21c Museum Hotel St Louis

The 21c Museum Hotels, true to their name, are known for bringing museum-quality contemporary art collections and world-class luxury boutique hospitality to cities where neither one can be taken for granted — not places like New York or Los Angeles but Louisville, Kentucky or Bentonville, Arkansas. For their tenth installment they’ve chosen St. Louis, Missouri, and turned a century-old Renaissance Revival–style YMCA building into a 173-room hotel and museum.

In the rooms and suites you’ll find 21c’s signature modernist style, a look that’s stylish enough for design fans but straightforward enough for traditional luxury-hotel guests. Every unit, naturall, comes with its own piece of original art, and all feature upscale details like 50-inch televisions and Malin+Goetz bath products.

They’re among the finest lodgings in town, but 21c doesn’t stop there. Woven throughout the building is 14,000 square feet of exhibition space, and the building’s former life as a YMCA means it already had space for a full-scale athletic club, including an indoor pool and even a running track. The restaurant, Idol Wolf, is inspired by the Spanish tapas tradition, and the Good Press café serves coffee by local St. Louis roasters.