Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago

The north bank of the Chicago River at Wabash Avenue held the Chicago Sun-Times building until 2004. In its place rose the Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago, a 98-storey tower of tinted glass and stainless steel designed by Adrian Smith, and the hotel on its lower floors received its first guests in January 2008 while the apartments above were still being finished. At 423 metres to the tip of its spire the tower is second in height only to Willis Tower in the city, and from the water it reads as a set of glass steps rising where the river bends south.

History

The project was announced in 2001 as a scheme for the world's tallest building and was scaled back after the attacks of that September. Ground was broken in 2005. The hotel opened on 30 January 2008, the spire went up in January 2009, and the building was declared complete that year. Sixteen, the opening restaurant, earned Michelin stars during its decade on the sixteenth floor and closed in 2018; Terrace 16 took over the room. Forbes Travel Guide rates the house Five-Star, a mark only a handful of luxury hotels in Chicago hold.

Architecture and design

Adrian Smith, then a design partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, stepped the tower back three times so that each ledge lines up with a neighbour: the first with the cornice of the Wrigley Building, the second with the twin cylinders of Marina City to the west, the third with the roof of 330 North Wabash, the Mies van der Rohe office tower next door. The curtain wall is glass tinted to pick up the colour of the river, held in brushed stainless-steel mullions. At the base a terraced garden steps down to a public riverwalk, and the hotel entrance sits a level above on Wabash Avenue.

Rooms and suites

The 339 guest rooms and suites occupy the floors between the spa and the first residential level. Windows run floor to ceiling across the width of each room, and most rooms have a kitchen with a cooktop and full-size appliances, a legacy of the condominium-hotel model behind the tower. The best views face east along the river to Lake Michigan, with the Wrigley Building clock tower and the Tribune Tower in the foreground; others look south over the Loop or north up Michigan Avenue.

Dining

Terrace 16 serves breakfast, lunch and dinner on the sixteenth floor and, in warm months, on a terrace that looks across the street to the Wrigley Building clock. Rebar, on the mezzanine above the lobby, is a bar with a long window on the river and a menu built around sushi and small plates. In-room dining runs round the clock from the same kitchens.

Wellness

The Spa at Trump takes the fourteenth floor, with treatment rooms, a relaxation lounge and an indoor pool lit by windows on the river. A fitness centre with the same outlook sits beside it.

Weddings and events

The function rooms are grouped on the sixteenth floor next to Terrace 16. The Grand Ballroom is the largest; smaller salons take board meetings and private dinners, and the terrace outside is used for receptions. Weddings and corporate meetings are both held here, and the riverfront with the Wrigley Building behind is the usual backdrop for photographs.

Location

The hotel stands at the junction of the river and Wabash Avenue on the Near North Side, with the Loop across the water and Michigan Avenue two blocks east. The Riverwalk starts at its feet. Grand station on the CTA Red Line is three blocks north on State Street, and Union Station is about 1.5 kilometres away across the river. O'Hare is around 27 kilometres by road and Midway around 18.