THE GRAND HOTELS OF HYDE PARK

Patricia Morse

Hyde Park Historical Society

Presented: 18 July 2021 Map of American Indian trails and villages of , and of Cook, DuPage and Will counties in 1804. Map by Albert F. Scharf, 1900- 1901. Photograph: Chicago History Museum; watercolor from The Dream City in Ashes--p. 6 (arcadiasystems.org) HYDE PARK BEGINS

• 1833 Nathan Watson buys land

• 1853 Hyde Park Railroad Station opens

• 1861 Hyde Park incorporates

Paul Cornell

Watson’s Tavern from Hansen, from HPHS HYDE PARK HOUSE 1858-1879

Gurdon P. Randall, architect

Approximately, the corner of 53rd and Hyde Park Blvd

Wood Frame 80 Units, 200 People

Photo: HPHS Archives HYDE PARK HOTEL 1888-1962

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Photo: CHUCKMAN'S PHOTOS ON WORDPRESS: CHICAGO NOSTALGIA AND MEMORABILIA THE COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION OF 1893 SOUTHSIDE TRANSFORMED Beatrice Hotel 1891-1959 SW Corner 57th & Dorchester

Southside Transformed

• Over 1500 Hotels and Lodging Houses on the Southside • Multiple small frame structures or empty lots became single buildings with single owners • Commercial streets became lined with tall buildings • Stores on the bottom, living spaces above • Built fast and furious for the Fair • Targeted by Urban Renewal 1950s

University of Chicago Photographic Archive Catherine Van Valkenburg Waite Holland Hotel 1891-1938 NW Corner Lake & 53rd Street

400 Rooms

Photo: Woman of the Century/Catherine Van V. Waite - Wikisource WHAT MAKES A GRAND HOTEL

Services Public Spaces • Daily maid service • Ballrooms • Laundry service • dances, fundraisers, weddings, civic • Bellhop/Assistance organization meetings, community • Concierge/Front Desk gatherings, political rallies • Security/Doorman • Elegant Dining • Meal plans • Smoking Rooms for business meetings • Parlors for receiving guests Luxury • Entertainment facilities • Marble staircases • Billiards • Elaborate décor • Bowling • Fine furnishings • Putting Greens • All the comforts of a wealthy home • Concert Rooms • Cutting edge technology • Movie theaters • Exclusivity (high rent)

Apartment Hotels rented short-term or long-term, with a range of rooms and suites. They offered services and did not require leases. Windermere Hotel 1891-1959

https://chuckmanchicagonostalgia.wordpress.com/ Raymond and Whitcomb Grand Hotel 1891-1929 1414 East 59th “Street

9,000 square foot dining room seating over 500 Bird's eye view of the World's Columbian Exposition, 350 rooms in 1, 2, 3 room suites Chicago, 1893. | Library of Congress (loc.gov); http://chuckmancollectionvolume11.blogspot.com/ CHICAGO BEACH HOTEL 1891-1924

Thomas Starrett Engineer

NE Corner 51st & Cornell

450 rooms, 175 with private baths

http://chuckmancollectionvolume8.blogspot.com/; https://chuckmancollectionvolume4.blogspot.com/ AFTER THE FAIR 1895-1917

Jackson Park –Olmsted Sons Redesign • Lawn Tennis • Athletic track and field • Equestrian Trails • Rose Garden, Annual Beds, Lakefront Promenades • Baseball Diamonds • Beach Bathing • Boating • Yacht Harbor digitalcollections.nypl.org; CHUCKMAN'S PHOTOS ON WORDPRESS: • After 1905, Golf CHICAGO NOSTALGIA AND MEMORABILIA; HipPostcard HOTEL DEL PRADO (THE RENAMED RAYMOND & WHITCOMB GRAND)

The past is a foreign country (tumblr.com); University of Chicago Photographic Archives DOMESTICITY 1905 STYLE

Elegant domestic life • Porcelain bathtubs, • Built-in buffets and bookcases, • Servants’ rooms, • Steam heat, • Electric lights, • Telephones,

Chicago History Museum Image Archive The Staff who Provided the Services, Pre-World War I

• Unionized • Well-Paid

Hotels provided 1000s of Jobs

Chicago History Museum Image Archive Arthur Burrage Farwell Hyde Park Protective Association Chicago Law and Order League

