Famed Fire Island Hotel Hits the Market for $11M

Another Fire Island hospitality oasis is on the market, the latest of several properties to go up for sale in the seasonal resort community.

The Belvedere Guest House for Men is available for $10.9 million, Newsday reported. The hotel at 33 Bayview Walk includes 33 hotel rooms and 200 feet of frontage on the bay. Twenty of the suites have private bathrooms — those in economy rooms have to share — and there’s a pool, hot tub and plenty of patios and decks.

The Venetian-style hotel has been operating for nearly 70 years. Julian Eberhardt has been in charge since 2018.

Mitch Muroff of Muroff Hospitality has the listing. It was previously on the market in 2003, when it was listed for $4.5 million.

Julian’s father, John Eberhardt, built the hotel in 1957 and expanded it with a partner, Craig Eberhardt. They added jacuzzis, balconies and private rooms, though the property’s most notable feature is the European sensibility, complete with antiques and expansive murals.

One longtime visitor told Newsday that the property “exemplified the over-the-top, Baroque, high style of the ‘queens’ sitting around having high tea. Men saw it as an oasis from the homophobic environment back then.”

Fire Island — particularly its Cherry Grove and Pines sections — is famously a mecca for the LGBTQ+ community, welcoming more than 100,000 visitors every summer, according to Muroff.

Several prominent Fire Island properties have traded hands in recent years.

Tristan Schukraft’s Tryst Hospitality purchased a majority of the Fire Island Pines Resort commercial district last year, spanning 10 buildings. The sale included the famous Pavilion nightclub, a hotel, two restaurants, a pool deck, boat docks and more spanning 320 feet of Fire Island Pines’ main pedestrian walkway.

And in 2022, Florida-based hospitality firm Bowline Hospitality Group purchased the Ice Palace resort on Fire Island for $7.2 million. That sale included the Ice Palace nightclub and the 63-room Grove Hotel, the largest on the island.

— Holden Walter-Warner