The Vibe: Not just an “art hotel”: a platform for exploration, connection and expression: from music to dance, painting to sculpture, film to poetry and beyond. Wisconsin’s coolest hotel.

The Area: Downtown Milwaukee. The Saint Kate sits, appropriately for an arts hotel, smack in the center of two of the performing arts venues that anchor the city, the Milwaukee Repertory Theater and the Pabst, neither of which is more than a two-minute walk from the hotel door. 

The DNA: The Saint Kate, The Arts Hotel (a nondescript corporate 1980s former InterContinental) designed by Stonehill Taylor has a permanent art collection of over 100 pieces features work from the likes of internationally renowned artists such as Damien Hirst, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Mapplethorpe, Candida Hofer, and has an in-house curator Maureen Ragalie. Local owners Greg and Linda Marcus have been longtime lovers and patrons of the arts in the city (Linda is an artist herself), and they wanted a venue that didn’t just claim its artistic bona fides through a single muraled wall or handful of pieces near the check-in desk. Music is almost as omnipresent as the work mounted on the walls with live performances every night of the week, and the hotel’s impressive and eclectic record collection at your service with record players in every room.

Suite-Me-Up: The hotel has five special artist-created guest rooms by local artists, as well as five unique culinary experiences, a 95-seat black box theatre for rotating performances, and multiple gallery and exhibition spaces.

Seen: Hospitality Design

✅ free Wi-Fi • size matters: 219 rooms & suites (28-42m2) (301-452 sq ft) • hotel opened: 2019 (previously InterContinental) • architecture & interior design: Stonehill Taylor • on-site parking (charged) • pets allowed • 24-hour front desk • wheelchair accessible