InterContinental Chicago Magnificent Mile

The gold dome on the east side of North Michigan Avenue, just north of the river, belongs to a building that was never meant to be a hotel. The Medinah Athletic Club opened in 1929 for the Shriners of Chicago, 42 storeys of limestone decorated in a mix of Assyrian, Egyptian and Moorish motifs, with a shooting range, a bowling alley, a miniature golf course and a swimming pool on the 14th floor. Five years later the club was bankrupt. The InterContinental Chicago Magnificent Mile occupies the tower now, and the pool is still there.

History

The architect Walter W. Ahlschlager, who also designed Chicago's Uptown Theatre and the Roxy in New York, gave the Shriners a building to match their taste for the exotic. The club opened in late 1929, weeks after the crash, with 440 members' rooms and a programme of athletics and banquets. The Depression emptied it, and in 1934 the club went into receivership. The building became a hotel in the 1940s, the Hotel Continental, then a Sheraton, which added a plain south tower in 1961. By the 1980s the historic tower had lost most of its decoration under paint and partitions.

Inter-Continental Hotels bought it and spent several years and well over a hundred million dollars restoring the public rooms, using the original drawings and old photographs. The hotel reopened in 1990 under its present name. The pool, the Hall of Lions and the Grand Ballroom came back as they were, and the hotel has been on Chicago's architecture tours ever since.

Architecture and design

Ahlschlager's tower is a set piece of 1920s eclecticism. The entrance hall, the Hall of Lions, has carved stone lions and a ceiling painted in geometric patterns; the stair rises past a Spanish Renaissance-style mezzanine to the King Arthur Court, with its carved oak and medieval murals, and up to the Grand Ballroom on the upper floors, a double-height room with gilded balconies and a ceiling painted in the Spanish style. The Renaissance Room has murals on panelled walls. Outside, the facade carries Assyrian reliefs of warriors and the dome at the top was built as a minaret-like ornament. The 14th-floor pool is lined in Majolica tile with a terracotta fountain of Neptune at one end and a balcony around three sides; Johnny Weissmuller, Olympic champion and the screen Tarzan, trained in it before the club closed.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has around 790 rooms split between the historic tower and the 1961 south tower, which makes it one of the larger hotels on Michigan Avenue. Rooms in the historic tower are irregular in shape and size, a legacy of the club plan, and the suites there have the best of the period detail; the south tower rooms are more uniform. Decoration throughout is traditional, with views either over Michigan Avenue or east towards the lake.

Dining

Michael Jordan's Steak House, opened in 2011, is the hotel's main restaurant, with a bar that fills before Bulls games. A lobby bar and a café cover the rest of the day, and the Magnificent Mile's restaurants begin at the door.

Wellness

The 14th-floor pool is the reason to use the fitness floor. It is 25 yards long, junior Olympic size, and swimming lengths under its painted ceiling is one of the odder pleasures of a Chicago hotel stay. A fitness centre and a spa with treatment rooms sit on the same floors.

Weddings and events

The Grand Ballroom, King Arthur Court, the Renaissance Room and the Hall of Lions are among the most photographed wedding settings in the city, and the hotel runs a full programme of weddings, galas and conferences across its historic and modern meeting floors. Receptions in the Grand Ballroom use the gilded balconies for musicians, and smaller weddings take the Renaissance Room. Meeting space extends through the south tower for conventions.

Location

505 North Michigan Avenue is on the Magnificent Mile, a block north of the Chicago River and the Tribune Tower and Wrigley Building, with the shops running north to Water Tower Place. Millennium Park and the Loop are a 15-minute walk south across the bridge. Grand station on the Red Line is two blocks west. O'Hare International Airport is about 30 km by road, reached by the Blue Line from the Loop in about 45 minutes; Midway is about 20 km. For a luxury hotel in Chicago with this much history, it is also one of the best placed for the river and the lakefront.