4601 North Sheridan Road
Built 1920
Architect: Walter W. Ahlschlager
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Somerset Hotel, ca. 1920 |
Built in 1919, the Sheridan Plaza Hotel was one of Uptown's first full-service, upscale apartment hotels. Located on the northeast corner of North Sheridan Road and West Wilson Avenue, the Sheridan Plaza occupied one of the most valuable parcels of land outside the Loop at the time of its opening. In 1925, a real estate appraiser placed the value of the Sheridan Plaza land at $6000 per front foot. Among non-Loop properties, only those surrounding the nearby Broadway-Wilson intersection and Englewood's 63rd-Halsted intersection equalled or surpassed this figure.
The twelve-story hotel was at the time of its opening the tallest structures in Uptown. Built at a cost of $2 million, it was also one of the district's costliest. The hotel was designed by architect Walter W. Ahlschlager, whose other Chicago projects included the Sovereign apartment hotel on Granville Avenue, and the Pantheon, Belmont, Davis, and Senate Theaters.
The Sheridan Plaza formally opened for business in April 1920. Early advertisements touted the hotel's convenient location and expert staff. Express motor coaches to the Loop ran along both Wilson Avenue and Sheridan Road, and the elevated and Milwaukee Road interurban trains stopped two blocks west of the hotel. Many of the Sheridan Plaza's leading staff members had prior experience working at some of the world's finest hotels. George F. Adams, the hotel's first manager, came to the Sheridan Plaza from the prestigious Greenbrier resort in White Sulpfur Springs, West Virginia. The hotel's steward and chef de cuisine had worked previously at the Grand and Sacher Hotels in Vienna, Austria. And the maitre d'hotel had experience at Paris' Hotel Balmoral and New York City's Astor Hotel.
Besides convenient transportation options and an expert staff, the Sheridan Plaza also offered its guests a generous array of deluxe amenities and first-class services. Guests received complementary laundry and cleaning services, storage space for valuables, package reception and delivery service, and free telephone service, including message reception. Guests also had access to the hotel's lobby, ballroom, and other public rooms free of charge. The expense for these services was included in the price of a room. Guests could rent a room by the day, the week, or the month. Rents in 1920 ranged from $100 to $130 per month, or roughly $1070 to $1600 in 2005 dollars.
The Sheridan Plaza Restaurant on the second floor accommodated the dining needs of guests. "In our main dining room," one early advertisement read, "the prices will be very reasonable and meals will be ready at any time you desire. Here you can entertain your friends at a moment's notice, without thought as to whether enough has been provided or whether it will suit." There was also a less-expensive, self-serve eatery within the hotel called the Narcissus Grill. Supper dances featuing the Sheridan Plaza Orchestra were held Saturday evenings at nine o'clock.
Compared to some of the area's larger apartment hotels, which catered to middle-aged couples with limited numbers of children, the Sheridan Plaza operated more as a short-term residence for out-of-town visitors, traveling salesmen, or older white-collar workers who were either unmarried or divorced. Of the 192 guests recorded in the 1930 census, 72 were unmarried and 22 were divorced. The most commonly reported professions among those residing at the hotel at the time of the census were salesmen, real estate agent, investment broker, bookkeeper, clerk, stenographer, and secretary.
During its early years, the Sheridan Plaza occupied an important place in the social life of the Uptown community. Local business associations held luncheons and meetings at the hotel. Over the years, hundreds of weddings and banquets were held in the hotel's ballroom. The Chicago Cubs baseball club made the Sheridan Plaza its home residential headquarters during the 1940s, and many visiting National League baseball teams stayed there as well. The hotel's Golden Lion Inn restaurant and nightclub helped the Sheridan Plaza retain its reputation as one of the north side's finest hotels and liveliest night spots into the 1950s.
With the sale of the hotel to a group headed by attorney and real estate developer Louis A. Sherman in 1957, however, the Sheridan Plaza began a period of slow but steady decline. The new owners shifted the focus of the hotel away from short-term rentals for out-of-town visitors and traveling businessmen and began to offer long-term rentals at market rates. Operating more as an apartment building than a luxury hotel, the Sheridan attracted growing numbers of retirees as residents. By 1968, almost all of the hotel's residents were senior citizens.
In late 1968, Advanced Training Institute, Inc. purchased the Sheridan Plaza for $1.5 million, ended daily rentals, and announced plans to invest $2 million on a remodeling project desinged to convert the hotel into a business college and low-cost senior care facility. The project never moved beyond the planning stage, however, and the hotel's condition continued to deteriorate. When the institute ran into financial troubles in the early 1970s, a court-appointed receiver took possession of the hotel and ordered its immediate closure. In November 1974, the on-site manager stopped issuing new leases and notified residents that they would have to move out by the end of the year. Two suspicious fires later that month claimed the lives of two residents and hastened the eviction process. Within days of the fires, all of the building's approximately 200 elderly residents had been cleared out. One 70-year-old resident complained: "When I moved in 12 years ago it was a nice place. Now it's just a dump. They never kept it up. They never did anything for us. There were rooms filled with trash... anybody could get in, through the fire escapes, it's no problem. Last week they just yanked out the switchboard and nobody knew why. Nobody even knows who owns the place." The Tribune aptly described the hotel as a "derelict building housing the silent and lonely."
For the next four years, the Sheridan Plaza stood empty and abandoned. Demolition appeared inevitable. In 1978, however, a Des Plaines-based redevelopment company, the Egidi Group, purchased the hotel for $1.1 million. The new owners of the hotel obtained national landmark status for the hotel in 1980, making it eligible for federal tax breaks and an $8.5 million low-interest federal mortgage loan to help finance a more than $12 million renovation to the building. As part of the renovation project, the hotel's brick and terra cotta exterior were completely restored, along with its barrel-vaulted lobby, interior plater decorations and stylish marble staircase. In 1983, the former 415-room hotel reopened as a 140-unit apartment building.
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Sources: Chicago Daily Tribune, 3 Apr 1921, G4; 1 May 1921, F1; 3 Aug 1958, E8; 20 Aug 1957, B7; 20 Feb 1968, 1; 2 Jan 1969, N1; 18 Nov 1974, 3; 19 Nov 1974, A1; 24 Apr 1983, N-B2A; 11 June 1983, B1; Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States, 1930, Illinois e.d. 16-1804.
Illustration: "Sheridan-Plaza Hotel, Chicago, Sheridan Road at Wilson," postcard (Curt Teich: #R-84959, undated), cropped.
Page authored: 22 June 2005
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