The Heywood Hotel

If a hotelier is going to be a little obsessive about keeping things local — hanging the work of local artists on the walls, playing local music, hiring local architects and interior designers, even stocking the rooms with locally roasted coffee — then it helps to be in a town with as much creative talent as Austin. Not to knock a perfectly fine state capital of the same size, but it’s hard to imagine a homegrown hotel in, say, Indianapolis finding its way toward mid-century Danish armchairs or a warmly lit polished-concrete courtyard — which is just what you get at East Austin’s seven-room Heywood Hotel.

At a glance, and given the price point, it looks like the kind of place that could just as easily stack guests in bunk beds and make them share a bathroom. But in Austin’s keep-it-weird boutique hotel economy, a couple hundred bucks a night buys you big, sunny rooms with lofted ceilings, a flat panel HDTV, an internet jukebox, designer bath products and beds whose state-of-the-art mattresses and fluffy down comforters are as dreamy as they come. An upgrade to the Queen Deluxe, housed in the original bungalow, gets you original longleaf pine floors, a twenty-eight-foot ceiling with a skylight, a wet bar with all the tools for making cocktails and a big bathtub alongside the shower. In the King Patio rooms there’s of course a cushy king bed, as well as extra square footage and windows on three sides for plenty of natural light.

For all that, the Heywood’s greatest asset might be its location. While hotels of a similar stripe tend to congregate around South Congress, the Heywood makes its home in East Austin. It’s just a few blocks from the convention center, but perhaps more to the point it’s smack in the middle of a neighborhood full of artists, eccentrics, excellent restaurants and local shops. The hotel will even provide a free bike to ride, so while the ladies and gents at the business hotels are clipping on their name tags in the elevator, you can arrive — or, if you’re here for leisure, just roll on by — in legitimate Austin style.

• 7 Rooms
• Style: Modern Design
• Atmosphere: Lively
• 1 Guest Review

Tweet