The Travelers Hotel

Art, throughout history, has never relied upon anything in particular. Inspiration strikes in the good times, and the bad times too. Throughout tides of generational change, of catastrophes large and small, of institutional and cultural censorship, personal agonies, and the sheer incomprehensibility of all that comes with existence—art, in some form, persists. In spite of, because of, inside of, outside of. Nurtured and fine-tuned by institutions and cultivated in the shadows of inherent, untrained talent. Paid for, not paid for.

But art—its creation—does have one definitive requirement. Time.

For most artists today, time spent creating art is not necessarily time they are sufficiently paid for. Thus, art must almost always exist alongside endeavors more lucrative. Look, and you’ll find artists in your wait staff, your Uber, your bartenders, your schools, and almost any job, day or night,  you can think of. Before they can create, an artist must exist. And to exist, an artist must have a bed. An artist must eat. The great, inevitable casualty being—of course—time.

“It makes for a world where creative people can’t lead a life that allows them to be creative,” said New Orleans developer Chuck Rutledge, sipping on the same regional beer he’s recommended to me—a guest at his and his partner Ann Williams’ artist-owned and -operated boutique hotel in Clarksdale, Mississippi.   

One hundred years ago, this building’s second floor—called The Travelers Hotel—served as a stopover for railroad workers staying in Clarksdale, while the first floor functioned as the Clarksdale Printing Co. until the 1990s. The building sat vacant for almost thirty years, until, in 2018, Rutledge and Williams infused $2.4 million into renovations, installing bathrooms, modern amenities, and chic, thoughtful touches while still maintaining the building’s historic integrity. In red brick and massive windows, it takes over the center of the 200 block on 3rd Street, from the outside appearing largely unchanged, and even retaining its original name.

Today, though, The Travelers Hotel lobby is an airy, open space, with just-so distressed walls and high industrial-esque ceilings, complemented by handmade mid-century modern furniture, stylish indoor plants, swaths of natural light, and a wall’s-worth of local art. Rutledge built both the corner banquette we are sitting on and the wooden bar from which we acquired our beers, and his sister, Ann Rutledge, built all of the furniture in the hotel’s twenty guest rooms.

And the woman who checked me into my room, then later poured our beers? She is one of the nine co-op members running the hotel, which is sponsored by Rutledge and Williams’ nonprofit, Coahoma Collective. She lives just around the corner, atop the nonprofit’s second venture, the Collective Seed & Supply Co. general store, with other artist-owners, who all receive free housing and studio space in exchange for around twenty-five hours of work per week in either the hotel or the store.

“You come here,” explained Rutledge of the model, “you work in these two businesses, you help us with our revitalization projects, work in the community, make art, whatever you do. You’ve got time to do it, and we’ll give you space to do it.”

The concept was born on a weekend in 2014, Rutledge told me, when he was scrolling through the New York Times weekly op-eds and came across Catherine Lacey’s essay “A Way for Artists to Live.” In it, Lacey fondly reminisces on the joys and the challenges of jumpstarting 3B, which was once a collectively owned and operated bed & breakfast in Brooklyn. With six fellow artists of varying disciplines, Lacey lived communally on the bottom floor, running the business upstairs. The revenue produced by renting out the b&b generated enough money to cover all of their living expenses and their food. And each of the seven artists only had to work one day a week.

Of the challenges related to pursuing low-to-zero-pay creative projects in one of the most expensive—if creatively stimulating—cities in the world, Lacey writes, “My experience with a small cooperatively owned business offers one possible solution, especially for those with a craft or passion project vying for their attention.” During her time at 3B, Lacey completed her first novel, Nobody is Ever Missing. “It’s hard to imagine I would have had the time to do so without the support of our business,” she concluded.

At the time, Rutledge was living in New Orleans, getting involved in various development efforts to create affordable housing options in the increasingly expensive post-Katrina city. A co-developer with HRI Properties, Inc., he helped to establish the Bywater Art Lofts, and alongside architect partner Jonathan Tate, collaborated on a housing experiment, which built smaller-scale “starter”  homes on vacant, irregular-sized lots around the city. “We were looking for ways to make more affordable housing for creative people, and this whole concept that Lacey laid out—it just made a lot of sense,” he said.

Six years later, The Travelers Hotel, a concept modeled similarly to 3B, just celebrated its first anniversary—though not in New Orleans, but over three hundred miles away in Clarksdale, Rutledge’s hometown.

