Ulysses

The Latrobe Building, a 1912 apartment tower in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood, is now the venue for the unusually named Ulysses, a high-concept, high-design boutique hotel by the hospitality brand ASH NYC. It’s inspired in part by the era of the building’s construction, and, in subtler ways, in part by the contemporaneous novel by James Joyce whose name it shares — as well as the aesthetic sense of the Baltimore-born filmmaker John Waters.

It’s a heady mix for any boutique hotel, especially one in stylistically conservative Baltimore. The result, however, is nothing if not memorable, and while it’s thoroughly unusual it never crosses over into theme-hotel kitsch. Its interior design is eclectic, with pieces sourced from as far afield as India. And while you wouldn’t accuse the rooms of minimalism, they are design-forward in their own slightly baroque way.

Ash Bar is the name of the restaurant, open from breakfast through dinner and beyond, serving classic mid-Atlantic fare accompanied by a substantial menu of drinks. And it’s Bloom’s that’s the more bar-like bar, open from five o’clock until midnight, pouring creative cocktails in a decadent, mirror-strewn space.