Hôtel Chez Swann
1444 Drummond St., Montreal; 514-842-7070; hotelchezswann.com. 23 guest rooms, including 11 suites. From $150. No eco-rating.
Montreal was ahead of the curve in the boutique-hotel phenomenon, with bijou properties sprouting up, especially in Old Montreal, over the past decade, if not longer. Is there room for more? Well, one that purports to be as influenced by modern psychology as modern design is intriguing. The Swann (named for Marcel Proust's alter ego in his magnum opus, Remembrance of Things Past), tries to jog involuntary memory through unexpected designs mostly by Mary Moegenburg, an American designer and some-time Montreal resident who has worked with Bruce Mau. That idea may sound convoluted and gimmicky, but it does give a kind of narrative to the hotel with whimsical effect. The hotel's own past is complicated. Before its rethink as arty bolthole, it housed a garment-manufacturing business, an Irish pub and tailor shop. Its exterior, though, hasn't changed: a 1919 Tudor style house that is an anomaly in a downtown block crowded with office towers and pricey condos.
DESIGN
Enter through a long corridor with a bold skylight that is bathed in dramatic blue light after dark. Along the way, you pass a neon green framed blackboard with love notes and the odd maxim chalked by staff and guests. By the time you arrive in the lobby, you're ready for the onslaught of art. Front-desk staff stand behind a carved wood piece by Quebec's Marc Pelletier. To their right and left are art installations, including several by Moegenburg. One called Stool Band with Fortuny-style pleats covering a series of stools stands out. In the centre of the room is an S-shaped snakeskin-patterned ottoman. “Curated” films that “go with the idea of the hotel,” as a staffer told me, are projected onto a wall in the lobby at night. These run from Chinese erotica to Visconti's Death in Venice.
ROOMS
My good-sized room is spotless, as is the entire hotel. It feels part boudoir, part Milan furniture fair, and seems like something an effete shut-in like Proust would have approved of. A living area comprises a tree-trunk coffee table between modernized Italian wing chairs on a grass-green shag rug. (It's like a little yard in your room.) The bed sits in the middle of the room and has a baroque headboard with swirls of black on brown, with tree-trunk end tables on either side, and Venetian-style chandeliers from Italy's Lume hang overhead. Everything is unexpected enough to create a slight sense of disorientation and contribute to the overall theme.
Another feature stands out: a long window alcove covered in a claret-coloured fabric with a pile of matching throw pillows, a real love-in-the-afternoon feature. Large windows let in light and allows a view onto downtown streets. That guests can be cosseted on a crimson velvet alcove while worker bees scurry outside adds to the languid sensuality of the room. This area can also be closed off with heavy damask curtains. Similar curtains cover, or not, a glass-windowed shower that separates the bedroom and bathroom. The peep-show shower has become a design hotel cliché, but it seems fitting here. The stellar bathrooms are large, with French château white and black tiled floors, and bold black swirls painted over chunky modern vanities with double sinks. The shower is worth a paragraph all its own, with a rain-forest head or the option of jets that shoot water the length of your body.
AMENITIES
