Six hotels sit here, in two groups. What they have in common is that the building is the reason to look: either it was raised for another trade and later turned over to guests, or the architecture and the art were written into the brief before the plan existed. Hotels that simply hang pictures in a corridor are not in this section.
01
THE BUILDING HAD A TRADE
What they share
All three opened inside a building that was put up for work of another kind, and the older purpose is still visible in the rooms.
Where they differ
The trades differ: barrels, beer, and a monastic church, and each conversion kept a different amount of the original interior on show.
3 hotels in this group
Hotel 01
Brooklyn, New York · USA
Wythe Hotel
A 1901 cooperage on the Williamsburg waterfront, with Manhattan standing in the windows
Wythe Hotel, Brooklyn · the 1901 cooperage from the street
The picture
The building is a brick barrel factory from 1901, standing a block back from the East River in Williamsburg. The original pine beams carry the floors, and the brick walls were left much as they were found, patched rather than smoothed. A newer storey sits on top in glass and dark metal, set back from the old parapet. Across the water, the Manhattan skyline fills the north and west windows.
Shared with the group
The cooperage was built to hold machinery, not guests, and the conversion kept that frame in plain sight: pine posts, mill floors, and window openings sized for a factory rather than for a bedroom. Nothing about the shell was made for sleeping.
Its own
It is the only one of the three whose earlier trade was tied to a working port, and the only one where the view across the river belongs to a different part of the same city.
Getting there
Subway to Bedford Avenue or the East River ferry; from either airport allow a long taxi or transit ride.
Checked · March 2026
Hotel 02
San Antonio, Texas · USA
Hotel Emma
The brewhouse of a nineteenth-century brewery on the river, its cast iron machinery still standing indoors
Hotel Emma, San Antonio · brewhouse machinery kept in place
The picture
The hotel occupies the brewhouse of the Pearl Brewery, built in the late nineteenth century in brick with tall arched windows. Cast iron tanks, pipework and riveted columns were kept where they stood, and the new rooms were fitted around them. Outside, the Pearl district carries on with shops and a market hall, and the San Antonio River Walk passes along the bank a short way below.
Shared with the group
Beer was made in this room, and the equipment that made it was never taken out. The plan of the hotel bends around tanks and columns that a brewer of the period would still recognise.
Its own
Of the three it is the one where the old machinery stayed inside as machinery, standing in the lobby and the bar rather than reduced to a wall surface or a bare structural frame. That choice sets the tone of the whole ground floor.
Getting there
The Pearl district sits north of downtown San Antonio; a car or a short taxi ride is the usual way in from the airport.
Checked · March 2026
Hotel 03
Maastricht · Netherlands
Kruisherenhotel
A fifteenth-century crusader church and cloister with a hotel built inside the nave
Kruisherenhotel, Maastricht · the nave with its inserted floors
The picture
The church of the Crosier monastery dates from the fifteenth century: Gothic stone, ribbed vaults, tall windows along both sides. Inside, a copper tunnel cuts through the west end and carries visitors up to a mezzanine that stands clear of the walls. The monastery buildings alongside hold the guest rooms. All of it sits in the old centre of Maastricht, a short walk from the Vrijthof.
Shared with the group
Prayer, not lodging, was the reason this building went up, and the conversion argues with none of it. The nave is still one room, and the new floors stand inside it without touching the walls.
Its own
It is the only one of the three that was never industrial, and the only one where the inserted structure is free-standing, so the original interior could in principle be emptied out again. The church would still read as a church.
Getting there
Maastricht has its own station with trains from Amsterdam and Liège; the centre is walkable and a car is more trouble than help.
Checked · February 2026
02
THE DESIGN CAME WITH THE PLAN
What they share
In each of these three the architecture and the art were part of the brief, agreed before the first guest room was ever drawn.
Where they differ
One is a single signed building, one divides the commission floor by floor, and one runs a public museum through its ground level.
3 hotels in this group
Hotel 04
Elciego, Rioja · Spain
Hotel Marqués de Riscal
Frank Gehry titanium ribbons folded above an 1858 winery in the Rioja vineyards
Marqués de Riscal, Elciego · the titanium roof above the cellars
The picture
The guest building is a Gehry design: bent ribbons of titanium in pink, gold and silver, lifted on stone piers above the older winery. The 1858 cellars stand beside it in cut sandstone, low and rectangular. Around them the vineyards of Elciego run up to the ridge of the Sierra de Cantabria, and the village church tower rises just north of the site.
Shared with the group
The commission began with the building. An architect was asked for a form first, and the guest rooms were arranged inside that form afterwards, which is why the outline reads from the vineyard road long before the entrance does.
Its own
Alone in this group it stands not in a city but on a working wine estate, and the hotel shares its ground with cellars that were in use more than a century before it was drawn.
Getting there
Elciego is about an hour by road from Bilbao or Vitoria-Gasteiz; a car is needed, and vineyard work follows the season.
Checked · February 2026
Hotel 05
Madrid · Spain
Hotel Puerta América
A Madrid hotel where every guest floor was handed to a different architectural practice
Puerta América, Madrid · one floor, one practice
The picture
From the avenue the block reads as a plain slab with a printed facade, standing on Avenida de América in the north-east of Madrid. The interest is inside: each guest floor was given to a separate practice, so corridors, doors, lighting and room shapes change completely as the lift passes from one level to the next. The car park and the roof were treated as design work in the same way.
Shared with the group
Here the design brief came before the rooms in the most literal form available. The commission was written as a list of floors, and each floor was drawn by a different studio working to its own idea.
Its own
It is the only one of the three where the design changes inside the same building, so two guests in one hotel can sleep in rooms that share nothing except their dimensions. The lift becomes the one constant in the building.
Getting there
Metro line 4 to Avenida de América, or a straight run in from Barajas airport; the district is residential rather than central.
Checked · February 2026
Hotel 06
Louisville, Kentucky · USA
21c Museum Hotel Louisville
A contemporary art museum and a hotel sharing one row of Main Street warehouses
21c Museum Hotel, Louisville · warehouse fronts on Main Street
The picture
Five nineteenth-century warehouses on West Main Street were joined behind their cast iron fronts. The ground level holds galleries of contemporary art, open to the street and not only to guests, with changing exhibitions and works placed along corridors and stairs. Above them the guest rooms occupy the upper floors of the same brick buildings. The Ohio River runs a couple of blocks north of the door.
Shared with the group
The art programme was not decoration added at the end. A museum and a hotel were planned as one project, and the exhibition floor was given the ground level, which is the part of a hotel that the public usually never enters.
Its own
It is the only one here that keeps a public museum, free to enter and staffed by curators, so a good share of the people moving through the ground floor are not staying upstairs at all.
Getting there
West Main Street in downtown Louisville, walkable from the riverfront; the airport is a short drive to the south.
Checked · March 2026
Groups are our own reading, not an official classification: no hotel belongs to one by any rule but ours. Everything else comes from published material, re-read by hand, with the month of that reading at the end of each entry.
