The Tremont Hotel
If you look at their website, you’ll probably get a favorable impression of the Tremont. If you read reviews on tripadvisor.com (as I did after I had already booked it), you’ll probably never want to stay there. My impression lies somewhere in-between. The hotel once was a nice three-star accommodation, but is now fairly run-down. Still, it’s a great location, and compared to the budget motels I usually stay in, it wasn’t bad.
The current iteration of the Tremont Hotel was built in 1927, and restored in 1996, but the history goes back much further than that. In my room, there were framed illustrations of the first three incarnations of the Tremont.
The first Tremont House in Chicago was a boarding house and saloon built in 1834 on the northwest corner of Lake and Dearborn (within what is now the downtown Loop). It burned in 1839. The second Tremont House was completed in 1840 on the southwest corner of Lake and Dearborn, where the Goodman Theater is now. It burned in 1849. The third one was built in 1851 on the same location. In 1856, the city of Chicago decided to raise the streets anywhere from six to ten feet to accommodate better sewers. Two years later, George Pullman (of later railway car fame) lifted the six-story Tremont Hotel while guests remained in their rooms; he employed 1200 men to turn 5000 jackscrews, lifting the hotel without breaking a single pane of glass. The hotel burned to the ground in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
After reading all the captions, I immediately turned my attention to the emergency egress plan on the back of the door.
Chicago