The Concept of Kinn
The modern traveler is looking for more authentic experiences in their hotel stay. Our dream was to create a first-of-its-kind guesthouse that perfectly mixes hotel and home in ways that had never been done before, and to provide guests with a sense of discovery, connectivity, and community in the process.
Our mission is to ensure our guesthouse experience brings together and thoughtfully combines the best of both worlds: luxury and comfort, historic and modern, tech and traditional, private and social, solo and group experiences, neighborhood feel and city access.
Our promise is to never lose sight of why we got into this in the first place and to always provide that perfect mix of hotel and home.
Why We Chose the Name Kinn
When we named our first guesthouse, we wanted it to have a connection to our family history and to the local Milwaukee community where we were starting our new adventure. We also wanted it to tie-in with our vision of providing the ideal mix of hotel and home travel experiences. Through research we discovered that the street name where our Bay View hotel is located, Kinnickinnic Ave., actually means “to mix two things together.” That’s how kin led to Kinn and we knew we had landed on the perfect name.
The Stone Masons
Laid the Foundation
Kinn Bay View offers a unique history. The three-story Queen Anne style building was built in 1887 by Bay View Freemason member Gustave Kuehnel. Kuehnel was a druggist and operated his drug store on the first floor and lived on the second, and used the third floor of the building for meetings of Lake Lodge #189 – the third noted Freemason group in Milwaukee, which was established in September of 1872. The group met there for 20 years, until a new located was built in 1908.
For the next 100+ years, the building took on many different lives. From a pool hall with a Chinese restaurant to a brew pub and live music venue, the majestic building has had live many lives. And now we continue adding to the building’s history as a place gather, where people come from all over the country to experience the guesthouse that now resides within these walls and to takeaway a bit of the history that Gustave started all those years ago.