Why you should experience Hotel Chicago Downtown, Autograph Collection in Chicago, Illinois.
Hotel Chicago Downtown, Autograph Collection is a shape-shifting hotel where River North's architectural experimentation, riverfront reinvention, entertainment culture and instinct for repeatedly rewriting downtown life converge within Bertrand Goldberg's Marina City.
Set along North Dearborn Street near West Kinzie Street and just steps from the Chicago River, the hotel occupies the former office component of Marina City, the rebellious urban complex conceived by Bauhaus-trained architect Bertrand Goldberg as an answer to the postwar migration of middle-class residents toward Chicago's suburbs. Building Service Employees International Union financed the development under labor leader William L. McFetridge, while Goldberg worked with structural engineer Severud Associates and James McHugh Construction on a $36 million project encompassing 896 apartments and an interconnected collection of residential, commercial and entertainment structures. The hotel building itself was completed in 1963 as a 13-story, 220-foot office structure within the larger composition, giving the current property a direct architectural lineage to Goldberg's experiment in concentrating work, housing and recreation beside the Chicago River. The result is a hotel where Goldberg, McFetridge, organized labor and midcentury Chicago's campaign to reclaim downtown living remain embedded in a building whose purpose has continued changing while Marina City's larger urban thesis endures.
What you should know about Hotel Chicago Downtown.
Hotel Chicago Downtown, Autograph Collection is best known for descending from the world's first House of Blues Hotel, which opened in October 1998 with 367 rooms after developer John L. Marks and House of Blues founder Isaac Tigrett launched an ambitious reinvention of Marina City's commercial buildings. Marks had acquired the commercial property for $3.35 million in November 1994, then joined Tigrett in announcing a 1,500-seat concert hall, 400-room hotel, restaurant and nightclub during a September 14, 1995 groundbreaking attended by Dan Aykroyd, Jim Belushi, John Goodman, Steve Cropper, Steve Potts and Matt Murphy. House of Blues Chicago opened on November 23, 1996 before the former Marina City office building underwent a reported $38 million hotel conversion, with Loews Hotels managing the resulting property and Nomura Asset Capital Corporation participating in the hotel venture. The wider Marina City redevelopment ultimately reached $125 million, connecting Marks, Tigrett, Aykroyd, House of Blues, Loews and Nomura to one of the most ambitious entertainment-driven reinventions of a Goldberg complex during the 1990s.
Gemstone Hotels & Resorts International developed the property's next character in 2007 through a $17 million overhaul that renovated all 353 guestrooms, the lobby and bar before introducing Hotel Sax Chicago, a name selected in deference to Chicago's musical heritage, with Mario Mazzini serving as general manager. LaSalle Hotel Properties had acquired the former House of Blues Hotel for $114.5 million, while Thompson Hotels replaced Gemstone as operator in December 2009 under an agreement championed by LaSalle chief executive Michael Barnello, placing the property alongside Thompson's Gild Hall, Hollywood Roosevelt and Donovan House portfolio. Hotel Sax became Hotel Chicago Downtown in February 2014 when the property entered Marriott's Autograph Collection, carrying the building from a singular House of Blues experiment through Gemstone and Thompson into Marriott's network of independently positioned hotels. A multimillion-dollar renovation announced in 2016 subsequently remade the guestrooms and principal public spaces, allowing House of Blues Hotel, Hotel Sax, Thompson Hotels, LaSalle Hotel Properties and Autograph Collection to form a continuous hospitality chronology inside the same former Goldberg office building.
How to fold Hotel Chicago Downtown into your trip.
Hotel Chicago Downtown, Autograph Collection works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing how commerce, architecture and public design repeatedly redefined the Chicago River as the city expanded around it.
Begin at Reid Murdoch Building, where architect George C. Nimmons completed the red-brick warehouse and office complex in 1914 for Reid, Murdoch & Company, placing the wholesale grocery concern beside the water and railroad infrastructure that powered Chicago's enormous distribution economy. Continue to Merchandise Mart, where Marshall Field & Company commissioned Alfred P. Shaw of Graham, Anderson, Probst & White for an Art Deco wholesale complex completed in 1930 with more than four million square feet across a site equivalent to two and a half city blocks, making it the world's largest building by floor area upon completion. Conclude at Chicago Riverwalk, where Sasaki and Ross Barney Architects joined Alfred Benesch Engineers and other collaborators to complete the final phases in 2016, organizing six blocks between State and Lake Streets as distinct riverfront rooms while negotiating a permit-constrained 25-foot build-out zone and annual river fluctuations approaching seven vertical feet. The progression moves from Nimmons's river-dependent wholesale economy through Shaw's colossal commercial marketplace into Sasaki and Ross Barney's twenty-first-century reconception of the water's edge, revealing the evolving riverfront culture surrounding Hotel Chicago Downtown, Autograph Collection.
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