Hotels in buildings by Holabird & Roche

Holabird & Roche was one of the defining firms of the Chicago School — the movement that gave the world the steel-framed skyscraper and the wide ‘Chicago window.’ Founded by William Holabird and Martin Roche in the 1880s, the firm filled the Loop with commercial buildings, clubs, and grand hotels prized for their structural clarity and craftsmanship.

Three of the firm’s buildings are hotels today, and one of them was once the largest in the world. The Hilton Chicago opened in 1927 as the Stevens Hotel with three thousand rooms, a twenty-seven-chair barber shop, a five-lane bowling alley, a 1,200-seat cinema and an eighteen-hole miniature golf course on the roof. It runs 1,544 rooms now, the original three thousand having been combined into larger ones over the decades.

The Palmer House of 1925 is the firm’s Classical Revival contribution to State Street, and the Roanoke Building on LaSalle began in 1915 as the sixteen-story Lumber Exchange and grew twice more, topping out with a thirty-six-story tower in 1925 — growth still legible in its silhouette.

The practice continued after its founders as Holabird & Root, whose 1928 Art Deco headquarters for the Chicago Motor Club is now the Hampton Inn Chicago Downtown.