Best Court Cottages

About Best Court Cottages

Best Court Cottages began in 1933 as an auto tourist court in Hot Springs, Arkansas, one of the striking survivors from the era when road-tripping families first fanned out across the country by car. A two-year restoration brought it back to life with its vintage bones intact: clean white brick, wooden gables, and the individual garages that once sheltered Model T cars between each unit. Today those garages serve as private sitting rooms, and the cottages sit in the city's Cottage Courts Historic District, part of the fabric that grew up around the thermal springs of Hot Springs National Park just up the hill. The owners run it as a calm, tidy, cabin-like retreat with an on-site cafe, close enough to Bathhouse Row to walk the promenade yet quiet enough to feel like a real escape.

What Best Court Cottages Is Known For

Best Court's quiet is the thing guests come back to again and again. Where most stays this close to a national park hum with traffic and crowds, the cottages hold onto the stillness you would expect from the woods themselves, especially the units toward the back. Much of that comes from the layout the 1933 court left behind: each cottage stands on its own with a private garage bay between it and its neighbor, so there are no shared walls and no hallway sounds. The restoration leaned into that gift rather than papering over it, keeping the white pine, the white brick, and the individual porches, and the result is a genuinely peaceful stay in the middle of a busy spa town.

Amenities

• Restored 1933 auto-court cottages
• Private garage bay per cottage, now a sitting room
• Full kitchen in every cottage
• Front porch with a cedar bench
• On-site Best Cafe and bar
• White pine interiors in the Cottage Courts Historic District

The Room

Each cottage reads like a cozy studio cabin, with a full kitchen, a comfortable living space, and white pine walls that give the interiors a warm, uncluttered calm. The 2019 restoration kept the vintage exterior while updating the insides with quality finishes and modern comforts, and the tasteful, pared-back decor lets the woodwork carry the character. A distinctive touch runs through the property: the original garage bay attached to each cottage, once built to fit a Model T, now finished as a private sitting area, and every unit opens onto its own front porch with a cedar bench.

The Grounds

The cottages line up in the tidy row-and-garage pattern of a classic 1930s auto court, finished in clean white brick with wooden gables and a small central strip of grass between the buildings. Each cottage has a private garage bay that doubles as covered parking and a buffer of privacy from the next unit, along with its own front porch and cedar bench for sitting out in the evening. Parking is free and right at your door, and the setting sits in the walkable Cottage Courts Historic District, with the promenade and Bathhouse Row a short drive up the hill.

The Experience

Staying at Best Court feels like slipping into an older, slower version of the American road trip. You pull the car into your own garage bay, settle onto the porch with its cedar bench, and cook a meal in a full kitchen inside a cottage that has stood on this spot since 1933. Mornings can start next door at the on-site cafe, and the day opens up from there: a short drive to Bathhouse Row to soak or stroll the promenade, the trails and thermal springs of Hot Springs National Park close by, and Oaklawn a few minutes further on. Come night, the back cottages go genuinely quiet, the kind of hush that makes you forget you are in the middle of a busy spa town.

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