Gladstone Hotel and the phenomenon of artist-designed hotel rooms

It was about twenty years ago when I first stayed in the Carlton Arms Hotels in New York city. I read about a review of artist-painted rooms in this hotel in The Face magazine. It was my first ever visit to New York and out of curiosity I decided to give it a try. After staying for one night, I had to move to another hotel. It was the noisy heating system that kept me awake all night. Twenty years later, Carlton Arms have all of its 54 rooms painted by artists and upgraded most of the facilities. It remains a major attraction to a large clientele from Europe and Asia. In different major cities around the world, artist-designed hotel rooms have been cropping up. There is Hotel Fox in Copenhagen, Hotel Des Arts in San Francisco, Hotel Atelier sul mare in Sicily and Kunstlerheim Luise in Berlin. This weekend marked the opening of the newly renovated Gladstone Hotel in Toronto, in which all the third and fourth floors are assigned to 37 artist-designed hotel rooms. Carlton Arms came back to mind immediately, but Gladstone Hotel is two decades later, and the rooms and amenities are targeted much more with the comfort of its visitors in mind.