Hotels in buildings by Rapp & Rapp

Brothers George and Cornelius Rapp were America’s great architects of the movie palace. From their Chicago base, Rapp & Rapp designed some of the most opulent theaters and theater-office buildings of the 1920s, lavishing French and Baroque ornament on the spaces where Chicagoans went to the pictures.

Three of their buildings now hold hotels, and two sit directly above working theaters. The Cambria Hotel occupies a twenty-two-story block of 1926 standing over the Oriental Theatre, now the Nederlander; its restaurant is called Intermission. The Allegro was built in 1926 as the Bismarck Hotel and keeps its Art Deco interiors, opposite the Cadillac Palace.

The 1928 Old Dearborn Bank Building on Wabash Avenue, a departure from the theaters, is now Sports Illustrated Resorts Chicago.

The theaters themselves are the reason the firm is remembered. Their Chicago Theatre of 1921, French Baroque and modeled on Versailles, was the flagship of the Balaban & Katz chain and won them the work of the entire Paramount-Publix circuit; some four hundred theaters followed across the country. The Uptown, the Riviera, the Oriental and the Cadillac Palace are all theirs — which means the Allegro looks across Randolph Street at another Rapp & Rapp building.