They Just Don't Build 'Em Like This Anymore - Pt. II
If you enter the large, glassy, brass-trimmed entrance to the InterContinental Chicago hotel on north Michigan Avenue, this is not what you will see. You will be in the correct hostelry, just the wrong lobby. To see this amazing piece of architectural detail, enter the building from the much smaller scaled, ornately brass-carved, glass canopied entrance a little further to the south. This is the original entryway of the former Medinah Athletic Club, built for the Shriners organization in 1929.
The building was meant to provide Shriners with a men's club of the utmost luxury. Unfortunately, the Depression and a rivalry between members, resulted in the club's closure soon after it opened. When it re-opened to the general public in the 1940s, the new owners left all of architect Walter W. Ahlschlager's fanciful details intact, which were inspired by the Shriners fraternal brotherhood, Arabic/freemasonry history. After all, the official name of the organization is the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.
Ahlschlager used the Middle East as the inspiration for many of the details in the hotel, as well as 12th-14th century European heraldic imagery. The ceilings in the main lobby as well as a secondary mezzanine lobby and elevator corridor, have a series of richly painted, polychromed ceilings.
The building had a modern addition attached to it in the 1960s, but by 1985 its
doors were shuttered once again. However, unlike its closure in the 1930s, the hotel didn't sit unused for ten years and was taken over by the InterContinental Hotels Group in the late 80s. The office of architect Harry Weese & Associates oversaw the $130 million renovation of the hotel complex.
On the exterior of the building, if you take the time to look up, you can see more of the Assyrian/Egyptian inspiration in the limestone carvings by Leon Harmart. And, if you look way up to the very top, next to the gold onion dome, you will see what looks like a chimney stack, rumored to have been built as a dirigible landing site. But in a zeppelin enhanced photo taken in 1929, the substantial chimney cover looks like it may have been planned all along. The landing pillar idea may have just been a flight of fancy.
See Part I at: They Just Don't Build 'Em Like This Anymore.
Posted by designslinger at 7/7/2009 2:18 AM 
Categories: Architecture, Preservation, History, Architects, Decorative Arts
Tags: Walter W. Ahlschlager Michigan Avenue
Categories: Architecture, Preservation, History, Architects, Decorative Arts
Tags: Walter W. Ahlschlager Michigan Avenue
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