The thing is barely out of the ground and all we have is a couple stories of core, and people are already griping about how bad it is. Tough crowd....

March 8









steel porn ... click on image to enlarge


March 11

great shots HC-- surely the detailing and the massing, especially from the south branch looking north, will be fine, but the letdown over the successive height reductions for such a crowning site is shared by many, I'm sure.

IMHO the real key to this ensemble will be offering a welcoming environment for all of us at ground level, and on that front there is cause for optimism.

I got to stay in that Holiday Inn as a kid, I was lucky enough that my parents brought us to Chicago from Milwaukee and we slept there. The whole south facing wall was all solid window with the best view of downtown and the sears tower. What will happen with that hotel now? lol this building will completely ruin any views. Will it just close down?

^ The Holiday Inn in the Apparel Center is still there (although I believe temporarily closed due to the pandemic), and its views have already been partially blocked by the two existing buildings that have been built on Wolf Point for a number of years now (especially WPW). Since the Wolf Point towers will (unfortunately) not completely block out the Apparel Center, it will still retain views in some units even after WPS is complete.

I'm sure it will stick around. People tend to choose staying at a Holiday Inn for value as opposed to views or prestige. If it does close, it will be due to the economics of adapting to a post Covid world where tourism and business travel is stunted for a few years as opposed to its loss of views for some rooms.

^ Only us skyscraper nerds take into account views when booking a hotel.

Personally, I ask for the highest floor every time. I'm sure many of you do the same. There aren't many tall hotel options in Chicago, but whenever you're in NYC, I recommend The Residence Inn at Broadway and 54th for phenomenal views.

Thanks for the great update.

I'm quite surprised to see these angled columns. So much that at first glance I'd assumed it was just an illusion. Wonder what the story is behind them.

dup

You know I do :cool:



Thanks for the tip!

^Wow you guys are hardcore! I have requested the highest floor only once, when I spent one night in downtown Detroit a couple years ago. I was given a room on the second highest floor of the RenCen (the highest floor was full), and the view was amazing. There aren't many tall hotels in the US, and Marriott at the 44-year-old RenCen is still the second tallest among them, being just several meters shorter than the Residence Inn in NYC.

What's the tallest hotel in Chicago? And the highest?

If there's a god, they'll make sure that building comes down sooner than later.

No need for the wrecking ball. A glass curtain wall recladding would suffice. Neither outcome is likely unfortunately, as the building is structurally sound and was mostly leased (and therefor profitable) as of before the pandemic.

The blue/grey paintjob from a few years ago was such an improvement over that vile beige tone it had. Still ugly, but considerably less of an eyesore now.

The tallest all-hotel tower in chicago is the hotel intercontinental (the old medina athletic club tower from 1929) at 471', but the top of the tower has a lot of unoccupied architectural embellishments, so I think the tallest hotel room that you can actually book in chicago is in the 460' tall chicago marriott built in 1978.

There are of course 10 mixed-use towers with hotel components that are taller than those two in chicago, but I believe the hotel portions for all of them are on the lower floors, with residential units located on the upper floors.

Kinda weird that in a city with over 125 towers over 500' tall, you can't book a single hotel room above that height. It's one of the rare skyscraper superlatives that detroit has over chicago.

A lot of US (and world) cities have that superlative over Chicago surprisingly. Chicago may be the only major world skyscraper city without a sky-scraping hotel room.

Hopefully some of the new developments will change that.

Even NYC only has a few ~700 foot hotels. Asian cities have 1k+ foot hotel rooms all over the place.

Maybe we just don't like high hotels in the west :shrug:

Yea, and Swisshotel is basically tied, perhaps higher occupied-wise.

https://www.skyscrapercenter.com/bui...l-chicago/4362

Didn’t we almost get a hotel component on the upper floors of this tower?

At any rate, the top floor here is supposed to be some kind of public space, so I am sure there’ll be a couch we could grease a janitor to look the other way and sleep on it for a night.

I keep on losing track of the name it is now, but the Carbon and Carbide hotel goes all the way to the top...

I think the former St. Jane will now be called the Pendry. Highest room is about 35 floors.

good call, both the old C&C (503') and Mather Tower (521') have now been converted to hotel use, and they are both taller than the Hotel Intercontinental (470'), but for whatever reason, the CTBUH database has their original and current uses inverted, so i didn't see them in my initial search.

however, in all those towers, there is significant unoccupied space at the top of them, so the tallest hotel room in the city that you can actually book might still be in the chicago marriott or swisshotel.

FWIW, a couple of years ago (ha!) I interviewed with an architect that had his offices at the very top floor of the C&C... not sure if that made it into a suite or not... you did have to take another stair up after getting off of the elevator...

I had a connection with the Mather as well... an old boyfriend worked for another architect that had her offices at the top of that tower... same thing, you had to take a separate stair to reach the offices...

regardless, both of those spaces were surprisingly close to to the crowns...