Shoreland Hotel
Encyclopedia
Hyde Park, Chicago
Hyde Park, located on the South Side of the City of Chicago, in Cook County, Illinois, United States and seven miles south of the Chicago Loop, is a Chicago neighborhood and one of 77 Chicago community areas. It is home to the University of Chicago, the Hyde Park Art Center, the Museum of Science...
neighborhood of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
. It was added to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
in 1986. It was a residence hall
Dormitory
A dormitory, often shortened to dorm, in the United States is a residence hall consisting of sleeping quarters or entire buildings primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people, often boarding school, college or university students...
of the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
as Shoreland Hall but was retired after the 2008–2009 school year.
History
The Shoreland was opened in 1926 by Harry Fawcett, who reportedly spent $2 million on furnishings alone. The Shoreland Hotel maintained 1,000 guest rooms over 13 floors, a crystal ballroom, a large banquet hall with a top-notch restaurant and an immaculate lobby with 30-foot-high ceilings. Its terra-cotta exterior featured gargoyleGargoyle
In architecture, a gargoyle is a carved stone grotesque, usually made of granite, with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building thereby preventing rainwater from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between...
s and other elaborate stonework. It hosted countless wedding receptions and parties for Chicago's elite, including a massive banquet held when Amelia Earhart
Amelia Earhart
Amelia Mary Earhart was a noted American aviation pioneer and author. Earhart was the first woman to receive the U.S. Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded for becoming the first aviatrix to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean...
returned triumphantly in 1928 to the Hyde Park neighborhood where she had attended high school. Later, Al Capone
Al Capone
Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone was an American gangster who led a Prohibition-era crime syndicate. The Chicago Outfit, which subsequently became known as the "Capones", was dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor, and other illegal activities such as prostitution, in Chicago from the early...
was known to conduct "business" in certain rooms. In the 1950s, Jimmy Hoffa
Jimmy Hoffa
James Riddle "Jimmy" Hoffa was an American labor union leader....
kept a room in the hotel and often held raucous union meetings there. As the story goes, one of Hoffa's underlings strangled a hotel worker in the lobby after he dared to ask the union boss to pay his debt to the hotel. That worker's wife was the hotel manager, making the Shoreland the largest hotel in the country with a woman in charge, at the time. Another notable resident was Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician, academic, and author who taught at the University of Chicago for more than three decades...
, who occupied rooms in the Shoreland at the same time as Hoffa. Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
also spent several nights at the Shoreland.
Today
Over time the hotel began to lose its splendor, and in the 1970s it was sold for $750,000 to the University of ChicagoUniversity of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
. It then became a dormitory
Dormitory
A dormitory, often shortened to dorm, in the United States is a residence hall consisting of sleeping quarters or entire buildings primarily providing sleeping and residential quarters for large numbers of people, often boarding school, college or university students...
, known as Shoreland Hall, and housed approximately 650 undergraduate students. However, in the spring of 2004 the university decommissioned the Shoreland as a dormitory, citing increasing maintenance costs and decreasing popularity among incoming students. It remained in use by the university through spring quarter of 2009, after which it will be turned over to a Chicago developer that specializes in historical preservation.
The University sold the Shoreland for $6 million to Kenard Corporation, who had planned to turn it into 260 condominium
Condominium
A condominium, or condo, is the form of housing tenure and other real property where a specified part of a piece of real estate is individually owned while use of and access to common facilities in the piece such as hallways, heating system, elevators, exterior areas is executed under legal rights...
s. Hal Lichterman, the president of the corporation, had said he hoped to put a restaurant in the old banquet hall and would otherwise gut the building. In fall 2006, after Hal Lichterman's death, Kenard resold the Shoreland for $10 million to R.D. Horner & Associates, one of the three initial bidders on the property. Horner & Associates plans to carry out Kenard's exact plans for converting the dormitory into condominiums. They had originally planned to open the building as early as late 2009, but in April 2007, the University exercised its option to keep the Shoreland open as a dormitory for the 2008-09 academic year.
The Shoreland was sold yet again to New Jersey-based Antheus Capital (through its 5454 S. Shore Drive LLC holding) in August 2008 for $16 million. Antheus Capital and MAC Property Management has decided to develop its own plans for the Shoreland. Antheus took over the lease with the University of Chicago, expiring in 2009.