21C Museum Hotel
21C Museum Hotel in Louisville
What’s the 21c Museum Hotel? It’s currently causing a storm, that’s what – recently voted the best hotel in the US by Conde Nast Traveller’s readers and lauded in turn by the New York Times and Vanity Fair.
21c Gallery
Seen as “one of the most ambitious unions of art and hospitality ever undertaken”, the 90-room boutique hotel plays host to pioneering and innovative, not to mention slightly arresting, interiors – think funky and almost goofy (check out the ubiquitous red penguins!).
It’s part of the new wave trend of cross-purpose venues, mixing art and culture with pleasure and business, and the first museum hotel in North America dedicated solely to collecting and exhibiting contemporary art of the 21st century, be it sculpture, or painting or installation spread across its vast show space.
It’s the brainchild of celebrated Kentucky power couple, art collectors and philanthropists Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, part of their inspired plan to rejuvenate downtown Louisville, especially on West Main Street, once the hub of Louisville with its towering Victorian warehouses and boasting the largest collection of cast iron façades of any town outside New York’s SoHo district.
The ornate buildings, mainly home to bourbon bourbon merchants and vendors, were once the hub of American bourbon but logically fell into rack and ruin when Prohibition was enacted in 1919. It is only just recovering, thanks largely to the 21C and its nearby museums such as the Louisville Slugger, the Muhammad Ali Centre and the Science Center. Hence its new name Museum Row is more appropriate than its old name, Whiskey Row. It’s equally known nowadays as the Iron Quarter.
Even if you don’t stay there, pop down to downtown Louisville’s historic museum district for a look-see – be sure to ask the bellman to check out the toilets, an attraction in itself. Check them out here! LINK HERE http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=Bq8hk-IPWJs&feature=PlayList&p=B65E324D67244FF0&index=0
Its restaurant, Proof on Main, is causing waves, too. Its tables are interspersed with those fabled red penguins and the cooking fuses the homely cooking of the American South with Italian cuisine, using noting but locally sourced, sustainable ingredients, hence the bison burgers and the tasty local Berkshire pork.
Its website’s not bad, too – check it out at www.21cmuseumhotel.com
21c Bedroom
For a taster of the museum, visit http://www.youtube.com/user/21cMuseum#p/a