“BLIND PIGS” AND GAMBLING

Wikimedia; Chicago Tribune CHICAGO BEACH HOTEL

CHUCKMAN'S PHOTOS ON WORDPRESS: CHICAGO NOSTALGIA AND MEMORABILIA Chicago’s Residential Hotel Center “Caldrons of social Here living is worthwhile. and cultural evil”

• Fast train to office, stores, theaters Women have • Recreation in Jackson Park dangerous leisure. • Events at the University • Cooler by the lake Women had access to unfettered urban “Enjoy living in a way that will free you diversity and its from the tedious, worrisome duties distractions. that go with keeping house” Women didn’t need families. They could live on their own and have careers.

University of Chicago sociologist, Norman S. Hayner Hyde Park Building Boom, 1917-1930

By 1930, 100 hotels in Hyde Park

• Fire-proofing • Steel-frame construction • Concrete floors • Brick & terra cotta

• 12 to 17 stories

• Class Differences • Smaller Rooms Below • Kitchenettes • Breakfast nooks • Murphy beds • Massive Suites Above

CHUCKMAN'S PHOTOS ON WORDPRESS: CHICAGO NOSTALGIA AND MEMORABILIA Sisson Hotel 1917

Sherry Hotel 1927

Hampton House 1979

Henry L. Newhouse & Felix M. Bernham, architects

352 rooms in 84 fully-furnished apartments, of 2-6 rooms each COOPER-CARLETON HOTEL 1918

DEL PRADO HOTEL 1929-present

Henry L. Newhouse & Felix M. Bernham, architects

Chuckman postcards; University of Chicago Photographic Archives; WINDERMERE EAST Rapp and Rapp, architects 1922-Present

1924: 450 guest rooms Present: 228 apartments

Vilma Banky

Wikimedia; University of Chicago Photographic Archives; https://chuckmanchicagonostalgia.wordpress.com/ CHICAGO BEACH HOTEL

1921

George C. Nimmons architect

600 hotel rooms Hotels of Hyde Park THE HOTELS LOSE THE BEACH

1925

Looking South from 39th Street , Leif Erickson Drive, May 1930, just opened

“the most wonderful water playground of the world”

Vintage -- Chicago Tribune; Encyclopedia of Chicago • Single-room units $240 a month ($3650 a month in 2021 dollars) • 9 room suites $1,075 a month ($15,600 a month in 2021 dollars)

• Modern exercise equipment delivered to guests in their rooms • Dancing lessons, including tap • Bowling alley (enough lanes for tournaments) • 18 hole indoor putting golf course, full- time golf instructor, in the basement

THE SHORELAND • Barber shop 1926-PRESENT • Beauty salon • Convenience shop ARCHITECT: MEYER FRIDSTEIN • Terrace café, Castilian Grill, Louis XVI Room of Gottschalk & Co. • Full-time upholstery workers in the attic to service the $2 million worth of furniture in 1926: 1000 Rooms the building. 1965: 750 apartments Present: 350 apartments LUXURY

Chicago History Museum Images; MAC Properties; Application for National Historic Landmark Status 1930’S STYLE

Application for landmark status PICCADILLY HOTEL 1927-Present Theater: 1927-1972 SE Corner 51st Street & Blackstone Rapp and Rapp 350 Rooms 1940’S

Chuckman; Chicago History Museum Images; 1950’S Guests of the Shoreland Milton Friedman, Bill Veeck, Jimmy Hoffa, Marie Wilson

Doris Irwin of American Air Lines

Mrs. Luis Aparicio at home in the Picadilly during the Sox run for the pennant 1959

Duke Ellington performed at the Piccadilly, 1961 (photo from 1970) Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection; Completeist: The Jack Benny Show 1952-53 Season; Chicago History Museum Images; Wikimedia’ Smithsonian Magazine; Chicago Tribune URBAN RENEWAL 1952-1970 Problem—White Flight & Crime & Urban Decay • Population Density • Poverty • Crime

Solution—Create a Middle-Class Residential Suburb in the City • Remove commercial streets • Create a few shopping centers • Decrease density

Hotels • Tear down old hotels, especially World’s Fair era buildings like the Beatrice and the Hyde Park Hotel • Decrease the number of units in surviving buildings • Turn hotels into leased apartments • Loss of 1000s of hotel jobs

