Virgin Hotels Chicago
- Architect
- Rapp and Rapp
- Year
- 1928
- Style
- Art Deco
- City
- Chicago, IL
- Collection
- chicago deco
Built between 1926 and 1928 as the Old Dearborn Bank Building at the corner of Lake Street and North Wabash Avenue, this 27-story, 300-foot tower was designed by the theater-and-hotel firm Rapp and Rapp, one of only two office buildings the firm ever designed. The bank failed almost immediately, its parent company liquidated in the Great Depression, and the building has since been converted into the 250-room Virgin Hotels Chicago, the first outpost of Richard Branson's Virgin Hotels brand.
the building
Movie-palace ornament. The steel-framed, light brown brick tower is dressed in ornate medieval and mythological terra-cotta decoration typical of the movie palaces that were Rapp and Rapp's main business, giving an office building the same theatrical flourish the firm gave its theaters.
An app-run hotel. As Virgin Hotels Chicago, the 250-room property operates through a mobile-app-based business model and was designed to appeal to female business travelers.
the style
The building's Art Deco character comes through in its elaborate terra-cotta ornament, more typical of the movie palaces Rapp and Rapp usually designed than of an office tower.
More on Art Decothe architect
Rapp and Rapp were known chiefly as movie palace and hotel architects; this 1928 tower is one of only two buildings the firm designed as an office building.
significance
Designated a Chicago Landmark on June 4, 2003, the building has passed from bank headquarters to office building to boutique hotel over its nearly century-long life.
nearby
- Old Dearborn Bank Building
- 35 East Wacker Building
- Carbide and Carbon Building
- Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist
- Chicago Motor Club Building
- Page Brothers Building