What guests are saying
What guests love
- An intimate, old-fashioned neighborhood feel — complimentary breakfast and afternoon cookies included.
- A quiet, tree-lined Lake View block a 10-minute walk to Lincoln Park and the lakefront, with lively Broadway at the door.
- Vintage character, right down to the original 1920s Otis elevator.
What to keep in mind
- A small 1920s hotel — rooms are cozy and vary
- A neighborhood location, a couple miles from downtown
Best for Travelers who want an intimate, affordable neighborhood base with vintage charm near the lake and Lincoln Park.
Summary of guest reviews. Sources: Construction date, original name, architects and the quoted descriptions from the Surf–Pine Grove District designation report (Commission on Chicago Landmarks, designated July 19, 2007), pp. 18, 19, 33 and 44. The Willows Hotel, Commission on Chicago Landmarks, Preservation Chicago. Photography courtesy of The Willows Hotel, used with permission. Details may change over time.
Why this building matters
Built in 1924 and revived as a boutique hotel, the Willows trades downtown bustle for residential charm, with a French-inspired look and a warm, personal feel across its roughly 55 rooms. It is one of three 1920s Lake View and Lincoln Park boutiques run by Broughton Hotels — alongside the Majestic and City Suites — and sits a 10-minute walk from the lakefront, the Diversey Harbor, and the bustle of Clark, Broadway, and Halsted.
The Surf–Pine Grove District designation report gives the building its first identity. It opened in 1924 as the Surfway Apartment Hotel, built for the Surfway Hotel Co. to designs by Rissman & Hirschfield — four stories, and the most talked-about facade on the street.
The report does not hedge about it. The Surfway, it says, is “arguably the most exuberantly-decorated and unusual building in the District, with an all-terra-cotta front facade detailed with round-arched first-floor windows, thin colonettes, floral and fruit swags, playful dolphins and other Adamesque-influenced detailing.” Elsewhere it calls the front “a remarkable expression of the decorative flexibility of terra cotta,” noting the tiled half-roof, and sets it against its taller neighbors: “much smaller in scale than the Surf or Pine Grove, but … no less lavish in its public face.”
Rissman & Hirschfield made a specialism of the apartment hotel, and the same report credits them with two more buildings in this guide: the Cedar Hotel on N. State Street, now the Viceroy, and the Knickerbocker. The Surf–Pine Grove District has been a Chicago Landmark since July 19, 2007.
What an apartment hotel was
The Surfway was built as an apartment hotel, and the designation report explains where the type came from. Earlier in the city’s history, cheap land and low servant wages let a wide range of households keep a house with at least one servant. Both grew expensive in the years before World War I, and Chicagoans who had been “initially loath to consider apartment living due to its social unrespectability” reconsidered.
What the type offered was a small apartment with hotel service. Units ran from studios to one- or two-bedroom suites that could be expanded or contracted as a resident’s needs changed. Kitchenettes, often called pantries, handled the cooking, but room service was available and residents typically had the use of a hotel dining room. Maid service could be had. Ballrooms and meeting rooms, standard in tourist and convention hotels, were not part of the arrangement.
The report describes the clientele as single professionals, office workers and childless couples, for whom keeping a house was beyond their means — people who wanted personal services without the outlay of personal servants. Apartment hotels went up in the fashionable neighborhoods, Lake View among them, through the prosperous years of the 1920s. The two largest in this district were built back-to-back on N. Pine Grove Avenue; at four stories, the Surfway was a small one.
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