“Black and white united against the poor” Mike Nichols and Elaine May University of Chicago Photographic Archives URBAN RENEWAL 3 ERAS OF LAKE PARK

1950s

1890s 1961 1960’S

• Rooms Combined into Apartments • 25% of rooms for short-term guests in the Shoreland, Windermere, Del Prado • Still important public community spaces, still convenient to downtown

Lost Marketing Points • Air conditioning, pools, not lake breezes and beaches • Nike missile base in deteriorated Jackson Park • Air traffic moves to O’Hare • Hyde Park unsafe and boring--jazz clubs gone • Breakdown of civic & commercial life • Changing tastes—Counterculture and space age

New Marketing Point • Seniors • Don’t have changing tastes Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters convention at Del Prado • Want services Hotel, 1965

Chicago History Museum Images 1970’S DORMS AND APARTMENTS

Some of the Hotels Once Owned by the University • Broadview • Blackstone • Carlson • Shelbyrne • Shoreland • Piccadilly (tore down theater 1972) • Windermere (bought 1973, sold 1979)

University of Chicago Photographic Archives 50 TH ON THE LAKE 1958-present 4900 S. Lake Shore Drive 300 Units

SHORE DRIVE MOTEL 1956 -1988 NW Corner 56th & South Shore Drive 2000’S

Hyde Park Apartment Hotels Thematic District, National Register of Historic Places, 1986

• Shoreland • Del Prado • Windermere • East End • Mayfair • Flamingo • Poinsetta HYATT PLACE CHICAGO, SOUTH/ SOPHY UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER 2013 2018

• Top 20 New Hotels, Travel + Leisure • Rated Number 3 of all Chicago hotels, Trip Advisor • Well rated Mesler Restaurant • Local artists in the décor just like the Windermere of old THE STUDY 2021 WHERE ARE THEY NOW

Torn Down • Hyde Park House, 1879 (burned) • Hyde Park Hotel, 1962 • Beatrice Hotel, 1959 • Holland Hotel, 1938 • First Chicago Beach Hotel, 1925 • Second Chicago Beach Hotel, 1970 • Windermere (West), 1959 • Shore Motel, 1980??? Condos • Hotel Sisson/Hotel Sherry/Hampton House

Rehabbed as Rental Apartments • Del Prado • Shoreland • Windermere (East) Hyde Park Hotels Referenced in the National Historic Landmark Applications

• Harper Plaza Hotel (5127 S. Harper Avenue); • 5316-18 S. Harper Avenue; • Cornell Towers Apartment Hotel (5346 S. Cornell Avenue) • Carolan Apartment Hotel (5480 S. Cornell Avenue); • Columbian (5220-5222 S. Harper Avenue); • Whitfield Apartment Hotel (5330-5332 S. Harper Avenue); • Hyde Park Manor (5143 S. Kenwood) • Gaylord Apartment Hotel (5316 S. Dorchester Avenue); • Grosvenor Apartment Hotel (5220 S. Kenwood Ave); • 5400 S. Harper Avenue. • Madison Park (1364 E. Hyde Park Blvd); • Park Beach Hotel (5325-27 S. Cornell Avenue); • East End Park Hotel (5236-5252 S. Hyde Park Blvd) • 5200-5204 S. Harper Avenue • Mayfair Apartments (1650-1666 E. 55th Street) • Fairfax Apartment Hotel (1369 E. Hyde Park Blvd) • Poinsettia Apartments (5528 S. Hyde Park Boulevard) • Hyde Park Arms (5316-18 South Harper) • Flamingo Apartment Hotel (5550 S. Shore Drive) • Broadview Hotel (S. Hyde Park Boulevard) • Ask Geoffrey, Blog • Bachin, Building the South Side: Urban Space and Civic Culture in Chicago 1890-1919 • Bachrach, Blog • Block, Hyde Park Houses • Bluestone, “Preservation and Renewal in Post-World War II Chicago” Journal of Architectural Education • Davis, Chicago’s Historic Hyde Park • Davis, articles in the Hyde Park Herald REFERENCES • Encyclopedia of Chicago • Hansen, City in the Garden • Harris, Apartment Hotels • Host and Portman, Early Chicago Hotels • Hotel Monthly • Low, Imprints: The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the City of Chicago • National Register applications • Newspaper archives • Tax, “Residential Integration: The Case of Hyde Park in Chicago” Human Organization