Lyon Porter had been hearing a lot about Nashville from guests at his Urban Cowboy B&B in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, since it opened two years ago. So when the former hockey player took a trip to Music City, he was on the lookout for a possible second outpost. “We came across this big Victorian house. I knocked on the door and spoke to the owner,” Porter says. Soon after, he purchased the Queen Anne on Woodland Street, located just blocks from Five Points, and immediately started thinking about the design aesthetic.
To help bring his vision for the interiors to life, Porter collaborated with locals, including stylist Ruthie Lindsey and woodworker Patrick Hayes, from 1767 Designs. Together with Hayes they designed bed frames and custom headboards for each of the nine guest rooms, as well as an entire 12-foot wall out of copper and wood. “Every piece of copper is hand-wrapped around a piece of wood that’s then hand-beaten to give it texture. We were literally burning pieces of wood with a blowtorch.” Porter says.
Photo: Ben Fitchett
The communal “Pour Parlor.”
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Photo: Ben Fitchett
A handmade copper and nickel tub.
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Photo: Ben Fitchett
Guest room.
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Photo: Ben Fitchett
Guest room.
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Photo: Ben Fitchett
Guest room.
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Photo: Ben Fitchett
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Guest room.
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Photo: Ben Fitchett
Guest room.
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Photo: Ben Fitchett
Guest room.
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Photo: Ben Fitchett
Guest room.
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Photo: Ben Fitchett
The music parlor.
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Photo: Ben Fitchett
The exterior of Urban Cowboy B&B Nashville.
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Inside the Urban Cowboy B&B in Nashville.
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With a mission to be more than just a hotel, Urban Cowboy welcomes non-guests too. The music parlor, complete with 25 instruments to be played, and the soon-to-open bar and restaurant fit right into the East Nashville neighborhood. “I lived in hotels for a long time playing hockey, and I really wanted this to feel like home.”
The B&B has been open for only a few weeks and already Music City has become a special place to Porter. “We’ve absolutely fallen in love with the city, primarily because of the people,” he says. “They’ve shown us true Southern hospitality, and that’s the same feeling we want guests to have at Urban Cowboy Nashville.”
