10 Hotels With Incredible Industrial Design
These striking hotels combine history and industrial style. Get some mechanical age inspiration for your own home.
The Crawford Hotel, Denver
The Crawford Hotel inside the still-active Denver Union Station, is an 1881 rail station, and a registered National Historic Landmark. The hotel retains the building's rich history while embracing a modern lodging aesthetic. The impressive Beaux Arts-style Great Hall serves as both the hotel’s lobby and the place where travelers wait for the train. This grand and bustling space includes Martini side tables from Restoration Hardware. The clocks are original while the dazzling chandeliers are impeccable recreations.
The Durham, Durham, North Carolina
The Durham is a downtown boutique hotel located in what was once a Home Savings Bank branch. The hotel’s design team, Commune, has maintained the structure’s midcentury modern architectural integrity, preserving the original exterior façade.
Chic Space
Noguchi coffee tables, with their signature curved wood base and freeform glass top, marry sculptural form with functionality at the chic Durham Hotel.
Local Talent
The Silo Hotel, Cape Town, South Africa
Once the tallest building in Sub-Saharan Africa, a grain silo has been converted into The Silo Hotel, a 28-room luxury property opened in 2017. It’s a daring mix of existing infrastructure and whimsical design that mingle with ease.
A Glam Slam
Paper Factory Hotel, Long Island City, NY
Commemorating its paper past, the lobby of New York's Paper Factory Hotel showcases a dramatic spiral staircase with a central column sheathed in hundreds of hardcover books, emanating sculptural appeal.
Factory Town
Hotel Liberty, Offenburg, Germany
In Germany’s Black Forest, a former jail has been revamped, opening as the Hotel Liberty in 2017. With a challenging starting point of crude brickwork and angular beams, the design team at Knoblauch added inviting touches. The delicate glass cube, spanning what was once the prison yard, now houses the light-filled lobby.
The Press Hotel, Portland
Maine’s Press Hotel is located in what was once the printing plant of the Portland Press Herald newspaper. The hotel maintains a connection to its journalistic roots in numerous ways. In guestroom corridors, actual headlines from the Press Herald were used to create newsprint-inspired wall coverings from Koroseal. The headline letters spill from the walls onto custom corridor carpeting from Innovative Carpets.
Hotel Covington, Covington, Kentucky
Hotel Covington was initially a high-end department store. The interior offers a peek into its fashionable past with towering ceilings, concrete columns and a traditional Covington home color palette of aubergine, sage and navy. In homage to Kentucky’s bourbon legacy, local woodworking studio Grainwell has created a spirited large-scale installation using bourbon barrels.
The Asbury Hotel, Asbury Park
The Asbury Hotel on the New Jersey Shore was once the local Salvation Army. Today, it’s a hip beach retreat that has preserved functional elements of its past. The lobby, which doubles as a greenhouse, has conserved the original brick and pillars while adding colorful new furnishings including the inviting pit sofa with a blue velvet base and playful hand-sewn cushions, custom designed by Bonetti/Kozerski Architecture. The practical grey oak coffee table is from Restoration Hardware.
Hotel Emma, San Antonio
Housed in a former brewery, Hotel Emma is a stylish jumble of industrial-meets- refined. The lobby, which was once the engine room, has conscientiously retained the original exhaust fans used to ventilate, the turbine-like ammonia compressor and the king valves, which controlled the flow of ammonia.
Detroit Foundation Hotel, Detroit
Located in the original Detroit Fire Department Headquarters, a circa-1929 Neoclassical building, the Detroit Foundation Hotel opened in 2017. Authentic firehouse features, such as the iconic red arched doors where the fire engines would pass, have been maintained. Original glazed brick tiles seamlessly mesh with modern lighting fixtures by Incite Design.
