A hotel built to display art

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With New York City-style loft rooms, large factory casement windows and an outdoor patio lined with decades-old steel railway canopies, the 21c Museum Hotel set to open downtown this summer is not just unique for Oklahoma, but also is the only hotel opening in a former Ford Model T assembly plant.

During a tour this week, Steve Wilson, founder of Louisville, Ken.-based 21c Museum Hotels, met with staff, reviewed renovation progress and was happy with what he saw.

“This building was exciting from the moment we first toured it,” Wilson said. “The windows are giant and there wasn't a case of needing to tear up the walls and figure out what was there. The rooms are unique even to 21c — they are spacious, very high ceilings, large windows, and a lot of light coming into each hall.”

The opening of the 21c Museum Hotel at 900 W Main will coincide with the former assembly plant's centennial. The $51.5 million redevelopment into a 134-room hotel and contemporary art gallery began in late 2014 and is part of an expansion of the chain that was started a decade ago by Wilson and wife Laura Lee Brown, both preservationists and art collectors with deep ties to Louisville.

The hotels are like nothing else in the country in that they are hotels built around a real contemporary art gallery with programming, curated exhibits and shows.

Wilson admits he and Brown started with the passion to share their art and spur development in a forgotten part of downtown Louisville that is home 1800s-era tobacco and bourbon warehouses.

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