Chicago Hotels in Historic Banks, Clubs & Towers Reborn

Fifteen buildings raised for money or membership, now open to anyone with a reservation. Banks, private clubs, a railway headquarters and a dairy depot — the kind of architecture a city builds when it is confident, and the kind most at risk when the business that built it moves on.

Daniel Burnham’s 1914 Continental and Commercial National Bank holds two of them at once: the JW Marriott on the lower floors and The LaSalle Chicago above. The 1929 Medinah Athletic Club, built for the Shriners and lost to bankruptcy five years later, is the InterContinental. The 1905 Chicago and North Western Railway headquarters is the Canopy by Hilton Central Loop. William Le Baron Jenney’s 1894 New York Life Insurance Building is the Kimpton Gray, and the 1895 Reliance Building — a National Historic Landmark and the ancestor of every glass curtain wall since — is Staypineapple.

Several were saved rather than simply converted. Preservation Chicago advocated directly for the landmark designations that made the Carbide & Carbon Building, now Pendry Chicago, and the New York Life Building viable as hotels.