Photography by Kenneth Hayden (Louisville, KY).

One of the ongoing themes of this blog, I hope, will be the the current state of boutique hotels (i.e. what are they good for?). Having perhaps hit rock bottom already on the very first try, I'm trying to make it a point during my travels to stay at places that attempt to reflect their city's true character. (It's my little rebellion against the motel parks ringing most airports, although asking whether an airport Sheraton or Hyatt can have a soul -- like the Sheraton Charles de Gaulle or Grand Hyatt DFW -- is also a question worth asking.)

Louisville's entry in the boutique hotel sweepstakes is the 21C Museum Hotel, now a year old. Backed by investors and heavy-duty contemporary art collectors Steve Wilson and Laure Lee Brown (an heiress to the Brown-Forman bourbon fortune), the hotel has been cobbled together from five buildings on Louisville's Main Street, including a former tobacco bank and a whiskey warehouse. The hotel is stuffed with art -- literally hundreds of pieces from the owners' personal collection, spilling over from the galleries into the lobby and into rooms (a video installation was dancing across my flat-screen when I arrived.) The hotel's mascots (as seen above) are the plastic red penguins produced by the Crackling Art Group. They lurk inside the hotel and out, occasionally appearing in guest rooms (in the bed or in the shower), in a sort of postmodern take on The Peabody's ducks in Memphis.

The rooms are equipped with the requisite flat screens and iPod docks (the concierge calls before your visit to ask what music they should stock your room's iPod with -- I opted for bluegrass), along with Malin & Goetz toiletries I gleefully swiped (including the peppermint soap). In short, I love the place, right down to the bar that mixes a mint julep with so much simple syrup in it that was drunk before I even noticed. As a boutique hotel, the 21C just works -- local owners, local flavor, raison d'etre that's unique and organic, all of which means that it will soon be wrapped up with a tidy bow and exported to other cities that have nothing in common with Louisville. I'm not kidding -- according to the hotel's director of sales and marketing, aspiring hoteliers in Austin, Cincinnati, Chicago and Orlando (Orlando?!) have already called about franchising the model, which would theoretically include traveling exhibitions between the various hotels.

Read more of Greg Lindsay's travel blog, IN TRANSIT.