn on the private 640-acre Lake Toxaway, the romantic small-property answer to Old Edwards on the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau, with the only swimmable lake in the region as its front yard.
"The lake is private, the mansion is a hundred and ten years old, and the porch overlooks more water than the entire town of Cashiers. If you cannot find a romantic weekend at Greystone, the problem is not the property."
Greystone began life in 1915 as the summer home of Lucy Armstrong Moltz, a Savannah heiress who arrived at Lake Toxaway in a railroad car and decided to stay. The house she built, a six-floor granite and timber mansion on a quiet peninsula, was the most ambitious private residence in the Blue Ridge of its era. After Moltz's death the property cycled through a string of owners before its conversion to an inn in the 1980s; a 2018 restoration under owners Geoffrey and Marianne Ellis returned the bones to form and added the contemporary Hillmont wing on the same peninsula. The result is a 30-room hotel that operates more like a country house than a resort, with the original mansion's drawing room, library, and screened porches still the social heart of the property.
The room product is split between the historic Mansion (the original Moltz house, eight rooms across four storeys, lake views, gas fireplaces, period furnishings restored rather than reinvented) and the newer Hillmont building (sixteen rooms with separate ground-level entrances, larger floor plates, screened decks with hammocks, the better choice for couples who prefer a fully contemporary bathroom). Two further suites sit above the spa with private screened porches. Every category looks at the lake; there is no inland room on the property. Bathrooms in the Hillmont were rebuilt in 2018 to a current spec, with deep tubs and walk-in showers; Mansion rooms retain the original layout with thoughtful contemporary upgrades.
Dining is the inn's quiet star. The Lakeside Dining Room runs a fixed four-course Modern American menu nightly under executive chef Nathan Allen, with most produce from regional farms and a wine list that leans Old World rather than Napa. The screened porch is set for breakfast and lunch in warm months. The library lounge, with its working stone fireplace, doubles as the cocktail room and is the property's evening anchor. Service across the property is the genuinely Southern article, gracious, attentive, never theatrical, with a roughly one-to-one staff-to-guest ratio.
What separates Greystone from every other inn on the Plateau is the lake itself. Lake Toxaway is a privately owned 640-acre lake, the largest in the North Carolina mountains, and Greystone holds the only public lakefront lodging on it. The inn's dock runs daily pontoon cruises (every guest, included), and rents kayaks, paddleboards, and the property's elegant restored 1929 wooden sport boat for sunset rides. Beyond the water, there is a small spa, two clay tennis courts, croquet, pickleball, hiking trails into Gorges State Park, and golf privileges at the adjacent Lake Toxaway Country Club. Greystone is a Historic Hotels of America member and a Relais and Chateaux-adjacent property in operational style, if not in formal affiliation.
For a Southern Appalachian honeymoon at the smaller, quieter end of the scale, Greystone is the clearer booking than either Old Edwards or High Hampton. Book a Mansion lake-view room for the historic frame; book a Hillmont with a screened porch hammock for full privacy. The included sunset pontoon ride, the four-course dining room, and a lake that closes to outside boat traffic at dusk add up to a genuinely uninterrupted week.
An anniversary weekend here is the Plateau's most reliable answer for couples who have already done the bigger resorts. The mansion drawing room, the fire-lit library, the boathouse dock at sunset, all of it scales to two without ever feeling under-attended. Private dinners can be arranged on the upper porch with the lake at the foot of the lawn, and the inn's restored 1929 wooden boat takes anniversary couples out at golden hour by request.
The spa is small (two treatment rooms, a couples' suite, a sauna) and intentionally so. Pair it with daily paddleboard or kayak time on the lake, hiking into Gorges State Park to the Rainbow Falls and Turtleback Falls trails, and the inn's morning yoga programme on the lakefront lawn for one of the better quiet wellness weeks in the southeastern mountains. Cell service is patchy; the digital detox is not advertised but is, in practice, total.
220 Greystone Lane
Lake Toxaway, NC 28747
United States
17 miles east of Cashiers village; 50 miles southwest of Asheville Regional Airport (AVL)
30 rooms and suites
Mansion rooms from $312/night
Hillmont rooms from $395/night
Spa Suites from $650/night
Lakeside Cottage to $1,200/night
Check-in: 4:00 PM
Check-out: 11:00 AM
Original mansion built 1915; 2018 restoration; Historic Hotels of America member
Private 640-acre Lake Toxaway frontage
Included sunset pontoon cruise
Restored 1929 wooden sport boat
Lakeside Dining Room (four-course nightly)
Small spa, two clay tennis courts, golf privileges
Complimentary WiFi throughout
From $312/night. The Mansion lake-view rooms and the Lakeside Cottage book three to four months ahead for October leaf season and Memorial Day to Labour Day; six weeks ahead for shoulder months.
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Sign up for deal alerts: fifth night free offers, resort credits, and the upgrade windows we would book ourselves.