Why you should experience theWit Chicago, a Hilton Hotel in Chicago, Illinois.
theWit Chicago, a Hilton Hotel is an exuberant design hotel where The Loop's theater culture, elevated railway geometry, contemporary architecture and nightlife energy converge at the historic intersection of State and Lake Streets.
Set along State Street near Lake Street and just steps from Chicago Theatre, the 27-story hotel was conceived by Chicago architect Jackie Koo as the debut project of KOO Architecture, with developer Scott Greenberg and ECD Company transforming a constrained downtown parcel beside the elevated CTA tracks into a $62 million high-rise completed in 2009. Koo turned the railway infrastructure into an architectural premise, running a zigzagging ribbon of chartreuse glass vertically through the façade as an oversized urban marquee whose geometry echoes the adjacent tracks. James McHugh Construction executed the 250,000-square-foot structure on the narrow site through unusually thick concrete slabs and carefully positioned shear walls that preserved large interior spans despite the neighboring railway and electrical infrastructure. The result is a hotel where Jackie Koo, Scott Greenberg, ECD Company and James McHugh Construction translate the movement, illumination and structural intensity of Downtown into a distinctly site-specific piece of contemporary hospitality architecture.
What you should know about theWit Chicago.
theWit Chicago, a Hilton Hotel is best known for opening in 2009 as Scott Greenberg's flagship ECD Company property, combining Jackie Koo's 27-story architecture with a hotel program that ultimately developed to 310 rooms, including 36 suites, and became a AAA Four Diamond property affiliated with Hilton. ROOF on theWit established the building's strongest cultural signature on the 27th floor through a year-round retractable-roof environment that Travel + Leisure ranked among the world's top three rooftop bars and Nightclub & Bar Awards named Hotel Bar of the Year, turning Koo's tower into a nationally recognized nightlife address. The hotel subsequently underwent a comprehensive redesign completed in 2023 under Koo, who conceived the new interiors around a fictional world traveler and layered collected artworks, saturated objects and rich textures through a lobby distinguished by sculptural columns rising 38 feet and a 12-foot live floral installation. Scott Greenberg personally selected much of the art incorporated into the renewed property, extending the owner's authorship beyond development into the visual character of the hotel. KOO Architecture's original construction, Greenberg's ECD Company ownership, ROOF's international recognition and the 2023 reworking of the property establish theWit as a hotel whose architecture, art and entertainment have evolved under unusually continuous creative direction since its debut.
Executive Chef Armando Diaz develops the hotel's current culinary character across State and Lake Chicago Tavern and ROOF on theWit after a career encompassing The Confidante Miami Beach, Andaz 5th Avenue, Antlers Lodge in San Antonio, NOCA in Phoenix and work under William Bradley at VU and Addison at Grand Del Mar. Vice President of Food & Beverage David Danielson adds a separate Chicago connection as co-author of The Bourbon Country Cookbook and a celebrity judge on Top Chef Season 16, working with Diaz on a State and Lake program centered on contemporary American tavern cooking and a locally oriented beer selection. ROOF extends that culinary authorship into the hotel's nightlife character through wood-fired cooking, live DJs and the retractable structure that allows the 27th-floor venue to operate throughout Chicago's seasons. Together, Armando Diaz, David Danielson, William Bradley and ROOF on theWit deepen the creative lineage established by Jackie Koo and Scott Greenberg, connecting contemporary cooking, entertainment and architecture within a hotel whose character remains inseparable from the energy of State Street.
How to fold theWit Chicago into your trip.
theWit Chicago, a Hilton Hotel works as the anchor for an afternoon tracing movie-palace performance, civic craftsmanship and Chicago's reinvention of its riverfront through the northern Loop.
Begin at Chicago Theatre, where Barney and Abe Balaban and Sam and Morris Katz commissioned Cornelius and George Rapp to create a $4 million movie palace that opened on October 26, 1921 with Norma Talmadge in The Sign on the Door, a 50-piece orchestra, Jesse Crawford at the Wurlitzer organ and 125 ushers welcoming audiences into what was promoted as the βWonder Theatre of the World.β οΏΌ Continue to Chicago Cultural Center, completed in 1897 by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge as the city's central public library and crowned by Preston Bradley Hall's 38-foot Tiffany dome, whose 30,000 pieces of glass form the largest Tiffany glass dome in the world. Conclude at Chicago Riverwalk, whose contemporary development began with the 2001 reconstruction of Wacker Drive before extensions incorporated the 2005 Chicago Vietnam Veterans' Memorial Plaza and later phases created a sequence of distinct public spaces along the Main Branch. The progression moves from Rapp and Rapp's architecture for mass entertainment through Tiffany craftsmanship and Chicago's library tradition into the twenty-first-century recovery of the riverfront, placing theWit Chicago, a Hilton Hotel within the architectural and cultural evolution of the streets immediately surrounding State and Lake.
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