21c Museum Hotel, Louisville

On the face of it, Louisville, Kentucky seems about the unlikeliest place for a hotel like the 21c. Not just an inspired modern boutique hotel, but a 9,000-square-foot contemporary art gallery as well, it’s the sort of place that would turn heads even in New York or Los Angeles — in Louisville, where the Midwest gives way to the South, it’s positively shocking. But this is a post-industrial city that’s reinvented itself, and while some cities hitch their renewal wagons to sports teams or suburban office parks, Louisville is going the arts-and-culture route.

The 21c belongs to locals Steve Wilson and his wife Laura Lee Brown, whose foundation owns the art collection that fills the hotel’s gallery. The couple brought in the New York-based architect Deborah Berke, whose portfolio, fittingly, includes both Yale’s new art school and the Scottsdale Mondrian hotel. And while the boutique hotels in many smaller provincial cities are tepid affairs, offering half-hearted gestures in the direction of modern design and taking care not to alienate the traditionalists, the 21c, by contrast, has left all caution behind.

Rooms are as urbane as they come, packed with artworks, custom-designed furnishings and high-tech amenities like 42-inch LCD televisions. Proof On Main, the hotel’s restaurant, brings a taste of sophistication to the downtown dining scene, and the museum, of course, is one of the neighborhood’s star attractions. Louisville may have a way to go before it’s the new Manhattan, but it’s clear that the 21c is the start of something, drawing art-savvy travelers who, until recently, would have been hard pressed to imagine a reason to visit Kentucky — but who, once there, may find its traditional charms (who could say no to a wee dram of bourbon, watching the races at Churchill Downs) impossible to resist.