A Chicago Historic Hotels collection
Hotels crowned with a rooftop bar, restaurant or pool — the best seats above the city.
Thirteen hotels where the best room has no ceiling. Chicago earns its rooftops: the skyline is worth looking at, the lake changes color through the day, and a building’s top floor is often the one part a visitor can reach without a reservation downstairs.
Cindy’s sits on the thirteenth floor of the Chicago Athletic Association under a glass atrium, facing Millennium Park and the lake. LH at LondonHouse runs across three levels above the Michigan Avenue bridge, on the site of Fort Dearborn. Château Carbide looks out from beneath Pendry’s gold-leaf crown, and J. Parker at Hotel Lincoln turns a full 360 degrees over Lincoln Park.
Some come with water. The Robey’s Cabana Club and the Viceroy both put a pool on the roof, and Soho House has an eighty-foot one above Fulton Market. Others are quieter: the Gwen, Arlo, the Cambria above the Oriental Theatre, and the Royal Sonesta, which opens straight onto the Chicago Riverwalk at street level as well.
1929 McGraw-Hill Building
1911 Federal Life Building
1923 London Guarantee Building
1914 Continental & Commercial Bank Building
1925 Cedar Hotel
1959 Executive House
1929 Carbide & Carbon Building
1928 Northwest Tower
1893 Venetian Gothic Landmark
1928 Old Dearborn Bank Building
1926 Oriental Theatre Building
1928 Colonial Revival boutique hotel
1908 Allis Building