Why you should experience The Westin Michigan Avenue Chicago in Chicago, Illinois.
The Westin Michigan Avenue Chicago is a cosmopolitan hotel where Streeterville's architectural ambition, Grand Mile commerce, midcentury expansion and lakefront culture converge at one of North Michigan Avenue's most prominent intersections.
Set along North Michigan Avenue near East Delaware Place and just steps from 875 North Michigan Avenue, the hotel began as Continental Plaza, opening on November 23, 1963 after its planned November 22 debut was postponed following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The original 15-story, 400-room building arrived during the extraordinary postwar transformation of North Michigan Avenue, preceding the neighboring John Hancock Center and helping establish the Upper Grand Mile as a major concentration of hotels, retail and modern high-rise architecture. A substantial tower expansion followed during the 1970s, raising the hotel to 27 stories and nearly doubling its original capacity as this stretch of Michigan Avenue developed into one of Chicago's defining commercial corridors. The result is a hotel where Continental Plaza, Western International Hotels and the architectural rise of North Michigan Avenue connect more than six decades of hospitality with Streeterville's emergence as an internationally recognized urban destination.
What you should know about The Westin Michigan Avenue Chicago.
The Westin Michigan Avenue Chicago is best known for opening as Continental Plaza on November 23, 1963 with 400 rooms across 15 floors before a major tower expansion completed during the 1970s created the 27-story profile and 750-room scale that define the property today. Western International Hotels operated the hotel during its formative decades, the company adopted the Westin Hotels name in 1981, and the Chicago property subsequently assumed the Westin character as the brand itself entered a new international era. A 2000 HVS assessment separated the complex into the original 1963 building and later tower, counted 751 guestrooms and 39,965 square feet of meeting space, and identified major 1999 renovation work across both structures, demonstrating how extensively the property had evolved during its first four decades. Corporate ownership shifted again when the hotel was sold to JER Partners Acquisition III in January 2005 and then to LaSalle Hotel Properties in January 2006, while Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide controlled the Westin brand and its management relationship following its 1998 acquisition of Westin Hotel Company. The contemporary property contains 752 guestrooms including 32 suites and 42,000 square feet of meeting space, preserving the immense scale created through the successive Continental Plaza, Western International, Westin and Starwood chapters of its history.
The Westin brand supplies another consequential chapter through the hospitality innovations developed under Barry Sternlicht after Starwood acquired Westin in 1998, connecting the Michigan Avenue property with a period when hotel sleep design became a defining element of the company's international identity. Westin introduced the Heavenly Bed in 1999 under Sternlicht, creating a branded sleep concept that became influential enough to extend beyond hotels into retail and reshape expectations surrounding upper-upscale guestroom design. Starwood subsequently placed Westin within a portfolio encompassing Sheraton, St. Regis and W before Marriott International completed its acquisition of Starwood in 2016, bringing the Chicago property into the world's largest hotel company at the time of the transaction. Together, Western International Hotels, Barry Sternlicht, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Marriott International place The Westin Michigan Avenue Chicago within several generations of American hotel-industry consolidation and brand development while its original Continental Plaza structure continues occupying the same North Michigan Avenue address.
How to fold The Westin Michigan Avenue Chicago into your trip.
The Westin Michigan Avenue Chicago works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing Gilded Age craftsmanship, experimental contemporary art and Gothic Revival architecture through the Near North Side.
Begin at Driehaus Museum, where banker Samuel Mayo Nickerson and Matilda Nickerson completed their $450,000 residence in 1883 with architects Burling and Whitehouse and interiors by R. W. Bates & Co., William August Fiedler and George A. Schastey & Co., creating the lavish “Marble Palace” later restored by Richard H. Driehaus between 2003 and 2008. Continue to Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, founded from a 1964 initiative by collectors, artists, critics and architects before opening in 1967 under director Jan van der Marck, presenting Dan Flavin's first solo exhibition and later staging projects involving Christo, John Baldessari, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman and Robert Smithson before Josef Paul Kleihues designed its current building, opened in 1996 as his first American commission. Conclude at Fourth Presbyterian Church, whose congregation formed in 1871 before Ralph Adams Cram and Howard Van Doren Shaw created the Gothic Revival Michigan Avenue church completed in 1912, preserving an architectural counterpoint to the modern towers that subsequently transformed the surrounding avenue. The progression moves from the Nickerson family's Gilded Age interior craftsmanship through Chicago's experimental contemporary-art culture into Cram and Shaw's ecclesiastical architecture, revealing three distinct creative eras concentrated around The Westin Michigan Avenue Chicago.
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