5 Hotels That Are Remaking Louisville
Kentucky’s largest city is in the midst of a hotel boom—with both renovations and new builds sprouting up.
One hundred years ago, the Brown Hotel opened in Louisville, Kentucky, resplendent with gilded ceilings and encrusted walls in a purpose-built Georgian Revival building that’s since been added to the national register. It would be nearly 85 years before another Louisville hostelry gained as much attention: the 21c Museum Hotel. An adaptive reuse of several 19th-century warehouses that featured interiors by architect and designer Deborah Berke and art everywhere, the property kicked off a boom that saw about 2,500 rooms added to the mix between 2014 and 2018.
Now, post-COVID, this city of 600,000—to which 19 million visitors come each year—is in the midst of another hotel renaissance, adding 25 properties to downtown and to neighborhoods like Highlands and NuLu since 2021 and through the next few years. Here, we look at a handful of new properties populating the southern city.
