The Latest Chicago Hotel Blends the Old with the New
Perched 21 stories up in the air, high enough to see the top of the glass atrium of the iconic Rookery, is one of Chicago’s newest hotels. It’s a hotel in the heart of Chicago’s financial district and fittingly, everything about The LaSalle Chicago, Autograph Collection, is very Chicago. It’s one of the city’s newest hotels and the latest selection for our hotel column, Room Key.
The hotel can be found inside a Beaux-Arts edifice crouched in the shadow of the somewhat menacing Board of Trade tower that looms over La Salle Street. Inside the entrance floor and up to the hotel’s lobby, it’s all Art Deco with geometric stone patterns and lots of gold and brass trim and fixtures.
Everything about the hotel feels very Chicago–corporate when the word evoked images of cigar-chomping, liquor swirling, and paneled-wood clubhouse, not something shorn of personality. It’s the kind of hotel you can imagine Jack Donaghy staying in, perhaps even living in.
The hotel lobby is found on the 21st floor, and so is the restaurant, called Grill on 21. While we didn’t try it while staying, really anything with “grill” in the name and in Chicago is pretty self explanatory in terms of what to expect. Also on the public floor are the spacious gym and the library, which is a sort of neo-Art Deco lounge with a few shelves of books.
Floor hallways are decorated with a thick carpet that resembles blue marble veined with white and the somber walls are accented with golden crown-like sconces. If you want to see a particularly over the top hallway, though, peek down the hallway leading from the lobby to the meeting rooms.
The bedrooms are on the handful of floors below the lobby, and continue the sort of dark clubhouse vibes with gray paneled rooms, wide plank floors, blue velvet drapes, a sun mirror over the bed, and tufted headboards. The bathrooms are decorated with white marble and beveled mirrors against textured blue walls.
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