When a Factory Town Becomes a Museum Town

My wife and I recently spent two nights in North Adams, an old industrial city in the northwestern corner of Massachusetts, at a lodging place called Tourists. What was once an unprepossessing small motel across from the Stop & Shop on Route 2 reopened last summer as a 48-room “hotel and riverside retreat,” still across from the Stop & Shop but now oriented toward the Hoosic River behind it. The lead investor is a Boston developer who oversaw the mostly minimalist design, with as minority partners the co-founder of a local brewery; the founder of Brooklyn Magazine; Wilco’s bassist, who created the playlist for the in-house radio station (which you can also listen to on Spotify); and a James Beard Award-winning chef from San Francisco who will be opening a restaurant across the river next year (accessible by a new and charmingly wobbly pedestrian bridge) and has already devised a menu for the hotel lodge that includes fish stew, braised chicken thighs and infused-spirit-based drinks. Read more about Mass MoCA >>