Beyond the Lobby: A Collector’s Journey Through the Delamar

From monumental bronzes to bespoke wallpapers and contemporary installations, each Delamar Hotel becomes a living gallery—honoring maritime legacy, celebrating modern artistry, and inviting guests to discover beauty in every detail.

Charles Mallory has an eye for art and classic cars, which he collects, and even women’s compacts, which he has branded.

But what he primarily has an eye for and on is Connecticut’s Delamar Hotel Collection, which he founded in 2000, serving as owner and CEO. Over the winter, the Delamar Mystic joined Delamar hotels in Greenwich, Southport, West Hartford, and Traverse City, Michigan, as the collection marks its 25^th anniversary. Adding to the celebration, the July 1 opening of the Delamar Westport, while a sister property in the town, The Inn at Longshore, continues to undergo an $8 million renovation and expansion. 

Mallory has enhanced these spaces, individual in their blend of elegance and comfort, with works from his art collection as well as artistic collaborations. Perhaps nowhere is this more dramatically apparent than at the Delamar Mystic, which opened this past February and blends Mallory’s maritime heritage with modern amenities. 

Arriving at the hotel, guests are greeted by Bessie Potter Vonnoh’s “Life and Love Springs From the Sea,” a monumental bronze sculpture by the Old Lyme, Connecticut, artist, one of the leading female sculptors of her day. Commissioned in 1935, the piece embodies Vonnoh’s lifelong mission to “look for beauty in the everyday world, to catch the joy and swing of modern American life,” as she said in a 1925 interview. 

Inside, a welcome from Mallory’s ancestors awaits. The present Charles Mallory comes from a long line of shipbuilders. Patriarch Charles Mallory arrived on Mystic’s shores in 1816, using a sailmaking apprenticeship as an entrée into building and investing in merchant ships. His son, Charles Henry, mixed the growing family business with a love for yachting, racing in the 1850s.

At Mystic, the founding Mallorys’ stately portraits meet you, along with a reef-like Timorous Beasties wallpaper that has a bespoke crab and lobster motif. Oil paintings and watercolors of 19^th-century ships and other nautical scenes from Mallory’s art collection festoon guest rooms and corridors, which include Schumacher wallpapers in blues and emerald green. Other touches, nodding to Mystic’s and the Mallorys’ global trade routes, are quirkier. An archival world map adorns the lobby ceiling while the elevator’s mosaic floor reproduces the face of a compass.

Custom, Victorian-tiered chandeliers of shimmering blue-green prisms in the lobby, as well as the sconces in the hotel’s La Plage Restaurant & Oyster Bar, echo a time when prisms refracted daylight on ships to illuminate life below deck. A trumeau mirror, crowned with a maritime painting, hangs above the fireplace in the lobby – the setting for the Juniper Books installation, whose spines form a whaling ship and a map of Mystic Seaport.

“My grandfather, great-uncle, and father were all presidents of Mystic Seaport Museum, so this is particularly personal for me,” Mallory said in a statement. “I wanted the hotel to feel like it belonged to both the past and the present. Think of it as a respectful handshake between centuries.”

The artworks in the other hotels also reflect their unique characters. Traditional, representational paintings in the Delamar Greenwich Harbor and its L’escale restaurant bar capture the old-world, Mediterranean grace of the surroundings. Contemporary works of marine life and comforting decorative objects – books, globes, and vases – underscore the Delamar Southport’s casual seaside charm. 

Artistic collaborations help define two other properties. The Delamar Westport features the work of fashion and interior designer – and Westport resident – Christian Siriano, who brings his creativity to the hotel’s lobby and the “Siriano Suites,” three suites that include the 3,000-square-foot presidential suite.

Meanwhile, at the Delamar West Hartford, the New Britain Museum of American Art provides a rotating selection of works for exhibit in partnership with the Delamar Hotel Collection. Among the works that have been displayed there is Johnny Swing’s “Fortune Cookie Bench,” made of quarters.

“I’m not Steve Wynn,” Mallory told the Hartford Courant’s Rand Richards Cooper. “I can’t fund my own hotel museum. So it’s terrific to have this relationship.”