Loft 523 is the quintessential loft hotel. It’s an urban sanctuary which celebrates sexy, sophisticated, sublime open space. Subtle, understated design stimulates the spirit and heightens the senses. Once a dry-goods warehouse, the hotel is about open-space as well as concealment and surprising revelation. Like anonymous French Quarter fa&ccedil;ades, which conceal a masked world of courtyards, fountains, gardens, and guesthouses, Loft 523 conceals then cleverly reveals each aspect of interior design .

At Loft 523, it all about texture, materials, warm white plaster walls bathed in natural light and 12-foot ceilings. Sprinkler pipes, columns, and heavy-timber beams tell a story. In the bar, original cast-iron columns, wide-plank flooring, masonry archways and pressed-metal ceiling tiles recycled as elevator cab continue to weave the tale. These are architectural artifacts that speak to a human continuum:  people who sold goods here a century ago, people here today, and those yet to come. The artful and attentive way these elements have been combined suggests that New Orleans today actually might not be "The City That Care Forgot."

As one critic wrote so well, "Design must seduce, shape, and perhaps most important, evoke emotional response." From Modern Fan Company's 52-inch opal-glass ceiling fans to legendary photographer/painter/chemist/Renaissance man Mariano Fortuny's acclaimed 1907 _Fortuny_ lamp, to Agape's awe-inspiring "Spoon" tubs and Vola's elegant bathroom accessories in large spa-like bathrooms, to hand hammered copper doors, to king beds by Mondo, Loft 523 is a joyful celebration of design, the emotional response it evokes and the creative culture of invention that is New Orleans.