The Edwin Hotel melds art and hospitality in a beautiful whole
The new Edwin Hotel knocked me back a bit. It’s breathtaking, more beautiful than many museums that I’ve visited around the world. The lobby acts as just that, a mastery of curation featuring what very well may be the largest public display of Chattanooga-produced art on the planet.
It emits a welcoming vibe of comfort and charm. The hotel is spotlessly clean and immaculately furnished.
Chattanooga has long been a city immersed in the arts. The new addition by Marriot’s Autograph Collection highlights this thriving artistic culture and celebrates the local artists that make it possible. Dozens of the city’s creators have pieces in The Edwin’s collection.
The location, smartly rooted at the beginning of Chattanooga’s famous Walnut Street Bridge, provides guests with immediate access to the city’s promenade. The hotel looks as if it belongs right where it is, like the city itself picked up hammer and nail and built it of its own accord. It is personified in locality and purpose. Boutique and elegant, it screams hospitality.
“The hotel should only be able to exist here, it should be exactly like nothing else,” offers the new locations General Manager Greg Bradly as he shows me around. He can’t hide his excitement about what The Edwin has to offer. Every detail is considered, from the subtle to the gargantuan.
“It’s meant to be a place to unwind and reconnect. Our goal is to be just as desirable as a place for locals to staycation.” The whole concept is sensorially driven. The artistry doesn’t stop with the hand-crafted pieces decorating the walls. Fragrances, music, lighting, all integral and intentionally controlled to provide subtle nuances of geniality.
The hotel offers a full-service restaurant headed by Executive Chef Kevin Korman. Whitebird is an ode to Appalachian seasonal dining. Open for all three meals, the restaurant would easily stand alone as a successful and progressive undertaking. In addition, Provisions offers fresh, immensely creative and dynamic takes on café offerings. Whiskey Thief, the hotel’s rooftop bar, is worth a whole write-up on its own.
The hotel rooms themselves proudly live up to the standard evident across the rest of the campus. Elegantly curated rooms leave no stone unturned. Turn down service and other special treatments have raised the bar for Chattanooga’s luxury accommodation world.
Every turn in the hotel unveils a new treasure. A beautiful piece of artwork, a previously unnoticed detail, a new song that brings back an old memory. Of everything here, a stunning installation in the lobby captured my attention the most. A beautiful 3-dimensional piece of artwork named “Onward Murmuration” flows across the lobby wall with cool comforting colors.
A collection of vibrant butterflies, in the shape of the Tennessee Valley, stopped me in my tracks. The piece, designed exclusively for the new hotel by artist Matthew Dutton, drives home the mission of The Edwin. It alone stands as rationalization to visit the new space.
Hospitality in its truest and most honest form stands proud and tall, integrity glaring brightly.