“We were looking for a site in New Orleans to do this, spending every weekend driving, looking for something that was the right size, the right price, the right location,” said Rutledge.

In the meantime, a conversation with friend and fellow developer Bubba O’Keefe, Clarksdale-Coahoma County’s Tourism Director, turned to the fact that Clarksdale—the Delta town that claims the title “The Birthplace of the Blues”—really needed a hotel downtown.

Rutledge said, “I thought, why couldn’t this work here?”

Clarksdale is a great place for artists, explained Williams—though in ways vastly different from those of New Orleans. “There’s this strong, very distinct music culture here, an emerging, fresh visual arts scene. It’s affordable, gritty, a place where you can come and just let your freak flag fly. And the landscape—it’s just really inspiring.”

Clarksdale is also, like so many small rural towns across the South, struggling. Driving through, one sees the markers: the abandoned storefronts, the stark separations between black and white neighborhoods, crumbling old buildings, and a general lack of young people.

“Clarksdale is all about agriculture, has been forever,” said Rutledge. “When I was a kid, though, there was a fair bit of manufacturing for a small town, too. It was a pretty vibrant little town. All these stores were occupied, mom-and-pop family businesses. But by the 1990s—dead. Globalization, big box retail, segregation. You lose the tax base, the school system goes down. A perfect storm.”

Suddenly, Rutledge and Williams’ endeavor became much larger. Offering an affordable, life-work balance option for artists remained central to their vision. But now, they were also bringing artists—and a hotel—to a place rich in culture, and hungry for new perspectives.

“In New Orleans there is obviously an incredibly established tourism and hospitality world,” said Rutledge. “There, we kind of have to build it to get our piece of the pie. Here, we have to build the pie.”

It goes beyond tourism though, said Rutledge. “People travel all over the world to hear the blues music here in Clarksdale,” he said. “Europeans love the juke joints, and they have for decades.” It’s great, he explained, and it’s great that there is a nice hotel option in town now. But in small towns like Clarksdale, tourism numbers alone are not enough to significantly impact the struggling economy.

“We want to actually create more businesses that can generate more substantial incomes for the locals, beyond tourism,” he said. “And we want to do that by getting more creative people here, thinking creatively, approaching things creatively. We want to bring in people with a fresh perspective, to see potential where a lot of lifelong locals might not.”

This is where the nonprofit came in, said Williams. To help fund the $2.4 million project, she and Rutledge were able to acquire a grant from the Walton Family Foundation. “As part of the grant agreement, we formed Coahoma Collective, with a mission of facilitating arts-driven and community-inclusive revitalization in downtown Clarksdale. We’re doing whatever we can to build new businesses, activate these streets, and just animate downtown to make it a better place for visitors, and also for the community who lives here.”

Over the course of the collective’s first year, the artists who have signed on as co-op members have ranged from a young playwright/journalist/photographer to a 74-year-old studio artist to a a former nonprofit executive, hoping to find some work/life balance. Then there is Catherine Cruz, a yoga instructor who is establishing Clarksdale Yoga, a studio downtown, and Chef Deandre Metcalf, who opened Third Street Bistro just down the street. 

“What we’re interested in are people who are seeking to live creatively,” said Williams. “And we need people who are curious about this community and willing to invest in it.” 

The possibilities are endless, said Rutledge, and the collective is always looking for opportunities to encourage new ventures. For example, he and Williams are currently developing a nano brewery onsite at the Collective Seed & Supply Co., in hopes that a future co-op member will take it over someday. “That’ll support one person by itself,” said Rutledge.

“And it will go a long way to building that sense of local identity, too,” said Williams. “People want to know what your local beer is.”

The Seed & Supply Co.—in addition to functioning as a hip purveyor of local goods, specialty foods, books, décor, art and other products difficult to find in Clarksdale—has a 7,000-square-foot courtyard that serves as the city’s garden center. Not to mention 3,000 square feet of shed space, which co-op members can use as workshops and studios for their work.

Coahoma Collective’s plans go beyond new businesses though; art has always been at the center of this endeavor. And for its newest project, Rutledge and Williams plan to bring visual art to the center of Clarksdale in a big way.

