By Libby Hoppe
As I was flipping through The New York Times Style Magazine last weekend, I came across a profile of one of Austin’s favorite creatives. Liz Lambert is a lawyer, an innkeeper and a visionary, and she’s given this Texas town two boutique hotels that celebrate Austin’s soul and its music culture.
Hotel San Jose first opened in 1939 as a motor court, a modern, West-Coast-inspired Spanish Colonial stopover for tourists. Locals say it later became a brothel, then a church bible school, then when Lambert bought it in 1995, a haven for hippies and penniless travelers. Lambert saw potential, and today Hotel San Jose is a gorgeous, ivy-enclosed bungalow with Polaroid cameras and vintage music posters in every room. It’s in SoCo (short for South Congress), which I and most everyone in Austin considers the coolest neighborhood in town. San Jose is a core reason for that, and even if you can’t nab a room (which starts around $160 for a standard pad), you can buy a beer at the hotel bar and hang out with the locals in the interior courtyard and poolside garden, sipping a Shiner as you listen to music by Texas greats Stevie Ray Vaughan and Willie Nelson.
Last year, Lambert opened her second Austin hotel, a wholly different yet equally inspired place.
Hotel Saint Cecilia is in an old home on a secluded wooden estate in the SoCo area. (I’d been to the neighborhood many times, but never really noticed the place until Lambert reinvented it). It’s extravagant and soulful at the same time, with turntables, carefully selected and colorful vintage furniture, patterned fabrics and funky light fixtures in every room, each of which has its own vibe. Inspired by the sophisticated style of the ’50s, modern art from the ’60s and rock ‘n’ roll from the ’70s, it’s the most contemporary old getaway you’ll find in the South, but it’s still so very Austin.