What guests are saying
What guests love
- The look and energy: industrial warehouse-chic meets modernist furniture, neon, and high-tech touches — rooms wired for sound, fast Wi-Fi, and design details that reward a second look.
- The Berkshire Room, a celebrated craft-cocktail lounge with a retro feel and small plates, draws locals as much as guests.
- A River North location two blocks off the Magnificent Mile puts restaurants, galleries, and nightlife at the doorstep — livelier and more relaxed than the business district across the river.
What to keep in mind
- A lively, scene-y hotel — not the choice for total quiet
- Boutique scale: amenities are curated, not full-resort
Best for Travelers who want personality and a great location without a luxury price tag — design lovers, younger visitors, and anyone who’d rather stay somewhere with a point of view than a chain box.
Summary of guest reviews. Sources: Date, height, foundations and the architects from Frank A. Randall, History of the Development of Building Construction in Chicago (University of Illinois Press, 1949), pp. 288 and 379. ACME Hotel Chicago, Preservation Chicago. Photography courtesy of ACME Hotel Chicago, Outset Collection by Hilton, used with permission. Details may change over time.
Why this building matters
ACME occupies a 1920s loft building in River North, the gallery-and-nightlife district just across the river from the Loop. When Chicago’s boutique scene leaned heavily corporate, ACME arrived as the city’s first genuinely youthful, rock-and-roll alternative — proof that an older, modest-sized building could find a vibrant second life as something far more characterful than another glass tower.
Randall’s History of the Development of Building Construction in Chicago records it as the Berkshire Hotel, “at 15 E. Ohio street, built in 1926 … 15 stories and one basement, on rock caissons,” by the architects Bailot & Lauch.
Rock caissons rather than wood piles, for fifteen stories on a narrow Ohio Street lot — the Berkshire was built to hold its height. Four doors east, the Devonshire of 1927 went up to almost exactly the same size on pile foundations, and is the Freehand today.