“The Sunflower River runs right through downtown Clarksdale,” said Rutledge. “It’s a muddy Mississippi Creek, and it has become very dynamic in the last few years due to all the downstream things that have been happening. The river goes from eight feet to eighteen feet in a day. But it’s beautiful, with cypress and cottonwood trees, right in the middle of downtown.”

Williams explained that historically, with reverberations today, the creek has divided downtown “white” Clarksdale from the town’s black neighborhoods. “I think that a lot of black residents in Clarksdale don’t feel a connection with downtown,” said Williams, despite the fact that these days there are a lot more black businesses downtown, and that their store’s customer demographics seem to be about half black, half white. “It’s changing, but there’s still work to do,” said Rutledge.

“We want this open greenspace, which spans forty acres—we want it to be this safe, beautiful place for people from both sides to gather and have barbecues or see a music performance, and to experience art together,” said Williams.

For the new Sunflower River Art Park, the two plan to install a new walking path on both sides of the river, ramps to increase accessibility for disabled and elderly people, and a series of art installations, all kicking off with a wildflower Superbloom this spring.

In addition to all of their work in Clarksdale, Rutledge and Williams are also in the process of returning to the plan that sparked all of this: affordable housing for New Orleans artists. In a model more similar to the one outlined in Lacey’s article, the planned Garden District artist-run bed and breakfast will feature nine guest rooms on the second floor, with four residences on the third floor. Artists will live onsite, managing the b&b from upstairs.

“In New Orleans, the city doesn’t need us, but the artists still do,” said Rutledge. “This concept can serve so much, and it can work anywhere.”

Envisioning a Travelers Hotel in every city—in big, expensive, creatively-stimulating cities and in tiny towns in need of stimulation—one realizes that what Rutledge and Williams have found is a sort of code cracked. This model offers a way for artists to live. But more than that, their work in Clarksdale—in just the one year that they have been there—is evidence of the value of infusing creativity into our towns, the possibilities of creative placemaking, and of giving our artists time here, in our places.

If You Go (once all this is over)

Afternoon stroll: Over the past two years, a program called “Paint the Town” has brought international and Delta artists to Clarksdale to adorn downtown with public art. From realist portraits to farcical cartoons to homages to the town’s historic advocates of civil rights, downtown Clarksdale makes for a wonderland of color and ideas, with surprises around every corner.

Pre-dinner beers: No better place than home. The Travelers Hotel has a comfortable, friendly bar with regional and national brews, plus interesting—and sometimes international—company. The lobby is frequently used for community gatherings, events, and fundraisers. But on a regular night, you’ll find locals and visitors alike gathered by the fireplace and around the bar, sipping on a pint or two or three.

Dinner: Based on conversations at the hotel bar, the general consensus for best place to eat in town was the Hooker Grocer & Eatery. A stone’s throw away from the hotel, the cozy, unpretentious restaurant is the project of three acclaimed chefs from as close as down the road and as far as Sydney, Australia. They frequently bring out creative specialty items, like the New Zealand Rack of Lamb, alongside classics like Shrimp and Dirty Grits, which my fiancé, eyes closed and nodding ferociously, proclaimed the best damned shrimp and grits he’s ever had.

Juke Jointin’: With only one night to spend in the Delta, we went in search of the grittiest, most realtrue thing. Red’s Blues Club holds court in the original Levine’s Music Center building, where Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm once played. Blues legends from around the country make their way to the little stool in the center of this tight little room, tinged with red-light and thick with the smells of smoke and barbecue (which is bein’ fixed in the corner for all guests to partake in). It’s BYOB, but they’ll serve you beer out of the ice chest if you’re just looking for a quick cold one. Settle in to drown in the deep depths of traditional Mississippi Blues music, interrupted only by hype man Mr. Ellis, who’ll tip his hat and politely extend a hand in invitation to boogie along on the dancefloor.

Breakfast: One co-op member recommended that we start our Sunday morning at the Bluesberry Cafe. Taking heed, we woke up early, sipped our morning joe from the very fancy latté machine at the hotel, then walked around the corner to tap our feet to the great Mississippi Marshall while we enjoyed a platter of home-style omelets and biscuits. Between checking on us, the restaurant’s managers would jump in and out of the storytelling/song, with a little tap on the drums here, a bit of harmonica there—and brilliant Mississippi twangs just everywhere.

Resources

stayattravelers.com

collective-seed.com

visitclarksdale.com