Chicago neighborhoods
29 historic hotels · curated by Preservation Chicago
The Loop is Chicago’s historic heart — the downtown core ringed by the elevated ‘L’ tracks that give it its name. It was here, in the 1880s, that the steel-framed skyscraper was pioneered, and the streets around State, LaSalle, and Dearborn still hold one of the world’s great concentrations of early high-rise architecture.
Many of those landmark towers — former banks, office blocks, and theaters — have been carefully restored as hotels, so a night in the Loop often means sleeping inside a genuine piece of architectural history, steps from the Art Institute, Millennium Park, and the State Street shopping corridor.
The result is that you can sleep inside the story. Staypineapple occupies the 1895 Reliance Building, whose glass-and-terracotta skin is the direct ancestor of every modern glass tower. LIVN Millennium Park is in the oldest of them all, an 1882 Adler & Sullivan building that still carries Sullivan’s floral ornament. The Chicago Athletic Association was a private club no member of the public could enter for 114 years, and its rooftop bar now looks straight across Millennium Park. And the chocolate brownie was invented in the Palmer House kitchen for the 1893 World’s Fair — the original recipe is still on the menu.
1911 Federal Life Building
1926 Oriental Theatre Building
1905 C&NW Railway Office Building
1893 Venetian Gothic Landmark
1928 Art Deco landmark
1896 Silversmith Building
1927 Bankers Building
1928 Mather Tower
1927 Stevens Hotel
1905 C&NW Railway Office Building
1926 Bismarck Hotel
1896 Morton Building
1927 Art Deco building
1914 Continental & Commercial Bank Building
1894 New York Life Insurance Building
1882 Adler & Sullivan loft — the Jewelers Building
1923 London Guarantee Building
1906 Majestic Building
1925 Classical Revival Landmark
1929 Carbide & Carbon Building
1915 Lumber Exchange Building
1959 Executive House
1928 Old Dearborn Bank Building
1895 Reliance Building
1910 Beaux-Arts Landmark
1893 Auditorium Annex
1914 Continental & Commercial Bank Building
1927 Midland Club Building
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