Mohonk Mountain House’s Catskills spa gets a refresh

With a vibe that’s Victorian castle meets forest wonderland, the Mohonk Mountain House was founded in 1869 by the Smiley family, promising guests good health through active engagement with nature — just 90 miles north of New York City.

To discourage indoor idleness, wine was prohibited until 1969, and today’s rooms still don’t offer televisions.

But the bucolic 1,200-acre property — which is dotted with trails, bisected by a 16.5-acre lake and host to a horse barn and thriving garden — lends itself to a sense of escape.

And now its spa is catching up, debuting a renovation by architect Robert D. Henry, its first refresh since opening 17 years ago.

In keeping with Mohonk’s understated sensibility, Henry did not radically alter what was already so appealing in the 30,000-square-foot space: The heated mineral pool remains, as do the fireplace lounge and multiple verandas with picture windows framing the Catskill mountains.

But the renovation freshened the interiors, updated the furniture and added cozy amenities, like its artisan-woven spa slippers.

Most exciting, Henry and the resort’s on-site “rustic crew” built an elegant 220-square-foot outdoor treatment room called the Lakeview Summerhouse, where the spa offers massages as well as yoga classes and mindfulness sessions (services from $300).

Designed to mimic the 120 open-air “summer house” structures lining the property’s many hiking trails, the cedar treatment room feels like a pristine treehouse. The “Lakeview Summerhouse Massage” takes advantage of the vista, with hand and foot treatments performed on the porch overlooking the lake, followed by dry brushing and deep tissue or Swedish massage in the curtained, al fresco space.

The spa is also introducing an indoor contrast bathing service: a circulation-boosting session in a new treatment room that has its own shower (for quick bursts of cold water) and steam room (for the contrasting warmth).

The treatment also includes a massage with rosemary, black pepper and eucalyptus essential oils. The only facility in the Northeast to offer the Swissline by Dermalab skin-care line, the spa focuses on touch, with facialists eschewing machinery and instead providing extensive massage to sculpt and tone the face.

As today’s wellness industry buzzes with concepts like “sound bathing” and “rewilding,” the Spa at Mohonk Mountain House feels like an authentic reflection of its roots as a 19th-century wellness center, on a property the United Nations has cited for “leadership and commitment to the protection and enhancement of the environment.”

Nina Smiley, a Princeton-trained psychologist and fourth-generation member of the resort’s founding family, has been teaching and writing about mindfulness for more than 30 years. Her sessions (in the new Lakeview Summerhouse, on the property’s trails or in one of its private parlor rooms) make meditation accessible to daily life.

Smiley teaches in three-minute mindfulness “chunks,” fortifying New Yorkers with breathing techniques and a sense of calm that ideally extends all the way from the Hudson Valley to the subway.