A Chicago Historic Hotels collection
Terra-cotta, gold leaf and Roaring-Twenties glamour: the dazzling towers of the 1910s–'30s, reborn as hotels.
The largest collection in the guide: thirty-four hotels in buildings from the 1920s boom, when Chicago put up towers faster than at any time before or since, and decorated them without restraint.
The set pieces are all here. The 1929 Carbide & Carbon Building — dark granite base, deep green terracotta, twenty-four-karat gold leaf at the crown, and said to be modeled on a champagne bottle — is Pendry Chicago. The 1929 Medinah Athletic Club, where Johnny Weissmuller trained in a pool that is still there, is the InterContinental. The 1929 McGraw-Hill Building carries Art Deco relief panels by the sculptor Gwen Lux, and the hotel inside is named for her. The 1928 Northwest Tower, a limestone flatiron that Wicker Park still calls the Coyote Building, is The Robey.
The decade’s ambition shows in the scale as much as the ornament. The Stevens Hotel opened in 1927 as the largest hotel in the world — three thousand rooms, a five-lane bowling alley, a 1,200-seat cinema and an eighteen-hole miniature golf course on the roof. It is the Hilton Chicago now, at 1,544 rooms. The Allerton of 1924 put its Tip Top Tap in the penthouse, and a radio show broadcast from it made the name famous across the city.
1920 Italian Renaissance Landmark
1923 Palais Brompton
1924 Diversey Arms
1925 Cedar Hotel
1927 McCormick Hotel
1922 Howard Van Doren Shaw clubhouse
1923 London Guarantee Building
1923 Gold Coast building
1924 Chicago Allerton House
1925 Classical Revival Landmark
1925 Beaux-Arts building
1926 building (first LEED hotel)
1926 Oriental Theatre Building
1926 Bismarck Hotel
1926 Ambassador East
1924 French-country boutique
1927 Devonshire Hotel
1927 Midland Club Building
1927 Davis Hotel
1929 McGraw-Hill Building
1926 Georgian Revival skyscraper
1927 Bankers Building
1927 Stevens Hotel
1926 Hotel Eastgate
1927 Art Deco building
1928 Art Deco landmark
1928 Colonial Revival boutique hotel
1928 Old Dearborn Bank Building
1928 Mather Tower
1928 Beaux-Arts building
1929 Medinah Athletic Club
1929 Carbide & Carbon Building
1928 Northwest Tower
1928 Borden's Dairy Depot